Caitlin Sauvey
ESL/Spanish Instructor & Linguist

     I have chosen a Spanish speaker for this project not only because I am a Spanish major, but she is also someone with whom I have created a connection through a mutual friend. To keep her name confidential, I will be referring to her under the pseudonym of Belleza Pura, meaning “Pure Beauty” in Spanish, due to her enchanting aesthetic. I have only spoken to Belleza Pura virtually because of physical distance, but I found her to be utterly talented in the mastery of photography and her use of compelling captions. She frequently uses her second language of English in these captions as well as other posts on social media to express herself. Upon asking Belleza Pura to work with me on this project, I was delighted to see her enthusiastic response to assisting my research. 

     Belleza Pura is a 22-year-old graduate student from IES Alfonso X el Sabio, which is a post-secondary vocational school in Spain. She graduated in June of this year with a degree in photography and filmmaking. Her literacy level in her first language, Spanish, is native as she was born in Toledo, Spain. English, however, she began acquiring in primary school and had continued studying for 11 years as well as attending an English academy for 5 years. Belleza Pura enjoys watching American films and reading in English to improve her proficiency as she has finished her studies. Her current job also requires her second language knowledge as she works in a cultural association as an administrative assistant and community manager for international youth and volunteer projects. Other than English, she can speak a bit of basic French and is trying to learn Korean in her spare time. Based on some conversations I have had with her before this project, Belleza Pura seems to be at a higher proficiency level, around high-intermediate, due to her ease of communicating. However, there are some noticeable linguistic errors, such as spelling and grammar, that I will be able to analyze for this project to see her current abilities with her second language.

     For the data elicitation and analysis part of this paper, I used two methods to collect linguistic data from the participant. I first decided to conduct an interview with Belleza Pura using the software Whatsapp, an app meant to connect people across the world through messages and calls. I set up a time for us to video chat that would work with both of our schedules, despite the six-hour time difference. I had her permission to record our conversation to analyze later. I wanted to make sure this method was a relaxed setting that would allow the learner to challenge herself and expand on the topics chosen, which goes along with the comprehensible output hypothesis (Lightbown & Spada, 2013, p. 169). To avoid breaking the flow of conversation and language usage, I used the natural acquisition setting, meaning I did not correct any linguistic errors I heard. I also avoided child-directed speech (or foreigner talk), and adjusted speech style used with learners to help them better understand, as I wanted to treat her like the respectable learning adult she is, not a young child. For the interview, I asked a series of genuine and display questions I thought to be more engaging for her to influence complex explanations, which are encouraged in Lightbown and Spada (2013): “Social factors in the wider community can also affect motivation, attitudes, and language learning success” (p. 137). The questions used for the interview were: 

• “Explain what you do for your job?”

•  “Why were you so busy last week?”

•  “Describe a dream vacation if you won the lottery. Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you go with?”

•  “What is your favorite childhood memory?”

•  “What is your general opinion of the United States?”

•  “Do you believe in climate change and if you do, what do you recommend to stop it?”

•  “Describe the most important person to you and why they are so special”

The time I gave her after the question also allowed her to negotiate for the meaning of my questions. For example, when I asked her to explain her job, she responded with “like every day?” to better understand how to properly respond. 

     After hearing some of her common linguistic errors, I asked if I could email her an essay prompt as my second method to get more examples of her English development. Once she agreed, I presented her with another series of genuine questions and asked for her to type at least 300 words and to try to finish within 30 minutes. I also requested that she does not use any outside sources as it would have interfered with the linguistic data. Since she informed me she was a bit anxious during the interview, I reminded Belleza Pura that mistakes were perfectly okay and expected as she is not a native speaker. I wanted there to be little pressure for accuracy but have her rather focus on comprehension. I believed relieving her anxiety would help with her willingness to communicate and my positive attitude would influence motivation (Lightbown & Spada, 2013, p. 132-134). The essay prompt I gave her was “Describe yourself to me: What are your characteristics and qualities? What past things made you the person you are today? What are your future goals and plans? Is there anything you want to improve on in your life?” Both methods provided enough data so that I could linguistically analyze Belleza Pura’s second language proficiency.

     For the analysis of the data I collected, I typed a transcript of the recorded interview so that I may visually see the linguistic errors. I also added the essay sent by email into the same document to find her most common issues, spoken and written. I color-coded Belleza Pura’s mistakes to see what were her recurring errors, which were: spelling, punctuation, word order, verb conjugations, prepositions, and articles. This allowed me to compare if some errors were only seen in oral communication or composition. Out of these mistakes, the two issues that seemed abundant were grammatical morphemes: verb conjugations and article usage. I decided to choose these two linguistic mistakes not only due to their repetition, but I also find myself making these mistakes when using my second language of Spanish.

     For Belleza Pura’s verb conjugations, she seemed to have the most difficulty with present and past tenses. When using the past tense, she would occasionally use the present instead: “There was where I meet my boyfriend” in her essay and “That’s what I *read a few hours ago” in the interview. With past tenses, it can get confusing to choose the correct conjugation as there are multiple such as perfect, simple, continuous, and combinations of those. With this confusion, it is seen that Belleza avoids attempting these past tenses in her composition. Spanish has many of the same complex conjugations as English, but Parrott (2010) explains that nerves can also result in these linguistic errors: “Mistakes like this may also be the result of not knowing the appropriate forms, or maybe due to ‘forgetting’ them under the pressure of communicating. Some learners consistently use a present tense instead of the past” (p. 228). Since Belleza Pura informed me that she was nervous speaking with me as it was “the second or the third time I speak with someone who actually speak English like the first language”, it explains why she was able to correctly use past tense at times and forget the correct conjugation at other times during our interview. With present tense, she tends to leave out the third person ‘-s’: “If covid let me” in her essay and “he do coaching” in the interview. Parrott explains how this is a common mistake even for those at very high levels of proficiency due to its lack of connotation: “Learners very frequently fail to pronounce this final s, even when they have reached a very high level of proficiency in the language… It may also be affected by the fact that the final s conveys no meaning - it is purely a formal requirement” (p. 191). Since the Spanish language does not have this third person singular ‘-s’, as well as it has no significance other than being grammatically correct, it makes sense why this error was abundant. 

     For Belleza Pura’s articles, she tended to either insert articles at inappropriate times or leave them out when needed. Her miscellaneous avoidance of articles only occurs with her struggle to communicate in the interview: “just few people” and “pick up phone”. Lightbown and Spada explain that these telegraphic sentences can also be seen with children during their early years of English acquisition, but since this lack of grammatical morphemes does not prevent comprehension, learners may forget to express these while speaking (p. 23-24). When she does use articles, however, there are times when she places them where they are not needed: “the Covid” in the interview. An error like this is generally common with Latin-based learners: “Learners may also use the in generalizations (in many European languages definite articles are normally used for this purpose)” (Parrot, 2010, p. 33). Martin Parrott also goes on to explain that these errors are common even if the learner knows the rules of articles due to the pressures with conversing, which explains why these article issues were only seen in the interview and not the essay: “a hard-working person” and “at the moment” were correctly used in her essay. Despite these recurring linguistic errors, they did not prevent any comprehension between Belleza and myself during this project.

     There are many instructional strategies that second language learners can use to aid their acquisition, however, Belleza Pura should focus on these two recommendations of mine: regularly practice oral communication and receive corrective feedback. One of Belleza’s main issues that resulted in linguistic errors was her anxiety when verbally communicating. Although speaking in English can intimidate her since she is not confident in her abilities, the only way for her to get comfortable and improve with her speaking is to verbally use her second language frequently. Whatsapp, the application we used to have our interview, is a great platform to communicate with English speakers across the world. Speaking with native English speakers, like myself, can be more stressful to Belleza rather than speaking with fellow English language learners, but she can use that practice to reduce stress and get corrective feedback. It has been discovered that second language learners make the most mistakes during communication exchanges, therefore there are more opportunities for corrective feedback (Lightbown & Spada, 2013, pg. 209). This will help prevent recurring errors and improve her level of proficiency. As Belleza also applies English to her job, she has the advantage of using online tools, such as spelling and grammar checks, to visibly show her where she is making linguistic errors. Grammarly is software Belleza can download to her computer that will provide correct feedback on any application she is using. To know if these instructional strategy recommendations work, I can reevaluate Belleza Pura’s second language production after a few months of her regularly using these suggestions. If she is more comfortable and confident in her abilities, along with showing improvement with her use of articles and tenses, I will know that the instructional strategy recommendations I provided had a positive effect on her second language acquisition. 

     In the final analysis, it was difficult to find Belleza Pura’s exact level of proficiency. This was due to the limited data I collected as well as the impossibility of accounting for other influences of her acquisition that Lightbown and Spada have mentioned, “it is not possible to directly observe and measure motivation, extroversion, or even intelligence” (p. 121). Despite some of these intertwined but unmeasurable factors, I believe Belleza’s proficiency level is high and is considered close to fluent. Her bilingual abilities allow her to express complex conversations and ideologies without having any troubles with comprehensibility. She was also in the highest stages of pragmatic development with her ability to organize her conversation and include culture-specific features like humor and apologies (p. 105). Her high level of English proficiency proves that second language learners are able to successfully acquire a language after puberty, despite the claims of the critical period hypothesis. Working with Belleza Pura for this language analysis and instructional strategy project was truly beneficial to both me and Belleza as we now are able to better understand and evaluate our own second language acquisition. 





 

References

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Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. M. (2013). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University 

 

Press.

 

Parrott, M. (2010). Grammar for English language teachers: With exercises and key. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press.