Assignment 1: Needs Analysis Criteria Sheet Introduction: Together with the aim of international integration, demands for learning a second language are increasing these days. Each learner has different reasons to study a new language, so teachers cannot apply the same teaching and learning methods or strategies for all students. As a language teacher, it is necessary to know to analyse students’ needs and give them a proper orientation at the first step learning a language. 1. Biographical statement of learner After getting the agreement from my friend, I started to collect some information about how he has studied English. The consent letter with his signature is attached in Appendix A. My chosen participant’s name is Dinh Hoang Khang coming from Vietnam. He is interested in sport, video games, music, movies and chatting with friends. Khang is a kind of sociable person because he is more likely to make new friends. Talking the same language, I can see his first language is really good when we discuss some topics in daily communication. Also, he got good results in schools and had a profound understanding of general knowledge. In Vietnam, he studied English in schools only. Except for some schools in rural areas, most Vietnamese students must study English grade one to university. Khang did study one year in a Vietnamese university, but he stopped it and planned to study abroad. That is why he now has to complete an English course at AE3 level before taking a bachelor of business at Edith Cowan University. He began to study from AE1 nine months ago, and he is currently in AE3 class. It can be seenclearly that studying English is his top priority as it is one of the essential requirements deciding if he can have a place in the university. From my point of view, those mentioned factors would have a significant influence in his language learning. There is no denying that staying in an English-speaking country, learners can improve their English more effectively. In this case, this student likes chatting and making friends, which gives him more chances to practice speaking frequently. Moreover, he decided to leave the school in Vietnam to apply for studying abroad, so his only choice is to complete this English course to attend the university. It is considered as subjective needs which strongly supports him to achieve his learning target. With the participant’s consent, I conducted to record his speaking and collect some of his writing samples. Speaking transcriptions and scanned writing copies are attachedin appendix B and C. Below is a table showing discussion of three orientation of needs: proficiency, psychology and purpose. Language proficiency orientation Psychological/ humanistic orientation Specific purposes orientation - Phonology: • Unnecessary “s” • No final sounds • Consonants: + th as in “that”  z as in “zoo” + th as in “think” th as in Vietnamese pronunciation + sh as in “fashion”  s as in “son” • Vowels: diffic[u]lt, w[a]lk, n[e]rvous, vill[a]ge, m[o]ney, f[a]shion - Morphology: • Inappropriate tenses: the first time I come here, we sit and see the star on the sky. • Word forms: during cook dinner, cannot forgot, have difficulties to helping their citizen • Resulting in more cotton need to be produced Apart from fashion lets people show their personality - Lexis: • Wrong spelling: althought, habor, eassy, enviroment • Articles: on Internet, in next day • Nouns: Another people, these problem • Participle: people feel boring - Pragmatics: • Speaking: not fluent due to pauses and hesitations • Writing: better but not logical - Not so confident in speaking (schools in Vietnam focus on grammar only). However, he feels it is getting better. - Confident about grammar and writing. - Has many friends from different countries and join in outside activities more often. - English to travel and discover advanced things around the world. - English to well support future career. - Motivation: pass the English course to take a bachelor of business at Edith Cowan University. It would help his family’s own business. As described in the table, the participant has a lot of problems in language proficiency. Concerning phonology, he tends to add “s” sound unnecessarily while he mostly forgets to pronounce final sounds. Due to this issue, it is hard to distinguish if his pronunciation or grammar use is wrong. “I likes reading skill” can be taken as a salient example for this. More than that, some consonants are not pronounced correctly. For example “th” as in “that” is pronounced “z” as in “zoo” when “th” as in “think” is pronounced “th” in Vietnamese pronunciation, and “sh” as in “fashion” is pronounced “s” as in “son”. In addition to this, some vowels are not pronounced correctly like diffic[u]lt, w[a]lk, n[e]rvous, vill[a]ge, m[o]ney and f[a]shion. Aside from this, some grammatical points should be taken into consideration. The learner sometimes forgets to use past tense to talk about what happened in the past. He uses the wrong word forms like “during cook dinner” instead of “during cooking dinner”. What is more, a clause goes after preposition instead of nouns or gerund. It can be seen in the essay writing when he writes “resulting in more cotton need to be produced” and “apart from fashion lets people show their personality”. Also, he sometimes writes words with wrong spelling such as “althought”, “habor”, “eassy” or “environment”. There are some other small mistakes about articles, plural/ singular nouns and participle. In terms of pragmatics, the learner’s speaking is not so fluent due to many pauses and hesitations. His writing is a bit better, but opinions are presented not logical enough. The next aspect needs to be discussed is psychological/ humanistic orientation. The chosen student is not so confident in speaking, but he feels it is getting better compared to some first days in Australia. In contrast, he is completely confident in grammar and writing as these are focal points in Vietnamese schools. Another reason is that teachers do not correct much in his writing. That is why he thinks it is not necessary to practice more. Owing to differences in weather, cultures and language, he felt lost and lonely at the beginning time. However, he gets used to it and enjoys life here when he has more friends to talk and participate some outdoor activities with. In the matter of specific purposes, the learner studies English in order to travel and discover new things around the world. Knowing English is a strong point for him to have more opportunities in future career. More importantly, he needs to develop his English skills to complete English course and have a place in university. It is considered as an intrinsic motivation as he left the university in Vietnam and changed to study in Australia. Likewise, he is aware that English is one of the indispensable conditions to survive in university. He determines graduate in a bachelor of business and comes back to Vietnam to assist his family’s own business. 2. Description of assessment tasks used English skills are divided into two primary categories that are receptive and productive skills. Recognised as active skills, the group of productive skills including speaking and writing are chosen for assessment because they can be observed and analysedefficiently. There is no denying that there would have some changes when people are talking with different audiences, in different settings or with different purposes. Each of those things can create dissimilar situations that speakers have to change linguistic, behaviours, attitudes or levels of formality. Thanks to these changes, we can know how flexible speakers are and whether or not they have an extensive stock of vocabulary to speak appropriately in every context. The level of formality reduces from the most formal to the least: essay, email, casual communication and diary. Essay requires academic words, linking verbs and complex structures to demonstrate writers' opinions. Moreover, essay topics sometimes are not familiar withdaily-life conversations. The next choice is email to teachers or university staff that is less formal than anessay. Casual communication is what happens every day, so it contains familiar topics, and language use is not formal. Diary would be trickier to learners since it requires them to use tenses properly. Because of those different characteristics, I chose essay, email, diary and casual communication to have more multidimensional views. 3. Determination of English language proficiency ISLPRs is a proper scale used to assess the participant's English language proficiency. Depending on what I analysed from his speaking, The learner's speaking level is between 1+ (transactional proficiency) and 2 (basic social proficiency). He can join in simple face-to-face conversations and express his ideas about some ordinary matters. Also, he makes some grammatical mistakes about tenses, nouns, articles and word choices. The good point is that he tries to use some complex structures with "because", "so", and "but". It can be seenclearly that he meets needed conditions in level 1+. Apart from that, the participant has not fulfilled all requirements in level 2. First and foremost, conversations through telephone is quite challenging to him. The good thing is that he always tries to give responses right after hearing the questions. Nevertheless, there are so many pauses, hesitations and self-correction which makes his speaking not fluent. Besides that, many people get troubles understanding him due to his bad pronunciation. He hardly pronounces final sounds and has many mistakes of pronouncing some vowels and consonants. Though he makes an effort to speak at length, the purpose of communication is not reached when audiences cannot understand exactly what he says. Regarding writing, the learner's level is placed at 2+. He could well express his ideas with a variety of academic words and complex sentences. Sentences and paragraphs are linked with appropriate linking words like "firstly", "nevertheless", "in addition to" or "apart from". The essay writing is divided into different paragraphs, which helps readers quickly follow though grammatical mistakes are unavoidable. His writing in diary and email is not good as the essay. However, the most confusing thing is his logical thinking when explaining problems. His viewpoint is not presented clearly in writing and supporting sentences are not connected to topic sentences in each paragraph. It can be said that he is not successful in developing his 'argument' in great depth. 4. Learner needs Basing on what is analysed in the three parts above, there are some noticeable points the student needs to do to enhance his language ability. The participant needs to learn more vocabulary to express his ideas precisely. Pronunciation and intonation should be emphasised to make his speaking more understandably and naturally. The student knows some basic knowledge of grammar, but he should learn more to use it fluently and accurately in both speaking and writing. Especially, organising and outlining ideas in writing should be seriously considered. In speaking, pronunciation should be a top priority as it causes misunderstanding and makes listeners impatient to communicate. Despite interesting opinions, it is useless if audiences cannot understand. Although he pronounces wrongly, I can easily guess it because we talk the same mother tongue. However, people from other countries usually have troubles understanding him, which sometimes makes him afraid of speaking. Concerning writing, the student should particularly concentrate on the way he organises and develops ideas. A large stock of vocabulary or grammatical structures cannot create a good piece of writing if writers’ opinions are not presented logically. It would become a long paragraph connected by many separate sentences. 5. Future teaching The learner has spent almost time studying English in Vietnamese schools from primary to university; hence, he is negatively affected by Grammar Translation Method. This method makes students speak or write slowly as they have to make a complete sentence by translation in their mind before producing it. Hence, Direct Method is suggested to change this bad learning habit. The student can get familiar with comprehending language directly and step by step practice to produce English as a reaction without translation. Owing to this method, he can approach to the correct pronunciation from teachers. Besides that, he needs to watch some English videos or songs with slow speed and repeat to correct his pronunciation. Grammar is a strong point of this surveyed learner, so teachers should take advantage of this point to turn it to communicative grammar. According to Nishiguchi (2003), this method can activate passive grammatical structures and vocabulary through communicative activities. To organise this activity, teachers have to choose a suitable topic and a grammatical point to be focusedon. The topic should be related to one of the student’s hobbies mentioned in part one to arouse his interest in the activity. Students have to practice the chosen grammatical area by speaking out loud. Essay organisation is also a great suggestion to help this student know how to put ideas in order. With two levels which are paragraph organisation and structure of a whole essay, students will be able to well arrange topic sentences and key information in each paragraph. Additionally, learners will know how to well present thesis of every paragraph’s topic (Gibson, 1996). It would be a great activity for students to imagine how a writing essay is built then apply it in their own writing. A good piece of writing should contain great ideas and reasonable explanations. From what B-Ikeguchi (1997) conducted in his Japanese class, I think it is so helpful for my student. It requires learners to collect information about a chosen topic, discuss and create their own writing. Summarising helps students to get main ideas in an article while outlining guides them how to arrange ideas. Finally, expressing personal beliefs assists learners to think and give opinions independently. Through this activity, students can build a coherent set of views and gradually form a paragraph then a complete essay. Word count: 2070 words (not include the table)  REFERENCES Gibson, B. (1996). A Peer Review Activity for Essay Organization. The Internet TESL Journal, 2(3). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Gibson-PeerReview.html B-Ikeguchi, C. (1997). Teaching Integrated Writing Skills. International Journal for Teachers of Writing Skills, 3(3). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ikeguchi-IntegrWrite.html Nishiguchi, N. (2003). Communicative Grammar -- It's Time to Talk. The Internet TESL Journal, 9(4). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Nishiguchi-Communicative.html   APPENDIX APPENDIX A: Consent letter   APPENDIX B: Speaking transcriptions 1. Casual communication Question (Q): Hi, Khang. How are you? Answer (A): I’m fine, thanks. What’s about you, Lan? Q: I’m good, thank you. Firstly, can you introduce a little bit about yourself? A: Sure. I’m from Vietnam. I live in Perth six month ago and I’m studying AE3 in PIBT. Q: How is your class? A: Your class is… oh my class is common, but sometimes it’s so boring because everyone in class is very quiet and teacher don’t often creates activity for student, so people feel boring. I think so. Q: So what skills of English do you like? A: Yeah, I like reading skill um and speaking skill, but my listening skill is not good. Now I really want to improve my listening skill because I cannot listen to teacher or my friend or another people. Q: What do you usually do after school? A: It is a good question. After school, I usually go home and sleep. After that, I often cook dinner with my friend. During cook dinner, I always chat with them. We practice English every day. Q: Why do you choose here to study? A: Because I research on internet. People say that Perth is a good city. It is quiet for study and I want to discover a lot of city in the world and maybe Perth is the first city I will see. Q: When u come here, how do you feel about Australia? A: The first time I come here, it difficult, very difficult for me. The weather in Australia is different with the weather in my country. I was sick. The food in Australia is different with the food in my country so I… it difficult for myself and… but the most difficult is contaction because I cannot listen to anyone in here. But after 10 weeks, I study English I feel better, I can listen to teachers and friend. Q: How do you think about your speaking now compared to your speaking before you came here? A: Yeah actually my speaking skill is not good now. But I think it is get it get better than the past I can’t. Q: Why do you think so? A: Because now I can speak to my friend or teacher and but in the past, I cannot talk anyone. Q: Thank you for your time. 2. Diary summary Sure, I have a nice day maybe I cannot forgot. On February 28th I hang out with my girl my friend maybe I like her. We walk around in harbor in Frementle city and we went home at 6 pm that day. I then we meet again at 9 pm. I was so nervous. We didn’t talk anymore. We just walked around the village at school and we sit and see the star on the sky. I look her face. She beautiful in my mind. After that, we leave at 12 pm I back home. I always think about her. I cannot sleep until 4 pm. I miss her smile and I look forward to see her in next day. Maybe I love her. I has a nice day. 3. Essay summary I don’t know why some ** they think fashion is harmful to environment and it cause wasting of money and maybe they think fashion negatively impacts on the another sector economic. But actually fashion bring excitement and benefit to people. Because fashion bring investment to develop country and fashion is the main of show of income of worker in the world. There are million worker in the world live from fashion.   APPENDIX C: Writing samples 1. Essay: Discussion: Fashion is harmful       2. Diary     3. Email