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Second Language Acquisition - Learner's Profile

INTRODUCTION

The person that I have chosen for this assignment, in order to analyse his performance in English, is called John and he is 23 years old. He comes from Greece and he was here in England for three weeks visiting a friend. He has been studying English for seven years in a private school of English back in Greece and he holds the Cambridge First Certificate degree. After going back to Greece, he will continue his studies in order to set exams for the Cambridge Proficiency. John was very keen on helping me with the interview and showed no hesitation in doing it. He came to my house and really enjoyed this experience as he revealed afterwards. The only thing that he asked before the interview was to give him the questions and so that he has some time to prepare.

His level of English is considered to be ‘Higher-Intermediate to Advanced'. He appeared capable of communicating by using the English language although he is facing some problems in certain aspects of the English language such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and discourse.

However, before I go on to analyse my learner's performance I will have to give a short account on how the English language is taught in Greece and which are the differences between the two languages.

In the interview, John is trying to explain that he found it difficult to communicate because the language that is taught in Greece is not the same as the one that is most English people speak. This means that during his studies he did not come across any authentic texts and especially authentic samples of spoken language. This is an important feature of Coursebook Evaluation research since many writers such as Cunningsworth (1995) have focused on the problem of authenticity in coursebooks. It has to be mentioned that in Greece most English schools use coursebooks and the most common method that is still being used is Grammar Translation. Although, John says that he speaks English with his teachers and classmates,...