Icelt Vappropriate and Accurate Language

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Description of the learners and the lesson I observed a class of 27 students, ages 17-23, doing basic level English at ITSA. This group has four 60 -minute lessons per week. In most classes, they are share the learning process with a native teacher assistant who emphasizes their pronunciation. They studied the ‘used to’ past tense form in the previous class. The teacher’s aim was to get learners be able to express that something happened often in the past, but does not happen anymore. Context The following samples were taken from the productive stage of this class where students (S) were expressing the activities they used to do when they were children. Language samples Accurate and/or appropriate Language *Context: Teacher asked students what they used to do when she was 8 years. 1. S: When I was a child umm loved playing video games. Comment: In this example I observed a micro-pause “umm”. This short pause of less than one second contributes to the speaker’s ability to organise his ideas. The change in intonation and rhythm show natural speaking. Therefore, the student has left out the personal pronoun “I”, but we can understand the meaning from the context. This kind of ellipsis is common in native spoken English, and this omission shows a degree of accuracy and fluency in the language. 2. S: I enjoyed waking up irly-early in the morning but now it is impossible I don’t have time anymore. Comment: The student used appropriate sentence stress and she also used a repair because she reformulated her incorrect pronunciation or slip,[ˈɪrlɪ] instead of [ˈ3ːlɪ]. In addition, when she said that she does not have time..., she moved her head in negative way. So, her corporal language helped to her to emphasise her answer. 3. S: I used to eat chocolates, I loved them but I’m on diet. Comment: This was a fluent, funny and spontaneously

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