A Case Study of Three EFL Learners

朱思亲

【Abstract】 This study is a sample to reflect the current learning situations of senior high school students on learning English. Through interviewing three level students, this study reveals that interests, acquisition and learning, and anxiety are the factors that influence students EFL attainment.

【Key words】Case study, three EFL learners, EFL attainment

1. Subjects

In order to represent each level of language proficiency, several subjects were selected. However, this is a sample that reflects the current learning situations of senior high school students on learning English. Thus, three subjects, taught by the same teacher are chosen in this study and each subject presents each level of language proficiency. Although one student is from Class 7, and the other two students are from Class 8, there exist little differences, since the teacher is the same, and the research purpose is mainly to know how the high-level student, middle-level student and low-level student learn the foreign language. The classroom environment may not necessarily have a positive correlation of language proficiency, in most natural conditions, the positive correlation exists.

The three subjects are willing to cooperate with the researcher throughout the whole interview, and the researcher asked the teacher how well these subjects did in the class, which is beneficial for the understanding of their language learning experience.

Subject 1 is a girl, and she is from class 8, low-level. At the outset before she entered the senior high school, subject 1 has possessed a limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. Subject 2 is also a girl from class 8, middle-level. She has mastered the basic linguistic knowledge, but she has some trouble with reading comprehension confidently. Subject 3 is a girl from class 7, high-level. She usually is among the five students who had the highest scores in English in her class. Compared with the subject 1 and subject 2, the subject 3 has acquired a relatively wider vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. However, he said that it is difficult for him to get high scores in writing. Entering a higher school, passing tests, and watching English movies were the major motivations of these three subjects.

In addition, all of them had received formal English since primary school in the primary school, Grade 3. They all had the same English teacher, since they entered the regular high school, No. 6 senior high school in Yiwu. More information about the subjects is attached in the appendix.

2. Results and Discussion

2.1 Question: Do you like learning English?

When asked whether the subjects like learning English or not, the subjects all answered that they like learning English. However, through the subjects description, the extent they like learning English is different.

As to Subject 1, she said, “To be frank, I am still interested in learning English.” She described how much she liked English with “frankly” and “still”, they showed that subject 1 did not have great interest in learning English. She was interested in learning English. However, when she was asked about the time in the interview, she did not have great passion in learning English.

So, why she gradually lost her interest? Subject 1 said, “For many times, when I did not understand what the (English) teacher said in class, the extent of interest decrease.” She did not have strong motivation to achieve success in the English course, not even a strong desire in learning English. When asked whether she had experienced the time when she did not feel difficulty in learning English, she said there were once or twice, in which situations she felt that learning English is not that difficult. Apparently, she felt it is hard to learn English, and she had already lost the interest in learning English already. Even though, when she was faced with the researcher, the researcher could find that she wanted to improve her English, she actually had lost strong self-motivation.

Subject 2 also did not have strong motivation in learning English. Her motivation to learn English well was to be an advantage, instead of disadvantage. In addition, she said that if she learned English well, she could put more energy and time in other courses. Obviously, to finish school, it is important to learn English. Both subject 1 and subject 2 did not have as strong motivation. It may not be obvious until they are compared with subject 3. Subject 3 had the habit of reciting words from English movies. Even though she said it had little help for school work, she still insisted on. So, subject 3 had strong motivation in learning English, as she was autonomous English learner.

2.2 Question: How do you remember English knowledge?

Krashen clearly differentiated acquisition from learning. On the one hand, Acquisition is focused on the “subconscious process”, which is similar to the way in which children learn English. It aims to recognize the meaning of the English knowledge. On the other hand, ‘learning is a “conscious process”, with the result of “‘knowing about language” (Kashen 1). In classroom, students learn about explicit knowledge. In addition, learning with consciousness has the function of “monitoring”, which is to check and make sure that the output has no grammatical mistakes. Furthermore, Kashen believed that only implicit knowledge could help EFL leaners autonomously input and output.

As to these three subjects, subject 1 obviously lacked the ability of acquisition. She said that she had difficulty remembering the vocabulary and grammars. Even though she once tried to write down those words in a notebook to increase the vocabulary, those words did not turned into her own, or implicit knowledge.

Subject 1 said that she sometimes cannot avoid the mistakes in her writing. She had already recognized this problem. However, when she wrote, she simply forgot to check the grammar. Sometimes she did check the grammar, however, she was not sure what she wrote was right or not. In fact, the way that she learnt English solely relied on the monitoring, and she even did not have strong sense of monitoring to check her grammar.

However, subject 2 and subject 3 both had mastered the method of acquisition and monitoring. Subject 2 said that sometimes she filled in the answer by choosing the one she thought was possible. Furthermore, when answered other classmates questions on English, she said she finally understood why the answer should be that one, which was a self-improvement of her own. So, she did not guess the answer, but rather depended on her daily reciting. The knowledge had become implicit knowledge before she knew it. In addition, she said that doing exercises could help her to learn the knowledge, because after recycling what had learnt for many times, she could implicitly acquire the knowledge. In addition, she could also use monitoring to learn language. When she wrote composition, she usually referred to her notebook for some conjunctions, so as to revise her composition, turning the simple sentence to complex sentences to create a good composition. This shows that with sufficient time, she could pay attention to the form of language, and she knew the rules to write beautiful sentences.

Subject 3 is quite different. She said that if classmates asked her about a question on English, she cannot answer it. She said she used her intuition to choose the answer. To her, acquisition was the main approach for her to acquire English.

2.3 Question: When do you feel anxious?

When asked whether they feel anxious about learning English, subject 1 and subject 2 sometimes feel anxious, while subject 3 seldom feels anxious.

Subject 1 feels anxious when she cannot understand what the teacher said in class. Two possible reasons: One is that she could hardly recognize the words in the textbook, and she is not familiar with the textbook. As she had mastered a limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, unfamiliar vocabulary could be the block of understanding what the teacher said. The other reason is that her attention might not be focused, so she missed what the teacher said in the directions.

What increased her anxiety is when she found most of her classmates could grasp what the teacher said in class. So, she once tried to ask the teacher about the questions she could not understand. However, this did little help to improve the situation. The teacher not only answered her question, but also told her related knowledge of that language point. Actually, she was a student with poor English, She could not grasp too much at a time. The teacher input too much and subject 1 is overloaded. This also increased subject 1s anxiety. She realized that there exists more knowledge that she needed to grasp. The teacher aimed well, because she is enthusiastic to her student, however, she forgot how much can different students grasp.

Subject 2 sometimes could be anxious in learning English. In most time, she could readjust her anxiety mood. For example, she said that when she read, she underlined the words she cannot understand, which did not affect her comprehension of the whole passage. She could tolerate the words she did not know. However, one occasion is an exception, which is when there was lots of vocabulary she did not know in the first paragraph. Even though she was unconfident to continue reading, she tolerated it and hoped to find answers for other questions. So, when tolerance is high, the anxiety would relatively be low.

Subject 3 said she is not very anxious when she was faced with questions she failed, but rather confident that she would not miss the questions in the exams. Replacing anxiety with confidence could be a way to be positive.

3. Discussion

As mentioned above, interests, acquisition and learning, and anxiety are the factors that influence students EFL attainment. Additionally, factors influencing EFL like the time spent in learning English could also be found in the interview transcript. The more time spent in learning English, the better English attainment will be. Subject 3 even spent time reciting words from the movie, while subject 1 could hardly finished assignment daily.

4. Pedagogical Implication

Even though there exist three level of students, high-level, middle-level and low-level, the teacher should balance all three level students, in order to help improve all the students English attainment. Teachers should input the amount of knowledge that the students could acquire. In addition, though it is quite hard for the teacher to remember all the students ability to receive new knowledge, it is quite necessary for the students, because it can motivate students attitude towards learning EFL. Furthermore, the teacher should teach students to be tolerant to the new words, even to those that are less commonly used. This could help students to be less anxious. Furthermore, the teacher should encourage students to use English as frequently as they can, in order to help the students acquire implicit knowledge.

Reference：

[1]Kashen, S.D.1985.The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Torrance, CA: Laredo.

[2]GE Peng,SUN Xiao-xiao.Application ofEugene Nidas Equivalence in the Translation of Economic News[J].海外英語. 2012(14).