Dear Ms Lily and Ms Sofia,

           I’m Kayla, I am 18 years old. I’m from Ecuador. I like art and nature. I’m a nice person but sometimes I have a lot of things in my head and I prefer to stay alone. I like work when everyone supports each other. Something that makes me happy this year is that all the teachers like you are given the best that they can for makes us feel safe and comfortable. I’m grateful for that and I'm happy to work with you this year. THANKS A LOT TO TEACHERS. 

“Ok I’m gonna start.  Yes- I - sometimes I go to the park and I collect some leaves and flowers and I make art with them so the that way also can I express my feelins so that’s why I like it and I love it. Yes. I have it. I have a journal and I have all the things in there. No but I have drawin and paintin recently. There is a game that is among us so I pint that in a way that is rayalistic . I drawin and paintin. I post it in my instagran. Yeah is so popular because in Quarantine that’s the only way that we find to play wit or friends veertually. Yeah we have I play with my boyfriend my jounger brother and their friends we have a lot fun. Yeah that’s very foon and also one day we play with my advisory. Wit Mr. Welsey we play wit or friends.”

According to Cappelini’s Language Development Table, I would surmise that 11th grade student Kayla is at an Intermediate level of English. She exhibits mastery of all language patterns addressed in the Beginning level such as; regular plurals, prepositions, the verb “To be”, common nouns, and simple sentences.

She also appears to demonstrate mastery of the language patterns addressed in the Early Intermediate level, such as; pronouns, subject statements, negative statements, prepositional phrases, basic adjectives, and coordinating conjunctions.

She exhibits command of the majority of the language patterns addressed in the Intermediate level such as; subject-verb agreement, intermediate adjectives, intermediate coordinating conjunctions, clauses linked by conjunction, subordinating conjunctions and contractions.

 She is emerging into the level of Early Advanced because she is exhibiting at least one of the language patterns addressed at that level: abstract nouns- she refers to “nature” and “feelings”.

In terms of Phonetics it appears that Kayla is sounding words out and spelling them how they sound.

In terms of morphology Kayla writes the word “given” when she means “giving” which suggests to me that she hears the two words endings the same. Moving forward we would need to go over when to use “ing” and when to use “en”.

When listening to the audio she can be heard saying “givin”, and “paintin”. She is not pronouncing the “g” in those words ending in “ing” which could be happening because In her native language Spanish, words do not end with a hard “g” sound. She also pronounces “yes” like “jes”, and “jounger”  These are phonetic variations that I believe demonstrate instances of language transfers from Spanish. The letter “Y” is pronounced like “j” in Spanish. In the case of her pronouncing the word “our” as “or” perhaps this is another phonetic transfer because she is not familiar with the “ow” sound in English.

Suggestions:

I would suggest conversation in English focusing on what she is passionate about, so that she will have more reason to want to express herself. I would also suggest a bilingual dictionary that she could add to and consult whenever there is a word she wants to express but does not know. I would also suggest that she present some of her drawings and collages with a description in English so she can be encouraged to express her passion for art in English.