Comparable ESOL Student: Mark

Vocabulary
Student uses appropriate vocabulary for his age in comparison with non ESOL students. He keeps his answers short and to the point, but his answers demonstrate understanding of the questions. He does not ask for clarification at any time. He uses high level vocabulary when referring to his bother’s language as “an unknown.”

Type and length of sentences
Student answers in short, often one word sentences. In the personal question and answer portion, he answered in sentence fragments, but the fragmented structure was appropriate for BICS. In response to the reading comprehension questions, student used more complex sentence structure and longer phrases.

Stages of Negation Student did not use negation in any of his responses.

Stages of Question Student did not use a question in any of his responses.

Stages of Past Tense Student did not use past tense in any of his responses.

Pronunciation Student did not make any English pronunciation errors.

BICS and CALP
Student consistently used appropriate BICS in the personal interview. He responded appropriately to the question and answer format. In the reading section, his CALP appears to be on grade level. He read at the first grade level independently with no problems. When questioned about what would happen next in the story, his sentence structure was more complex and sentences longer than when answering in the personal interview. His speech showed excellent CALP in his use of “would” when talking about a hypothetical situation instead of the simpler “will” (see line 54 of transcript). At no point did he lapse into his other language.

Prescriptive aspects of English: grammar, punctuation
The student made no grammatical errors in his spoken language, nor in his written language. He showed an understanding of grammatical structure in his answers like the following: “What do you like about school? That we can play. This answer indicates his ability to formulate the more complex structure “What I like about school is that we can play.”

Student read an excerpt at the 1st grade level. His reading showed excellent sight word recognition and phonetic word decoding skills. He responds appropriately to punctuation marks and reads with expression. In almost all cases, when he missed a word he self corrected . When he did miscue, he went back to the beginning of the sentence and self corrected using context.

Student’s writing shows some misuse of capital letters. He mixes capital and lowercase letters within a sentence. He also inverts lowercase g’s. The only spelling/word choice error was “waht” instead of “with”. He uses print conventions and punctuation properly. His story was appropriate and showed both imagination and excellent reading comprehension.

General Conclusions
Mark is doing extremely well in regard to his English skills. His reading and writing are within acceptable ranges for his age level. He is on par with non ESOL student his own age, and may even be slightly above in his reading and CALP.

Transcription of Interview with ESOL Student

Student’s Name: Mark Date of Interview: On or about November 3, 2004

Questions asked by the child’ mother, with responsesbeneath.

1. What is your name?
Mark

2. Can you please write it down for me?
O.K.

3. How long have you been lived in America?
4 years

4. Where were you born?
Slovenia

5. Did you live there long?
Yes

6. How long?
(Long pause)

7. Well, how old are you now?
Seven

8. And if you lived 3 years in America, how many are left over?
Three years

9. What language did you speak before you took English?
Slovenian

10. Who lives in your house?
My family

11. Who is in it?
Dad, you and Alex

12. What languages do I speak to you in?
English and Slovenian

13. Do I speak any other languages?
No

14. What languages does your Dad speak to you?
Slovenian

15. Does he speak any other languages?
English

16. And how about Alex, what languages does he speak to you?
An unknown

17. He doesn’t speak, right?
Yes

18. Can you read?
Yes

19. Where did you learn to read?
At school

20. What languages can you read in?
English and Slovenian

21. What language do you prefer to read?
English

22. Who reads to you at home?
You do.

23. When do I read to you?
Sometimes when we go to bed.

24. What language do I read to you in?
English and Slovenian

25. What kind of books do you like to read?
English.

26. Is reading hard or easy?
Hard, hard and easy.

27. What is hard about reading?
Words are, hard words.

28. What do you like about school?
That we can play.

29. What do you not like about school?
That we have to learn.

30. What do you like to do after school?
Watch TV.

31. Do you have friends in school?
Yes.

32. Who are they, are they boys, are they girls?
Boys.

33. What do you like to do with them?
Talk about cars.

34. What kind of cars?
(Long pause.)

35. You don’t want to say?
(Student shakes head.)

36. What do you like to do on the weekends?
Watch T.V.

37. Do you have any pets?
Yes

38. What kind?
3 cats

39. What are their names?
(No response.)

40. Which is the first one we had?
Mickey

41. What is the second one?
Motorcek

42. And the other one?
Cukrcek

43. What do you like to do with them?
Play

44. What kinds of games do you like to play with them?
Run

45. How long have you been now in Slovenia? Do you remember? We came here in July and now it is November.
2 months.....3.......4

46. We are going to take a break, Thank you!

Reading Portion

47. Now what I would like to ask you to do is to read this for me. If you don’t know any words, try and sound them out.

O.K. Thanks for reading. What do you think Sally will do now? What happened at the end of the story?
She lost her necklace

49 Where did she lose it?
In the cat cage.

50. What do you think Sally is going to do?
Tell her mother, and her mother is going to tell the man that has the pet shop and he is going to get it out.

51. What is going to happen then, is he going to get it out?
Yes, and He will...he will... and he will ask if they want the cat.

52. What cage did the necklace fall in?
In the cat cage.

53. How about if, if it fell in the snake cage? What do you think Sally would do then?
Scream!

54. That is what I would do! How would they get the necklace back if the snake ate the necklace?
They would get a new necklace and the snake would die.

55. I don’t know, maybe. Well thank you!

Writing Sample