Case Study of a Non-native English Speaker
Vanderbilt University Peabody
Cuilu Shi
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Case Study of a Non-native English Speaker
Introduction to my Learner
My learner is a 21 years old female. Her name is Hannah. She came from northeast of China and she arrived in America in August this year. She is now a graduate student major in HR management. Before she came to America, she had never been abroad. This is her first time to expose herself to a native English speaking country. Her native language is Mandarin Chinese and she does not speak other dialects. She began to learn English in her 3rd Grade in elementary school. Both of her parents do not speak English or other languages and she seldom had opportunities to communicate with native English speakers. Basically, Hannah learned her English in the classroom with her Chinese English teachers. After she entered into college, her English teachers encouraged her to watch English movies and English TV shows, since then she began to learn her English by imitating the native speakers. She spent 2 years to learn Spanish as her second foreign language in her college in China. Even though she forget most of her Spanish, she thought that her English benefits her a lot when she tried to acquire Spanish because the two languages share so many similarities.
Hannah is an outgoing girl and optimistic. She likes to imitate the words she heard from the TV series she watched. She enjoys sharing her experience in America. Even though we talked very much, still we tend to have topic limitations when communicate in English.
Sometimes we might still need to continue our conversations in Chinese. While I began to lead her to use more English, she became more cooperative, but sometimes she still need to look the words in the dictionary. Instead of giving me the exact noun words of the name of certain things, she often gave me details to describe the things, because she did not know the exact name of those things.
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Description of my Learner’s Oral and Written Language Abilities
Generally speaking, my learner’s English is at a high level. Hannah makes
unconscious mistakes in her oral English. But I can easily follow her ideas, because I think she values meaning more than grammar. During our conversation, she always tried to correct herself if she noticed her mistakes. She is very carefully with her written English. She uses academic writing style in her papers, which is different from the way she expresses herself in oral English.
In terms of phonetic and phonology, even though Hannah pronounce English with Chinese accent, her pronunciation is generally well, especially for vowels. I noticed that she has some problems with consonants. First, she pronounces /θ/ as /s/ when “th” is at the end of a word. The pronunciations for th has been normal problems for Chinese English learners, because in Chinese pronunciation they only have similar sounds such as /s/ and /z/, instead of having voiced and voiceless dental fricative/ð/ and /θ/. Hannah told me that she had an English teacher taught her pronunciation in her college. Her teacher recognized that “th” is a regular problem for Chinese students, so the teacher paid special attention on “th” and trained them to speak “think about this thing, that thing, these things and those things”, in order to distinguish between /ð/ and /θ/. I think her teacher’s method truly helped Hannah with the
“th” sound, especially with words begin with “th”. But I noticed that she unconsciously pronounce / θ / as /s/ especially when “th” is at the end of a word. For example, she spoke with as /wis/ and faith as /fes/. Second, she makes mistakes in labiodental fricative
consonant /v/. Hannah often pronounces /v/ as /w/ without using her upper teeth to touch the bottom lip. But when I asked her whether she knew how to pronounce /v/, she gave me the right labiodental fricative sound. I noticed that she knows exactly how to pronounce /v/
sound, but when “v” is put into a word or even a sentence, she would unconsciously forgot to 44
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touch the bottom lip. She told me that she can easily pronounce /v/ sound without vowels, while she felt it is difficult for her to combine /v/ sound with vowels. For examples, words like visit, vocabulary and wolves. Every time I asked her “how are you”, she would answered
“very well” sounded like /wɛri, wɛl/.
Besides her errors in consonants, Hannah also has problems with words stress,
especially with compound words stress. Hannah knows to stress on different words in certain sentences can express different meanings. She is able to express herself with different tones to show her interest, anxiety and happiness. But she has problems with stress in the words.
Hannah tends to always stress on the second word when she pronounces compound words.
When I asked her what her feeling of being away from her family members, she told me that she missed her grandfather’s birthday and her mother send her a video recording the birthday party, which made she felt homesick. She pronounced grandfather and homesick
as /græn’fɑðə/ and /hom’sɪk/ stressing on the second words (see Appendix A, line 116-120). I consider that her mistakes on stress may because even though she knows these are compound words, she tends to pronounce the two parts separately.
In terms of morphology and morphophonology, she made unconscious mistakes in plurals and verb past tense in her oral English. For example, she frequently omits “s” when inflecting for plurals and “ed” when inflecting for past tense. However, she seldom makes such mistakes in her written English. But she has errors both in her oral and written English when referring to preposition, and subject-verb agreement. Sometimes she may get confused with irregular simple past and past participle word forms. For example, she texted me by saying, “I found my computer was broke.” Another time she also said “Did he mean my phone was broke? (see Appendix A, line 140)” I think she might have problems with past participles when they are working as adjectives.
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In terms of syntax, Hannah uses different types of sentences in different situations.
She uses more simple sentences in her oral English. When she uses complex sentences, she often makes mistakes in subject-verb agreement. In her written English, she uses more coordinate sentences and complex-coordinate sentences. I noticed that Hannah tends to overuse conjunctions, such as however and therefore, in her written English (see Appendix B, line 154-158 and line 173-174). She always uses therefore and however, which may lead to misunderstanding for the readers to get her main ideas.
As for determiners, she knows when to use “a” and “an”. She also knows that “the”
works as definite article, which refers to special things or things mentioned before. She told me that she used to make mistakes with “every” and “each”, now she knows that it should be
“every DOG HAS his day” and “each of us IS girl”.
In terms of semantics and pragmatics, her vocabulary is above Tier 2 level. She knows academic words and phrases especially those concerning her major fields. But when regarding to describe her daily life in America, she has limitations in giving the name of certain things. She often comes up with Chinese words when we are talking about American products which both of us are unfamiliar with. For example, she used “the notebooks with dates inside, so that you can write down your schedule” to describe the calendar notebooks, when she tried to complain with me about the expensive commodities’ prices for our international students (see Appendix A, line 111-114).
Word choice is also a problem for her. Hannah noticed that sometimes she come out with words based on their Chinese meanings instead of considering the words have different usages in English. Hannah shared with me two interesting stories about her choosing the wrong words to express herself, which leads to misunderstanding with native Americas. She told me, “I remember the first time I arrived at America, there is a American guys who pick me up to the university. During the travel, he asked me several questions. One of the question 93
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is,” are you the only children… only child in your family.” I said ” yes”. And then I also said I am single (see Appendix A, line 53-59).” After she said ”I am single”, she felt the silence in the car and noticed that she choose the wrong words to express herself. She wanted to express that she is the only child in her family, but forgot that single also means unmarried. But in Chinese, single and only share similar meanings, while in English one word may have several different meanings. Another story is about she tried to tell an American guy that she cannot turn on her phone to save his phone number. “I kept saying my cell phone is out of power. It is power off. I cannot open it. That guy just didn’t understand what I am talking about. After I showed him my phone, he finally understand and said ‘oh! Your phone’s battery is dead.’
(see Appendix A, line 130-142 )” Hannah simply used power to describe the energy of her phone’s battery, without considering that “out of power” means people in charge lose their authority. Different from the first story that she actually know single also means unmarried, before she came to America, she did not even know that people should say the battery is dead to describe that you cannot turn on your phone. Because the first story happened when she first arrived, she felt really embarrassed about that mistake and she told her to speak less and listen more. But after the second story, she noticed that if she never tries to speak out and makes errors, she would never know the correct expression of those words.
From these two stories, I recognized the limitation for students to learn English based on their native languages, because languages lose their true meanings during translation. You cannot simply explain a word in English by finding a word in another language. Word choice is a great challenge for non-native English speakers, because meanings for a word vary in different situations.
Assessment of my Learner’s Current Stage 118
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Generally speaking, Hannah already went through Brown’s five stages of
development. Now she is at the stage of productive use. Her oral English contains Chinese accents with some errors in English pronunciation, but she is understandable in social communications. In her major field, especially regarding to her written English, Hannah acknowledges academic words and phrases, she also makes few errors in her writing.
Hannah has fully developed her acquirement of grammatical morphemes. She told me that her teacher used to teach her using prefix and suffix to build her vocabulary. Each time she learned a new verb, she would looked up into the dictionary by adding “-ment”, “-tion”,
“tive”, etc., to extend her vocabulary. She knows exactly when to use past tense. Besides her knowledge for adding “ed” to regular past tense verbs, she also knows irregular simple past and past participle word forms. But sometimes she may misuse them.
She is sensitive with articles. She can easily distinguish the usage of “a” and “an”.
Occasionally, she would overuse “the” to replace the using of these and those. As I have mentioned, she is sensitive with the usages of “each” and “every”. But regarding possessive determiners, Hannah is at the stage of post-emergence (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013).
Hannah often makes mistakes in her oral English when regarding he and she. She made mistakes when refer to the gender, but frequently she would correct herself quickly. Hannah tends to use too many pronouns when she tries to tell me a story about things happen to other people. Her misusing of “he” and “she” or “his” and “her” sometimes makes cannot follow her (see Appendix A, line 95-98).
Regarding to sentences and clauses, Hannah seldom uses complex sentences and clauses in her oral English. She tries to avoid using complex sentences with relative clauses, because she does not want the tense that used in the clauses being not consistent. She pays attention on tense, number and person in her written English to make sure that she can correct her mistakes before finishing her papers.
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In sum, even though Hannah unconsciously makes mistakes, she can recognize her problems and often tries to correct herself. A week after we discussed about the /v/ sound, she told me that she started to focus on using her teeth to touch bottom lip. Every time she wants to say a word with a “v”, she will give herself one second to think before she speak out.
Through our interview, she had a comprehensive and objective review of her English and she started to pay attention to her unconscious mistakes.
Discussion of an SLA Theoretical Framework
Through my interview with Hannah, I noticed that her English acquisition began with mimicry and memorization (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). Hannah started to learn English as a foreign language in China when she was 9 years old in her third Grade. Her English teacher started to teach her English by exposing her to the 24 English letters. Since she is already nine years old, her knowledge of Chinese phonetic alphabet influenced her acquisition of English pronunciation. She told me that her teacher wrote both uppercase and lowercase letters down on the blackboard and spoke them loudly. Her teacher also asked the students to write each letter on their notebooks and read those letters after the teacher. She began
learning English by imitate her teacher’s pronunciation of letters and simple words before she learned phonetics. Through mimicry and memorization, Hannah started to acquire English as a foreign language.
I consider that her Chinese accent is one of the results of her imitation from her English teacher. Because Hannah’s teacher may also contains accent when speaking English, her accent can greatly affect beginners like Hannah. In her initial stages of learning English, Hannah did not have the opportunities to expose herself to native speakers and environment to learn English, which lead to her accent in English speaking and errors in English
pronunciation.
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As I mentioned before, Hannah told me she remembered her Chinese English teacher trained the students “th” sounds by asking the students to speak “think about this thing, that thing, these things and those things”. I believe that because the teacher also learned English as a foreign language, which means she could recognize similar problems Chinese students might encounter during their English learning. By pointing out the difficulties for Chinese students of their acquisition of English phonetics, the teacher let the students notice the differences between the two languages, which contribute to their further understanding of English acquisition.
Hannah’s native language can explain her mistakes in stress, possessive determiners and plurals. English is an intonation language, while Chinese is a tone language with four distinguish tones, which makes Chinese students not sensitive enough for English stress. She knows to stress on different words in certain sentences can create different tones to make her point. But she fails to be sensitive with the stresses inside the words. As I have mentioned, Hannah also have problems of misusing “he” and “she” when referring to the gender of the possessors. This is because, in Chinese, the pronunciations of “he” and “she” or “his” and
“her” are same even though their written forms are different. But from my observation I noticed that even though she made mistakes of possessive determiners, she did not have a preference for “he” or “she”. For plurals, in Chinese, in order to express plural forms of the nouns, you only need to add words like many, several or numbers before the noun without furthering adding “s” at the end of the noun. Such differences between English and Chinese lead to Hannah’s unconscious mistakes. The influence of the learner’s first language may not simply be a matter of habits, but a more subtle and complex process of identifying points of similarity, weighing the evidence in support of some particular feature, and even reflecting about whether certain feature seems to ‘belong’ in the target language (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013).
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For the further development of Hannah’s English acquisition, cognitive perspective can explain her achievement in English learning. “Drawing on J. R. Anderson’s (1995) work, Robert DeKeyser (1998, 2001, 2007) and others have investigated second language
acquisition as ‘skill learning’. They suggest that most learning, including language learning, started with declarative knowledge. Then through practice, declarative knowledge may become procedural knowledge, or the ability to use the knowledge (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013).” In Hannah’s process of learning English, her teacher paid special attention on grammar teaching. Her Chinese English teacher encouraged the students to do a lot of exercises on grammatical training. Besides the grammar instructions in the classes, she also had tests focusing on English grammar. For example, the tests contained single-choice questions concerning the usage of plurals, auxiliaries, tense, etc. I believe such instructions and tests on grammar make learners be familiar with the rules of a foreign language. Through the repeated practices, the declarative rules become part of the learners’ language skills. The declarative knowledge then turns into procedural knowledge that the learners can
automatically apply the rules they have learned.
For example, Hannah also learned Spanish for two years in her college in China. She told me that her English knowledge benefits her study of Spanish because the two languages share a lot of similarities. Instead of applying her native language skills, she automatically applied her English skills to her Spanish study. I consider this is because, through years of learning English, those English rules already become parts of her language acquisition skills.
When she started to learn another foreign language, she would automatically apply her prior knowledge to help her acquisition of a new language.
What’s more, social-cultural factors also contribute to the formation of my learner’s acquisition of English. Through the interaction with other speakers, second language learners acquire knowledge through their collaboration from their communication with other speakers 217
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(Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). Hannah told me that even though the grammar instructions in the classes laid firm foundation for her future study, her teachers focused too much on
reading and writing. Students in the classroom were able to speak English when they were told to. Before she can speak whole sentences, she often kept silence and did not confident enough to speak English. After she arrived in America, she forced herself to communicate with native speakers. She found she often made funny conversations with native Americas, as I mentioned in the word choice part about the two stories Hannah shared with me. Even though she felt embarrassed of making those mistakes at first, she collaborate English speaking skills through the conversations and by imitating their oral English, she created her own understanding of linguistic rules besides her teacher’s instruction in the classroom.
Description of a Specific Instructional Plan
I will let Hannah recognize her unconscious pronunciation mistakes and form her habits to overcome her errors. For example, her errors in pronunciations of “v” and “th” can be overcome through exercises. Through my observation, I noticed Hannah could
pronounce /v/ sound, she just not get used to combine /v/ sound with vowels. We together figured out a way to help her overcome this problem, which is to give herself one second before she speak out a word with a /v/ sound. For the pronunciation of th, she knows how to pronounce /θ/ when the th is at the beginning of a certain word. In order to help her overcome this mistake, she needs to form her habit of sticking her tongue outside her teeth. Through practices, I believe she can overcome such errors.
I will encourage Hannah to communicate with native speakers and learn from their way of oral expression. Through the communication with native speakers, Hannah can test her own expression while learn from native speakers about how they express themselves.
Hannah also lacks conceptual knowledge. I will encourage her to be aware of the details 242
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around her and ask native speakers about the names and certain expressions of certain phenomena.
I will also encourage her to ask for feedbacks from her teachers and peers. Teachers tend to ignore the mistakes she made and value more on the meanings she give. Asking the teachers for feedbacks and let them be her guidance to overcome her mistakes and misusing of English. Through sharing experience with her peers, Hannah can find peers with similar mistakes in their process of English acquisition. They may give her suggestions of how to overcome her own errors.
I noticed that Hannah enjoys watching TV series and movies. I will encourage her to watch them without watching Chinese subtitles and learn from the shows through imitation and memorization.
Critical Reflection on What I Have Learned
Through my interview with my learner Hannah, I noticed that it is important to learn my learner’s personality and characteristic before I study her process of English acquisition.
At the beginning of our conversations, she tended to be not comfortable of speaking English with me. I tried to encourage her through topics she might be familiar with and I also share my own experience in America to inspire her to be more involved into our conversations.
While she started to talk with me in English, she tended to be nervous because she knew I was recording our conversations and trying to find her grammar mistakes. I told her that the mistakes she made not only would help me to finish my observation, she would also got the chance to be aware of her own mistakes. After several interviews, Hannah became more cooperative and even started to share with her top embarrass moments in her life in America.
I also consider it is important to know my learner’s motivation of studying English.
She told me that because her English teachers in her elementary school and high schools 267
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emphasis too much on grammar studying in order to get high scores in the exams. At that time, she found it is really boring to learn another language. Sometimes she found that even though she can read materials and articles, she noticed it was difficult for her to express herself. But after she entered into college, the teachers started to draw their attention on the speaking and listening skills of English. The teacher introduced video resources such as Discovery and movies, such as “American Beauty” and “English Patient” to their class. The teacher let her watch the videos and talk about what they learned from those materials. She became obsessed to the shows and the American culture that presented to her. “The more I watch, the more I want to learn (see Appendix, line 76-98).” After that she began to watch TV shows in different languages and she even started to learn Spanish as her second foreign language. The grammar study of a foreign language can be complicated and tedious, but the combination of showing them the attractiveness of the language can encourage the students to use the language. Through recognizing the motivation of my learner, I had a thoroughly understanding of how she collaborate her English.
Another significant part of study a non-native English speaker is to have certain background knowledge of the learner’s native language. Learners’ English acquisition is a result of L1 transfer (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). Because my learner and I shared same native language, it made me be able to connect the similarities and differences between the two languages when referring to the explanation of her mistakes. I noticed that even though Chinese students tend to make similar mistakes, such as plural mistakes, past tense mistakes and determiner mistakes, some mistakes could be eliminated through the individual
differences and even the influence of different teachers. For example, the pronunciations for th has been normal problems for Chinese English learners, because in Chinese pronunciation they do not have voiced and voiceless dental fricative/ð/ and /θ/. However, Hannah’s teacher recognized that “th” is a regular problem for Chinese students and she trained her students to 292
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speak “think about this thing, that thing, these things and those things”. A non-native English learner will unconsciously apply his prior knowledge to his second language acquisition. In order to fully study a non-native English speaker, one should also pay attention to the
speaker’s native language level. In my case, my learner started to learn English at 9 years old.
Before her exposure to English, she already developed her Chinese skills. While she learned English in the classrooms, she spoke Chinese much more than her English speaking, both academically and socially.
What’s more, to fully observe a non-native English speaker, researchers should not only pay attention to the learner’s oral skills. Both academic and conceptual knowledge in written and oral English should be concerned in the studying of English learners. In my case, Hannah made fewer mistakes in her written English than in her oral English, when referring to the same problems. While she was sensitive to the knowledge regarding her major field, she lacks conceptual knowledge.
Implications for my Future Work with ELLs
In my future work with ELL students, I will try to help my students to turn the declarative rules into part of the ELL students’ language skills so that they can automatically apply those rules.
In my classroom, I will try to “get it right from the beginning” (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). I value the structure-based language teaching. I consider that in order to acquire a foreign language, one should know the rules of that language. The similarities and differences between English and my students’ first languages will be my resources to help them better acquire English. I will firstly recognize the first languages of my ELL students and the level of their first languages. Regarding on the levels of their first languages, I will know the depth of the effects of their native language to their foreign language acquisition.
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Through the comparison between English and my ELL students’ first languages, I can lead my students to properly transfer their prior knowledge of L1 to their English acquisition and arise my students’ attention of the differences between the languages in order to avoiding certain errors. Since my understanding of my students’ first languages may be limited, I will also encourage my students to do the comparison by themselves. By doing those
comparisons, students can create their own methods of learning English grammar rules.
I will balance reading, listening, speaking and writing altogether. Language
acquisition takes place when learners are exposed to comprehensible input through listening and reading (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). I will choose content-based materials and resources that related to their lives to enhance their English input. Instead of letting my students to recite huge number of vocabularies, I will expose them to reading materials. High levels of vocabulary in an L2 can be achieved by exposure to the L2 vocabulary during reading (Snow and Kim, 2007). Both academic and conceptual knowledge will be valued in my classroom. Speaking and writing skills will be tested to determine the ELL students’
English output. I will also encourage my students to do practices in order to help them solidify their English studying. I will also introduce video resources into the classroom and encourage my students to watch movies and TV series. For example, the students’
pronunciation skills can be solidified through imitating what they hear in the videos. What’s more, the students can learn English expression and word choice through watching the video materials.
Mistakes are allowed in my classroom. I want to make sure my students can express themselves without being nervous and anxious of making mistakes. But mistakes will not be ignored in my classroom. I choose not to directly correct their mistakes, but I will provide feedbacks for my students as references to better develop their English.
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What’s more, I encourage my ELL students to learn from their peers. I wish to hear every student’s sound in my classroom and I value small group discussions to let them benefit from each other. Students will be encouraged to share their experience of learning different languages. They can work together to recognize their mistakes and learn from each other on overcoming their errors.
In my classroom, my ELL students will benefit a lot from my teaching. However, I will not teach them everything. Many language features, from pronunciation to vocabulary and grammar, will be acquired naturally if learners have adequate exposure to the language and a motivation to learn (Lightbrown and Spada, 2013). A teacher can never be able to teach the students everything in the classroom. However, I will dedicate myself in helping my ELL students to build their own English learning strategies and motivate my ELL students to learn English.
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References
Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned (4th edition). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Snow, C. & Kim, Y. (2007). The challenge of vocabulary for English language learners. In R. Wagner, A., Muse, & K. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Vocabulary Acquisition:
Implications for Reading Comprehension (pp. 123-139). NY: Guilford.
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Appendix A
Lulu: Hannah. How are you?
Hannah: Very well.
(Chinese ….)
Lulu: What is your native language?
Hannah: Chinese. Ma..Man.. Mandarin (figuring the stress) Lulu: What about other languages?
Hannah: Spanish. Just a little. De.. Au.. (some Spanish words) Lulu: Oh, great. Tell me about something of your Spanish.
Hannah: I started to learn Spanish as my second foreign language in my college. I learned 2 years. But I can speak very little Spanish right now.
Lulu: So do you your English help your Spanish study or has bad influence for your English study?
Hannah: Well, I would say English really help my Spanish, because they are similar languages. Some words are similar, but the grammar are different.
Lulu: How long have you been exposed to English?
Hannah: Maybe three month.
Lulu: Three month? I mean how long have you learned English?
Hannah: Oh. (then she began to speak Chinese with me) Maybe 10.. 12 years.
Lulu: In which grade?
Hannah: I think 3rd grade.
Lulu: Do you remember how your teacher taught you when you began to learn English?
Hannah: In my 3rd grade, the articles like hello..
Lulu: with letters first?
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Hannah: Yes. ABCDEFG..(she began to sing the alphabet song)
Lulu: which parts do they value? Like speaking, reading, listening and writing.
Hannah: reading and writing. They teach me to pronounce the 24 letters. To read after them.
And we had tests focusing on.., like reading comprehension. You know Chinese students do not have the chances to speak English.
Lulu: Yes. All those tests focusing on grammar.
Hannah: Right. The grammars are really boring. I remember I was really good at memorize the grammars. At that time, I love English because I can remember all of the rules. But then I do.. did not like anymore.
Lulu: Oh. Why did you feel so?
Hannah: I think it is because at first I just thought if I recite more..that English is about to recite things, like vocabularies, phrases. But when I realized I will never recite all of them.
And I also find that.. found that when it comes to speaking and listening. I cannot express myself. I can understand my teachers’ English. But when I listen to the tape, you know we listen to tapes to do English tests, I cannot understand the English.
Lulu: So you learned grammar really well.
Hannah: Yes. I think that’s the only thing I get from my previous years of learning.
Lulu: Ok. What about your parents? Do they speak English or any other languages?
Hannah: No, only Chinese.
Lulu: What about your relatives or friends that you can speak English with?
Hannah: No, no, just teacher.
Lulu: What about your life in America? I remember you told me you have an America roommate.
Hannah: Yes. Three Chinese girl and an American girl.
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Lulu: Any interesting things happen in your house?
Hannah: Nothing special. She doesn’t often talk with us. Oh. I can tell you a really funny story happened on me. I remember the first time I arrived at America, there is a American guys who pick me up to the university. During the travel, he asked me several questions. One of the question is,” are you the only children… only child in your family.” I said ” yes”. And then I also said I am single.
Lulu: HAHA. You are single.
Hannah: I didn’t noticed that until I felt that suddenly all the people in the car stop talking.
They must think I am really weird.
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Lulu: Hi, Hannah. How are you? How about your campus life?
Hannah: Very well. I just had a group discussion. We will have a group presentation next week.
Lulu: Do you enjoy working together with your classmates?
Hannah: Yes. They are very kind. One of my classmates invited me to pay a visit to her apartment tomorrow. He.. She will pick me up at my home in the morning.
She likes to collect tea, and she told me she doesn’t have too many friends to drink tea with her. I brought some tea from China. I want to bring her some.
Lulu: Great. I think she will like your original Chinese tea.
Lulu: Can you share with me some of your experience of learning English? Like a really good teacher with great English pedagogy.
Hannah: Yes. Before I went to my college in China, I learn English only in the classroom, follow the teachers’ rules, in order to get a high score in the tests. But in my college, the teachers teach us about the English culture and American culture.
Lulu: So you think learning the culture makes you..
Hannah: Definitely. I have a teacher who really like to watch videos in her class. Students all love her because we didn’t have homework and we just need to watch videos. I remember we watched some videos about KKK.
Lulu: What is KKK?
Hannah: The Ku Klux Klan, some mysterious party, like terrorists. I think it is founded in Tennessee in 1800 something.
Lulu: Wow. So interesting.
Hannah: Yes, the videos are really interesting. Like fraternity in Yale.. or some famous university in America. I do not remember which university it is. Oh, and also a Discovery 478
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video about wolf...wolves..wolves. (trying to pronounce correctly) The alpha, omegas wolves and how their hierarchy works for the whole pack.
Lulu: All of them are English videos?
Hannah: Yes, all of them. Without subtitles. She asked us to watch again and again, and then asked us to talk about what we heard and what we learned from the videos.
Lulu: I think she is training both your listening and speaking abilities.
Hannah: Yes. She also asked to write essays after we watched movies. I still remember some of the names. “American beauty” , and “English patient”.
Lulu: Great. You even remember the names. You really like those movies. I haven’t heard them before.
Hannah: These are all old movies. I don’t like them. One of the movies is about some creepy old man fall in love with a little girl. She is her..his daughter’s friend. He tried to find passion in his life. Finally, when she wanted to be with him, he did not accepted her and he even kill himself.
Lulu: How do think these movies or videos help your English learning.
Hannah: She taught me English beyond the grammars and vocabularies. Like she asked us to analyze the humanity in the movies. I think there are differences between Chinese and western people. In their thoughts...They talk more about faith, belief.
Lulu: She introduced you the cultural differences through watching attractive videos.
Hannah: I think it is because of her that I began to be curious about those things.
Lulu: Did you go to a church after you arrive in America?
Hannah: Yes. I do. But it’s a church for Chinese people. Some Americans, but most of them are Chinese.
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Lulu: You should really go to a real church for Americas. I’ve been to a church and it was different. They sing songs together and they share some cookies and drinks as Jesus fresh and blood.
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Hannah: Cute notebooks. Where did you buy those notebooks? I like the notebooks with date inside, so you can write down your schedule.
Lulu: You mean calendar notebooks?
Hannah: Yes, I think so. I do not know the exact name of them.
Hannah: I felt really sad that I did not remember my grandfather’s birthday.
Lulu: That’s bad. The time difference between China and America makes you cannot figure what day is today.
Hannah: Yes. My mother took a video for me, about the birthday party for my grandfather. I feel homesick. I really miss them.
Lulu: Did you go for shopping on black Friday?
Hannah: No, I didn’t. I just spend some time with friends during the thanksgiving holiday.
Lulu: It is really nice to experience how Americas spend thanksgiving. Have you tried turkeys and pumpkin pies?
Hannah: Yes. Another interesting thing happened to me during the holiday and I really want to share it with you.
Lulu: Great. Interesting story.
Hannah: One of my classmate’s friends drove me back home after a party. We introduced each other and he told me that he knew a great Thailand restaurant. He would like to take me there. So he wanted to give me her number. I tried to tell him that I my cell phone was out of power. He just cannot understand me. He said what do you mean by out of power.
Lulu: Out of power.
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Hannah: Yes. I kept saying my cell phone is out of power. It is power off. I cannot open it.
That guy just didn’t understand what I am talking about. After I showed him my phone, he finally understand and said ‘oh! Your phone’s battery is dead.’
Lulu: So it should be battery is dead.
Hannah: Yes. I didn’t understand him at that time. I heard ‘dead’, but I didn’t understand why he would say my cell phone is dead. Did he mean my phone is broke? After that I asked my roommates, then I realized it should be the cell phone’s battery is dead. Not out of power or power off.
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Appendix B Hi Nereyda Gomez,
I am Hannah, I have opened a debit card in chase and you are my banker. I have already emailed to you to ask the information about wireless transfer. you said i should know my ckecking account. However, I looked throuhg my package for several times and i did not find such informations, such as saving account and checking account and so on. Maybe, you forgot to give me such information. Because I saw such kind of information in my classmates’ package, they are their information. I turned to your help. How to deal with them? It is urgent.
Thanks.
This case is about Defense Systems, Inc. (DSI). DSI manufactures electronic components and semiconductors used in weapons supplied to the U.S. Air Force as well as in personal and automatic computers. Last year, DSI conducted an aggressive hiring policy at major
universities around the United States. However, semiconductor market failed to pick up. Jim Daniels was the vice president of human resources. Therefore, Jim Daniels faces a tough problem and must do some unpleasant alternatives. Jim Daniels refuses to conduct layoff and downsizing, in consideration of their negative effects. Therefore, Jim Daniels should develop other alternatives to avoid large scale layoffs.
External and Internal environment:
Next, I discuss external and internal environment which affect the company. Such analysis contributes to better understanding the situation of DSI and to generate alternatives. About external environment, first, economic globalization affects the company. US market is a 561
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desirable target for foreign competitors, because of its size and wealth. Meanwhile, US market is relatively open to foreign companies. Following globalization, more and more foreign companies come into US market. These foreign companies sell either low cost products or special products which attract customers. Under such circumstance, competition is fierce. Performance of some native US companies will be affected gradually. I think that DSI may be one of these native companies impacted by globalization and competition.
Second, undoubtedly, intangible human asset is important to a company, so labor market conditions determine companies powerfully. As the text book says, U.S. labor market is characterized by skill shortage, whereas some developing countries has high-level skill labor markets. For example, many U.S. employers operate offshore to India due to the prevalence of English language and various technical skills. Meanwhile, compared to other countries’
labor market, labor cost in the US is high. Therefore, compared to these companies which conduct operation offshore, some U.S. native companies are disadvantaged. About internal environment, DSI does not rely on subcontractors. This condition resulting in aggressive recruiting in DSI. Meanwhile, DSI has a low degree of training, which is also affects company’s operation.
SWOTs Analysis
Strength Weaknesses
Intangible human asset: DSI conducted
an aggressive hiring policy at major universities around the United States.
These students have an average GPA of 3.4.
Extra Capacity: Compared with Jim’s
ex-employer who could produce only 5 percent of the parts it purchases, DSI can
No Subcontractors: Without
subcontractors, if DSI encounters
fluctuated seasons or economic cycle, the company should conduct layoff or aggressive hiring.
No training plan: DSI is technology
oriented. Technology changes and updates quickly. Without training which 582
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currently produce 50 percent.
Technology: With high-level employees, we own high-level technology.
update employees’ talents, DSI is easy to fall behind.
Opportunities Threats
Economic cycle: when economy booms,
household income will increase and people will buy more products.
Performance of DSI will elevate.
Foreign companies: Following
globalization, many foreign companies enter into U.S. Market. There is a fierce competition in U.S. Market.
Changes of Technology: Technology
always changes and updates. Some changes are anticipatory changes, and others are reactive changes. Due to changes, DSI must take actions to adapt.
Alternatives to Layoff
In this case, Jim does not want to do layoff and termination, Jim knows that layoff will impact corporate loyalty. Jim wants to preserve as many jobs as possible and put the right person in right position, because he knows that underutilizing talents will lead to
dissatisfaction. Therefor, Jim should come up with some alternatives to layoff. Here, I recommend some alternatives.
First, I recommend internal transfer. The case said that DSI had other geographic locations, some in need of additional workers. If internal transfer is conducted, there will be a win-win situation. Therefore, I put this policy in the first place. In the article, Jim faces a dilemma with extra employees, whereas, in other locations, there is a need for employees. Therefore, internal transfer can solve problems for both sides. To finish internal transfer, Jim should do some measures. There have to be a sophisticated career management process so that
managers and employees are aware of open positions. Then, Jim should do a career 599
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assessment and development activities that allow people to get ready for positions. About selecting employees who go to other locations to work, there are some notices. If a employee has a spouse and children, it may be hard to persuade him/her to go to another location to work. Meanwhile, compensation and benefits should be offered to employees who accept internal transfer.
Second, I recommend unpaid leave of absence. Employees are offered a leave of absence without payment for a specified period of time to help an organization recover from a downturn. Currently, DSI has an extra amount of employees due to semiconductor market.
However, such surplus is temporary. When market pick up, employees will be need.
Therefore, unpaid leave of absence is appropriate. On the one hand, it will save money. DSI do not need to pay the salary to employees who take an unpaid leave. Stagnant business can be alleviated. On the other hand, when business picks up, more talents will be necessary. At that time, these employees who take an unpaid leave will be back and then restore their position to keep business going on. However, some notices should be taken. Choosing appropriate employees who will take unpaid leaves is important. Although, currently, business is stagnant, business is still in process. On the contrary, it is the moment when talented and high qualified employees are required to pull through difficulties. In addition, when Jim persuades employees to take an unpaid leave, Jim should emphasize that
employees are certain to be restored after coming back.
Third, I think that instituting shorter work weeks can be adopted. DSI can reduce the number of hours employees work and proportionally decrease pay. This is a seasonal arrangement when business is stagnant temporarily. Due to reduced hours to work, payment will be reduced. Under current circumstance, employees are surplus and money is shortage.
Therefore, this policy also can result in win-win situation. However, some problems exist.
When hours to work are reduced, employees are inclined to be loose. Meanwhile, when 612
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payment is reduced, employees are apt to be dissatisfied. Thus, when Jim conducts this policy, Jim has to explain the reasons particularly and carefully. It is the reason why I put this policy in the third order.
Besides these policies, there are many other alternatives, too. For example, employers can consider a virtual office to permit employees to work at home. employers can vacate office space to rent to earn some profits. Moreover, employers in DSI can share ownership with employees. Employees should invest their own money on DSI. They will get profits when business is good, but they will lose money when business is bad. This method can mitigate problem of money shortage. Although these two methods benefit DSI and help DSI, problems exist. Employers should use these method appropriately.
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