Ezekiel Amarh
Celta Assignment 2: Focus on the Learner

For this assignment, I interviewed Ibrahim A Rabie, a 46-year-old Sudanese student from my intermediate class. Ibrahim works night shifts as a security guard in west London and spends most of the day recovering from the long twelve hour shifts. Ibrahim’s first language is Arabic which he speaks at home with his wife. He came to England to live with her in 2007 and has been studying English on and off for the last year and a half. Ibrahim completed a law degree in Morocco when he was 26 and now wants to improve his English language skills so he can communicate with ease, and seek legal work internationally in English speaking countries.

Ibrahim says he prefers to learn by looking …show more content…

Ibrahim demonstrates that he is one of the weakest students in my intermediate class. He able to communicate in an A&B conversation but would be more comfortable in a pre intermediate class. He is able to utilize the core parts of speech needed to convey the basic meanings of his sentences
e.g. sub + verb + noun, but lacks the ability to implement auxiliary verbs, prepositions and other parts of speech needed to make his sentences complete and sound fluent. During our conversation he said “I listen to radio, I like news documentaries yes”. Monitoring Ibrahim in class during pair tasks his partners seem to get the gist of what he is saying and are able to keep a simple conversation going, for example:
Where are you from?
I am from Sudan.
How long have you been in England?
I have been here from 2007 to be with my wife.

The main areas Ibrahim needs to focus on are his grammar and vocabulary. The Good Grammar book by M.Swan and C.Walter is ideal for him as it is aimed at pre intermediate students. I would suggest p187 section 14 Nouns and p.145 section 11 articles a/an the. I would also recommend that he listen to the talk radio stations like LBC 97.3 instead of listening to