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Data collection and Findings.
When all the above-mentioned activities were over, the data was collected based on the series of observations and interviews and analyzed the L2 acquisition
1. Data analysis from the observation.
During a week of observation, I figured out some challenges that the participant had while producing a language. Also, probably that was the reason that she was not able to develop her speaking skills. She was dissatisfied with her grammar competence, therefore, decided to take online classes. During a week, I have observed my participant`s L2 acquisition and her online teacher focused on teaching grammar as the subject aimed to improve it. The teaching and learning process was based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis method. According to Charles Fries, the first scholar who developed this method defines it as “an integral component of the methodology of FL teaching” (Alkhresheh,2013). It is a great method to identify whether two languages have something in common, which checks both similarities and differences between languages (Johnson, 1999). It provides that when L1 and L2 are similar, the learning process might be relatively successful or easy. As it is seen from the participant`s experience where they used the same constructions of the sentences while learning English which was similar to her mother tongue. While observing the teaching and the learning process I found out that Russian and English languages are equal to some extent in terms of grammar and lexicology. When it comes to the differences between them I would say that language interferences happen all the time while acquiring different languages. Any language cannot match fully and a new language is always acquired comparing and contrasting with the native language of the learners.
2. Analysis of the data from series of interviews.
In the initial interview, I asked the subject about her English learning experiences. As she mentioned she had been learning English intensively for 2 years, but she attended English courses when she studied at school. Initially, her teachers used to apply the Grammar Translation Method where the basic focus was on grammar competence. Methods advanced as the demand for learning English rose significantly and Direct Method replaced the former method. This method was better than the previous one as the teacher frequently used the target language while explaining the grammar. As the participant mentioned, she could learn the grammar of the target language through these methods. While learning English they used to compare two languages and it assisted to avoid confusion. However, the learning process was a challenge for her as some grammar units were difficult to understand. For instance, as I mentioned above she had problems with articles and to be. The only reason was that she did not have background knowledge about these units in her L1. However, after some drilling techniques, she was able to use them properly. When I asked about the difficulties that she still has, she responded that the biggest issue for her nowadays was Indirect Speech. Although she was taught this grammar before, she did not know how to convert direct speech into indirect. She said that it was difficult for her to follow the appropriate tense. When I gave some sentences in Direct Speech, she replied misusing the order of the tenses. The sentences were the following:
(They say: “We take a bus to the work”. Her response was: They said they take a bus to the work. John said: “I will fly to Florida tomorrow”. Her response: John said that he will fly to Florida tomorrow.) , and then I shared a handout where she changed sentences in direct speech into indirect ones. The results of the writing assignment were not satisfactory as she did not follow the sequence of tenses at all so that I decided to help her with this grammar. As a supportive activity, I have chosen two activities; one is an out-of-class activity which was the oral interpretation of spontaneous speeches while the second one was a reading activity. According to the grammar rules, first I provided the theory of the usage of the tenses then I set her in different problematic situations outdoors asking her to interpret people`s words using Indirect Speech. Initially, she was making the same mistakes, however, after feedback that I provided for each wrong sentence, she managed to cope with this grammar. As the participant said, it was very productive as all the sentences that she said in the Reported speech were daily conversations which promoted her speaking skill as well. The in-class activity that was the following part of the teaching process included reading three passages. The task was to read the texts and retell them in third person singular using Indirect Speech. Surprisingly, she had fewer mistakes as she could get input from previous activities. Despite some mistakes that she made the task was almost done well. After each task, I provided feedback so that she could analyze her mistakes and work on them. The modal verbs were the next step to teach and I implemented two activities in the teaching process. I provided two handouts where the participant learned to give directions using proper verbs of modality. She did not have difficulties while doing these tasks as in most cases the meanings in both languages were similar to each other. The participant, whose native language was Russian, had relatively more positive transfers which facilitated easier L2 acquisition.
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