Analysis

Case Study Analysis 

Yunior, a native Spanish speaker who came to Florida in high school, explained that his Spanish fluency has decreased over the last few years, since he has been in the United States.  His experience in a high school in Miami involved an ESOL program and a situation similar to that of immersion.  Through his experience he gained a great deal of practice in speaking, reading and writing in English and he continues to adopt the language as he is now 21 years old and attends the University of Miami.  We consider these things as we match the characteristics of his oral language to the SOLOM matrix.

                In listening to Yunior speak it was surprising to understand him so easily.  In fact, it seemed as though he was a native speaker!  As the interview continued though, and Yunior’s responses grew in length, his areas of struggle became more apparent.  Being that the interview was a conversational piece about the interviewee’s personal experiences, the piece we are evaluating is authentic oral language use and therefore, the SOLOM is a good way to measure Yunior’s oral proficiency.  Using the SOLOM as a guide, his speech errors can be better analyzed as it will be broken down to five categories of comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. 

                Yunior’s comprehension could be rated as a 5 (out of 5).  He seemed to understand all of the questions that were asked of him throughout the interview without difficulty.  The questions were asked at a moderate pace—not terribly fast and not noticeably slow—and the questions never had to be repeated.  His understanding was apparent as he answered each of the questions in great detail, especially once he got comfortable.  He even seemed to understand idioms and slang such as “cool beans.”  He either understood them or disregarded them.

 His fluency could be rated as a 4 (out of 5).  As previously stated, at the beginning of the interview, when Yunior’s responses to the questions asked were short, his speech was close to that of a native speaker.  However, his responses through the bulk of the interview had multiple yet minor errors such as pauses, repeated words, unfinished phrases, and run-on sentences.  These errors did not disrupt the overall delivery of Yunior’s information; however, it did slow down the conversation a bit.  His fluency was also affected by the large amounts of information he was discussing and poor organization of his points.  For instance, when describing the most fun part of learning English, he began his explanation with an analogy but halfway through the analogy he described something different and then returned to the analogy.  During conversation Yunior would oftentimes veer off in tangents about a different topic, making it hard for the listener to piece all of the information together and understand completely.

Yunior’s vocabulary is characteristic of a mixture of a 4 and a 5 (4.5).  While he has a wide vocabulary to work with, he oftentimes had a hard time choosing which words to use and/or had to backtrack to rephrase them.  His English education is apparent though, in some of the words that he used throughout the conversation such as indoctrinated, obligatory, nuance, and bastardized.  His BICS and CALP are both fairly high.

His pronunciation could also be considered a mixture of a 4 and a 5 (4.5).  While his accent at times is not very apparent, at others it makes it clear that he is a native Spanish speaker.  Even though he has an accent, it is rarely hard to understand him.  It is only hard to understand him when he speaks fast with an accent.  For the most part, his intonation and pronunciation resemble that of a native speaker.

Yunior’s grammar could be rated a 4 (out of 5).  He occasionally makes grammatical errors that do not affect the listener's understanding.  For instance, Meagan asked him, “Do you remember learning to read and write?”  He responded, “Yeah, of course I did.”  In this case, he inappropriately changed the tense that was being used originally, the present do to the past did.  His common use of the words uh and you know were distracting to the listener but again, did not majorly affect the listener’s understanding.

With each of these ratings in mind, we give Yunior an overall score of 22 which is Phase III, Limited English Proficient.  While the term limited has a negative connotation, we believe that Yunior has an exceptional grasp of the language.  He has had great educational input as well as authentic practice with speaking the language during his time in the United States.  With continued practice, Yunior is well on his way to Phase IV where he will be considered Fully English Proficient in oral language.