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TESOL-PROGRAM 2013
KABUL EDUCATION UNIVERSITY
Afghanistan

BY
QEYAMUDDIN MUBASHIR

PRACTICUM I
FOCUS ON THE LEARNER
Case study of Weda
A senior Student of English Department
at KEU
WORD COUNT: 1013

ADVISOR:
SARAH HAMPTON






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Part 1.
In this research, I did a case study on one of my students from a senior in-service class of
the English department of Kabul Education University. Her name is Weda. She is also an
English teacher at one of the public high schools in Kabul. She wants to improve her
English language skills because she wants to be a brilliant and professional teacher when
she graduates.
She grew up in Kabul and started learning English in 7
th
grade of high school. It is the
12th year that she is studying English. Since the method of teaching in private courses
and also public high schools are traditional, she has studied more theoretical ideas and
definition of the language grammar rather than practicing it. Therefore, I can still see
grammatical mistakes when she talks English.
According to her own learning style survey her learning style is more tactile and
interpersonal. She prefers to study with friends and classmates in groups. Although she
is a tactile and an interpersonal learner, she is calm and her presence in the class is not
noticeable because she does not talk a lot and does not take part in the whole class
discussions.
2. L1
Like any other Afghan English student, she has a very good knowledge of grammar and
vocabulary. But the only problem she has is not being exposed to a native like speaking
community. The other issue is that she has not studied grammar or vocabulary in
context. She has studied grammar definitions more than using it in context and also she
has memorized vocabularies as I found out observing her in the class and in her
interview.
In her interview she highlighted that she wants to improve her speaking and grammar.

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Part 2.
Identification and analysis of the problem of one main
language difficulty (grammar)

Area of Difficulty and Rationale for Chosen Activity
When she speaks English, she confuses with the usage of simple past in English language.
Instead she uses the passive form of grammar as simple past. She does this mistake because
she makes past tense according to the Persian structure past tense. When we make past tense
in English according to the structure of past tense in Persian it becomes passive form of English.
During her interview she said:
when I was graduated from school I start to become a good teacher in this case I start
teaching language in a school (Instead of, when I graduated from school

In this part Weda has confused with the usage of simple past. She has used the simple past
structure according to the Persian simple past structure to show past tense. This grammatical
problem is best solved by doing more practice of teaching grammar in context activities. I
suggest Weda practices the past simple tense exercises from the Oxford Practice Grammar
Intermediate book by Eastwood (2006). On page 17 of this book there is the theoretical
explanation of the simple past that can be a very good instruction on understanding and doing
an exercise of simple past.
This activity on simple past tense is very useful for Weda because it is much more practical and
communicative. On page 11 of this book there is the theory and practice of simple present
tense which Weda can compare both tenses together to see the differences.
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In addition, I selected two more exercises; one of them is done by one person: a news story,
which also presents the past tense in context. And the other is done by two people and is a
communicative exercise. By doing these exercises, she will be familiarized with the usage of the
tense.
The reason for inaccuracy
The reason why Weda makes this mistake is that she verbally translates the past perfect of
Persian structure and uses it instead of past simple in English. When Persian speakers use this
structure they think that they have used the right form of simple past in English. The other
problem that Weda has is that she focuses more on English language rules instead of doing
grammar in context activities.
2. Identification and Analysis of one skill area of specific need (Reading)
Area of difficulty and rationale for chosen activity
In my observation of Weda during a class I found out that she had difficulty in reading and
comprehension. When I observed, I saw she was reading the text many times to understand the
main idea of the text and she was stopping on the difficult words to check the meanings in the
dictionary. The problem is that she does not know good reading strategies/ techniques.
I witnessed that she that she read a text many times stopping in the middle of the text and
starting it again until she got the idea. Again this is a problem that many Afghans face every day
due to not having good reading strategies. To solve this problem I suggest an extract from tasks
for teachers education: a reflective approach by Rosie Tanner and Catherine Green (1998).
I chose this activity because it gives good practice of reading and it has many reading
techniques.



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Reason for inaccuracy
The main reason for difficulty here is when I was teaching in Wedas class she was very slow in
reading the passages and it took a lot of time for her to finish a reading passage and get the
main idea. For this reason I wanted to give her some reading techniques to practice and make
reading easy for her.
Conclusion
Simple past tense is not possible only to learn by one exercise. It needs a long process of
practice in context. I recommend Weda to do more exercises of grammar in context and also
read short stories that are in the simple past. It would be very helpful for her. As well as,
reading short stories are good for improving her reading skill.

Appendix
Teaching vocabulary is one of the most important points in teaching second language. So it
is necessary to each one in order to know how teach vocabulary and how they should start the
teaching of it. There fore there are some methods applicable for teaching of vocabulary. But in
Afghanistan some methods are possible and some are impossible to conclude for teaching
vocabulary. So, there are some method that help us for teaching vocabulary in Afghans
schools. Dictionaries: - learners use dictionaries to check meaning of new words.
Translating: - translating the words into first language.
Synonyms: - using words learners already know to teach the similar.
These methods are possible solution for teaching vocabulary in Afghanistan because of the
methods could not be applicable according to the shortage of time, inexpert and professional
teacher and high number of students in one class. So these 3 methods that I have mentioned
above are too much applicable for teaching in all stages. Therefore i have been suing these 3
methods in my own class for teaching vocabulary.
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References
Eastwood, J. (2006) Oxford Practice Grammar (Intermediate). Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Rosie, T. & Catherine G. (1980) Tasks for Teachers Education: A Reflective Approach.
New York. Longman