Analysis of Student Work, Case Study Example

The student has little understanding, though not complete understanding of the morphological structure and morphemes generally. Evidence of the efficient use of morphemes is the student’s addition of the affix “s” to form a noun phrase. For instance, the student adds the affix “s” to the word “week” to form a noun phrase “week’s lesson”. This is evidence that the student has some knowledge on the use of morphological structure and morphemes. One of the things that show a misunderstanding of morphology by the student in the passage is by the student failing to add a morpheme on the word “teach” which is a verb to come up with the word “teacher” which is a noun.

Inflectional morphology involves modifying a word to indicate grammatical properties like plurality or past tense. The student understands the use of inflectional morphology because he has modified some words to indicate grammatical properties. For instance, the student uses the phrase “although they are beginning”. The affix “ing” has been added to the root word “begin” to form the present participle tense. However, the student does not apply inflectional morphology well in all cases. There are instances in which the student applies these morphemes in the wrong way. For instance, the student makes the wrong use of inflectional morphology by using a phrase like “I am student teaching…”

Derivational morphology is adding of morphemes to words to come up with separate words. The morpheme can turn a verb into a noun, frequently meaning the person or thing that does the action indicated by the verb. For example, if the morpheme “er” is added to the word “paint” at the end, it becomes “painter” which is a noun meaning “a person who paints”. Derivation is the process of making words that are separate, but related morphologically. The student does not have knowledge on derivational morphology because instead of using derivational morphology to change the verb “teach” to the noun “teacher”, he only makes use of inflectional morphology.

Syntactic competence is the knowledge speakers have concerning the probable syntactic combinations in their language. Generally, speakers have knowledge on a number of potential language combinations of their local language. The student does not have synthetic competence because from some of his sentences; it is clear that he does not understand that a phrase like “I am student teaching….” is not a correct combination of the language.

Lexical competence can be described as the ability of recognizing and using words in language in a manner used by the language speakers. The student does not have this competence because he does not use the English words in a manner used by the English speakers. For instance, English speakers use the word “learnt” as opposed to the word “learned” in reference to the past tense of “learn”, but the student did not make correct use of this word.

The use of the word “learned” in writing as opposed to “learnt” can have a different meaning in writing and speech. The word in speech sounds different as opposed to when it is written. The student also has non-standard varieties of English, which can be seen from the use of the phrase “…but compares to the….”. Further, the student does not make a distinction between written and spoken language. For instance, considering that this is written language, the student should not have started a sentence with the phrase “like my landlord…”, but that can be used in speech. The student writing is influenced by his/her English pronunciation that can be seen in the use of the phrase “…But no matter for what grade…”. The errors are not consistent. They only occur in some contexts.

Pragmatic competence is the ability of using language properly in different social circumstances. The student’s use of the language is not properly used in this passage. In this circumstance, the use of the phrase “…..like my landlord, who has been here for 50 years, and lived in Chinatown all the time, still has very limited English language..” is an indication of the student not having pragmatic competence.