Teach English in Bei'er Sumu - Hulunbei'er Shi — Hulunbuir

Learners from each country have different difficulties when acquiring the English languages. Here problems and difficulties for learners in China will be discussed, possible reasons and some ideas about solving them. The further the language from the family of Germanic languages, in which we include English, the more difficult to acquire it. Although similarities between native language and acquired language can create some issues, learning a language that is completely different in alphabet, grammar, syntax and vocabulary can be frustrating and extremely demanding. The alphabet The Chinese language has a graphic alphabet of it's own, very complex and wide. If this were the only standard alphabet, learning English would be twice as hard. Fortunately, there is a Latin alphabet - Pinyin, that has the same symbols as English alphabet, only with different rules of reading. Teaching learners differences in pronunciation has proven itself not so difficult itself. But, Pinyin has set rules about reading each letter and there are no exceptions. So, learners (if they are adults, or learners' parents if we are talking about young learners) expect teachers to teach them exact rules of pronunciation each and every letter in English alphabet and their combinations. This can be done, but over a course of long time. Sometimes learners, or their parents, have difficulties understanding why this is not the top priority and why is it not the top priority of every class. Learning phonics itself is a long process, but more often than not it is expected of teachers to teach learners all the rules and exceptions in a very short period of time. Pronunciation Vowels in Chinese are not so open and clear as in English. So pronunciation of even simple words can turn out to be vague, to say at least. A lot of time, effort and practice is needed to make students get used to opening their mouth more and to learn how to produce a vowel correctly. Another matter of pronunciation would be consonants at the end words. Words in Chinese always end with a vowel . If teachers have younger students, their speaking apparatus is simply not able to produce those letters with consonants at the end. Constant drills are needed and a lot of attention to every student, teaching them how to reproduce the word is essential, but can be impossible if teachers are working in classes with a lot of students. Furthermore, there is a risk - if a teacher over-pronounces the ending consonant, the learners might memorize the word that way and it will not sound natural when they decide to use it later on. The suffix -ing in particular can create confusion. If /g/ is pronounced strongly, that is not the correct sound of the suffix. If the suffix is pronounced in a standard manner, the learners might simply not hear it. Tenses Chinese language does not have tenses as we know them. It has one tense and the place of an action in time is determined by temporal adjectives. So, the concept of tenses is very confusing to many students in this country. Most of the time, this results in various combinations of tenses. Students use the correct temporal adjective, but if we talk about tenses that are formed by and auxiliary and the main verb, the auxiliary can be in a future tense while the main verb is in past participle. This aspect of language is very difficult for students to acquire since the concept itself is unfamiliar to them. In contrast to a student from Spain because Spanish has tenses with similar rules of usage as English. Lack of formal tests Education in China is based on a lot of formal tests. If a teacher decides that they want a different approach, or simply they do not find formal tests to be useful or motivating, students or students’ parents might consider this as lack of professionalism. This is, of course, not always the case, but this is one of the cultural differences a teacher can encounter in this particular country. So, a teacher either needs to adapt and conduct formal tests or explain to students/parents that there are other ways of learning a language and testing a student’s knowledge. This may not always be well received by students/parents, so the teacher should be extra careful and seek advice from the school management. In conclusion, every country has it’s own challenges for a language teacher, but this does not mean it’s any less rewarding. These were just some of many challenges that can be seen by an English teacher in a Chinese classroom and the ideas for solving these issues sometimes can turn out to be art, sometimes a completely new approach to teaching, if a teacher is ready to change their perspective and adjust to all the needs of their students.