Teach English in Nanqiao Zhen - Zhuzhou Shi

Millions of individuals around the globe have enrolled in English courses for several reasons. They could either like the language or they just want to get better opportunities in life. China, for example, has 400 million people who are currently studying English so that thousands of teachers are needed in order to meet the demand. When arriving in the Asian country, educators realize that their students can have some problems to learn the language compared to other regions of the world. After all, learning a new language always presents some difficulties and more if one’s native language has different grammatical structures. Chinese grammar has some similarities to English grammar; nonetheless, a huge difference is that words in Chinese don’t change. That is to say, words don’t have other forms based on gender, singular/plural or verb conjugation (Liang, 2014). Another difference, which is very noticeable, is that this language doesn’t have an alphabet, instead there is a logographic system for its written language wherein symbols stand for the words (FIS, 2016). Therefore, after noticing all these differences between these two languages and in order to allow educators to understand how to teach English successfully, it is crucial to address the most common problems found by students who learn English in China. First, as it was mentioned above, the fact that Chinese uses non-alphabetic characters makes learning more complicated for English language learners as they have to learn and comprehend a whole new alphabet (The TEFL Academy, 2017). Alternatively, the rhythm of the Chinese language depends on the syllables whereas in English the rhythm is controlled by the stress of the sentence. In this case, pupils will have trouble when trying to understand or speak the same way a native English speaker does. Equally important, pronunciation plays a very important role since the Asiatic language doesn’t have sounds that could relate to the English sounds of the letter [l] and [r]. Thereby, teachers would notice that their students are confused because they wouldn’t be able to easily differentiate the sound of these two letters, which results in learners having a hard time pronouncing them (The TEFL Academy, 2017). Additionally, the order of the words and their spelling are another reason for students to get perplexed. This occurs since in Chinese the subject of a sentence can be omitted, and even the object can be placed at the beginning. To make things worse, students will have to remember that in English words do change and this can happen to the point where they might look like other words (The TEFL Academy, 2017). The last problem to mention in this writing can be found in the Chinese culture in which making mistakes or not knowing the answer to something can be shameful, preventing the pupils from speaking out and practicing their English (Aleksandra, 2019). In conclusion, even though students in China can face problems when learning English, they have to realize that with some practice and motivation all problems can be overcome. Here, teachers have to be careful and focus not only on the problem but the solution. In the end, we all are able to find ways to solve problems and with a lot of work and dedication, we would make our way to the main goal which is to learn a new language. References Aleksandra, D. (2019). What problems do English learners face in China? Retrieved from https://www.teflcourse.net/blog/what-problems-do-learners-face-in-china-ittt-tefl-blog/. Frankfurt International School. (2016). The differences between English and Chinese. Retrieved from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/chinese.htm. Liang, W. (2014). Why native English speakers can learn Mandarin easily. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/why-native-english-speakers-can-learn-mandarin-easily. The TEFL Academy. (2017). 5 Problems for Chinese Speakers of English. Retrieved from https://www.theteflacademy.com/blog/2017/01/5-problems-for-chinese-speakers-of-english/.