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The purpose of this essay is to highlight some problems for English learners in china, the importance of understanding these troubles to improve your teaching skills, some suggestions to solve them and of course some personal experience I have had during my stay in this country. Nowadays you can notice the great influence EUA has on China with business relations, music, culture etc. So, it’s not difficult to imagine that for them learning English has become the priority for their children. Parents now enroll their kids at a very young age to English classes, even if they still haven’t mastered their own language. One of the most important problems for Chinese students to speak English is the articulation of the consonants, specially the /r/ sound which is the most unfamiliar for them. In Chinese language some consonants sounds don’t exist like /g/ or /dz/ so its important to practice and be patient with them also you need to speak clearly and use pronunciation drills every day for practicing. After the students are familiar with all the sounds of the consonants and vowels eventually, they must learn how to read and write. For Chinese students is obvious that the writing system is completely different for them and is another problem that they will face , Chinese language use ideograms to express a word and English uses the alphabet for that , so teaching the alphabet from the beginning is crucial for them , you need to teach them how to write every letter and be patient. You can also include games like the hangman or word search to be more dynamic. For Chinese students the English grammar can be very challenging because in their own language they don’t conjugate the verbs , for the tenses usually they only add one word to the verb and that’s enough so in general the most important thing for them is to put everything in order to express the correct idea , on the other hand, in English you need to use the correct conjugation , tense form and put in order everything to make a sentence. For this situation practicing with worksheets and the course book is essential and you need to check with them continuously and include some exercises like fill the gap or crosswords. Other important aspect to consider is their culture because although Chinese students tend to be very responsible and hardworking, they usually don’t want to speak in class so you need to encourage them with fun and simple activities so they can feel comfortable, also in china they use and depend a lot on technology and in the apps so it can be very productive to link some activities with some apps like kahoot, in this way they can learn and feel excited about the class. In conclusion although every person is different and has their own personality when you become an English teacher is very important to know the culture and have a general knowledge about their native language , every day you will learn something about them and you will need to use this to improve your teaching methods.
