Five Problems for Chinese English Speakers
Almost everything about English is difficult, and a list of five common problems could consist of nothing but grammar rules. I’ll forgo the really technical stuff, though, and focus mainly on the things that stand out to me the most (and, consequently, bug me the most as an EFL teacher fighting a losing battle).
1. The “th” sound
There aren’t any sounds in Chinese that require the speaker to stick their tongue out, so this completely goes over my students’ heads. Even when I exaggeratedly demonstrate to stick your tongue out while pronouncing words like teeth or thirty or think, they just won’t do it. Maybe it’s too much of a social faux pas.
2. The “arrr” sound
The stereotype that Chinese people pronounce Rs as Ls is horribly misinformed. This is not true. What is a problem, however, is when the R sound is in the middle of a word, such as in dark, shark, or Clark (hey, that’s my name). I know they can pronounce R correctly, but it almost always comes out as “ah” (i.e. dock, shock).
3. Plurals
It seems like a simple rule to add an S on the end when there’s more than one of something, but we have a lot of words (like clothes and mouse) that this doesn’t apply to. Chinese is much simpler, because the word stays the same, only the quantifier changes. Often, my students will just tack on an extra S for everything (i.e. clotheses).
4. He/she
Some of my friends, whose English is ridden with slang and other fluent nuances, still struggle with he/she. They’ll accidentally refer to a boy as a she or a girl as a he. That’s what happens when boys and girls look too much alike! In reality, though, spoken Chinese only has one word for both (ta), so it really is confusing.
5. Verb tenses
They say Chinese is difficult, but how can it be difficult when the language doesn’t have tenses? Words don’t change, unlike English, where we add -ed or -ing on the end depending on when something happened, not to mention all the irregular verbs out there. Students, then, play it safe by sticking to -ing (i.e. I like to swimming).
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Responses to “Five Problems for Chinese English Speakers”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsKevin — 24 November 2009 @ 12:38 am
Isn’t [2] correct? I always pronounce “ar” in the middle of a word as “ah”. How do you think it should be pronounced?
Clark — 24 November 2009 @ 1:08 am
Well, my name is Clark, for instance, not Clock.
Kevin — 25 November 2009 @ 12:34 am
Ah, I see you’re from the US. What you describe is basically a standard British accent (I say “Clark” pretty much as an American would say “clock”, but when I say “clock” it has a short o that Wikipedia tells me is similar to the one in “sort” in some American dialects), so it’s not something to worry about.
(exception: when the r is followed by a vowel sound, e.g. “arid”, “arena”)
Clark — 25 November 2009 @ 7:33 am
Blimey, that makes perfect sense! Why didn’t this occur to me before? I guess I still haven’t accepted that schools teach British English over American English. When a student’s accent isn’t exactly British, though, it really does sound like a mistake. I always drill words as “arrr,” too, and the students can never repeat it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a student who could pronounce my name correctly (correctly American, that is).
Rynn — 25 November 2009 @ 9:25 pm
The R’s as L’s is actually the Japanese accent. And it’s not EXACTLY an L, it’s more a rolled L XD if that make any sense… but yeah in Japanese my name is either said elin or elen, depending on how they decide to put my name into katakana… my preference is elin. My kids also had a hard time with plurals… and tenses… >.>
Clark — 25 November 2009 @ 10:34 pm
Yeah, but you know how we are, we think all Asian people are the same.
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