English? Is that a strange language?
July 11, 2011 11:36 PM Subscribe
Which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
So, I have a new job at a private after-school academy for middle school students in Seoul. The students often complain that English is so hard to read, so hard to understand, and so hard to speak properly.
This makes me wonder. What do you, English speakers, think about this language? Is English hard for you? If you think it's hard, which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
You can make fun of me if you want due to the fact that people here thinks my English is horrible according to the two previous questions I posted here. I deserve it. Don't complain that I teach English in this country. I'm already a huge disgrace to the native English speakers.
So, I have a new job at a private after-school academy for middle school students in Seoul. The students often complain that English is so hard to read, so hard to understand, and so hard to speak properly.
This makes me wonder. What do you, English speakers, think about this language? Is English hard for you? If you think it's hard, which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
You can make fun of me if you want due to the fact that people here thinks my English is horrible according to the two previous questions I posted here. I deserve it. Don't complain that I teach English in this country. I'm already a huge disgrace to the native English speakers.
I recommend reading this pdf article about the issues that Koreans face when learning English. Also listen to your students and the way the speak and understand what aspects of the language are they having difficulty with.
There are many difficult aspects of English and being an EFL learner can be quite difficult because there are many concepts that are missing without the cultural component. Also writing and speaking English are both completely different and many native English speakers have poor writing skills.
posted by andendau at 11:53 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
There are many difficult aspects of English and being an EFL learner can be quite difficult because there are many concepts that are missing without the cultural component. Also writing and speaking English are both completely different and many native English speakers have poor writing skills.
posted by andendau at 11:53 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Hey there, long time (former) ESL in Korea teacher here. A few factors:
1. Sentence structure is totally different from Korean.
2. Many sounds in English do not exist in Korean (and vice-versa).
3. Korean students rarely learn English to speak it and only use it for the purposes of test-taking and vocabulary review. It is often a joyless, rote-learning exercise for them.
4. Korean classrooms culture does not usually favor speaking and engagement with the teacher (but this is where you come in). This is a hard obstacle to overcome, especially if it means gaining the attention of one's peers while you are speaking.
5. What differences in meaning we discern in language by vocal stress (e.g., "SHE is a doctor" vs. "She is a DOCTOR") are communicated with grammatical particles in Korean. These distinctions are extremely nuanced and hard to penetrate for someone who is unfamiliar with English speech patterns.
posted by holterbarbour at 11:56 PM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]
1. Sentence structure is totally different from Korean.
2. Many sounds in English do not exist in Korean (and vice-versa).
3. Korean students rarely learn English to speak it and only use it for the purposes of test-taking and vocabulary review. It is often a joyless, rote-learning exercise for them.
4. Korean classrooms culture does not usually favor speaking and engagement with the teacher (but this is where you come in). This is a hard obstacle to overcome, especially if it means gaining the attention of one's peers while you are speaking.
5. What differences in meaning we discern in language by vocal stress (e.g., "SHE is a doctor" vs. "She is a DOCTOR") are communicated with grammatical particles in Korean. These distinctions are extremely nuanced and hard to penetrate for someone who is unfamiliar with English speech patterns.
posted by holterbarbour at 11:56 PM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]
IANYLinguist. I am a native English speaker who has a very, very limited background in English language history. I am not fact-checking here, so props to those who do.
English *is* hard. You want a nice, beautiful language that mostly makes sense? Try Spanish. (disclaimer: I never got past two years of study in it, but pretty much everyone I know who are fluent speakers be they native or or not, agree. And I know a lot of Spanish speakers.)
Languages are often kind of crazy because people are crazy and they move around and share words they know. English is a mishmash of largely Germanic languages (the island kept getting attacked by different folks and their language came with them), although one of its most awesome and annoying features is its readiness to incorporate words from other languages, hence its large secondary base of Latin-derived words from the formally church-educated classes who pretty much controlled written language in England for centuries.
Spelling *is* hard in English (due to aforementioned mishmash of languages), and wasn't standardized until written language and basic literacy in such became commonplace in the...18th century, maybe? Just look at all the words that Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers in any language, misspelled by today's standards.
I think the only thing I've heard everyone agree on regarding acquisition of a new language, however difficult, is immersion and practice--there's no silver bullet. If it makes your students feel any better, they no doubt speak/read better English than I speak/read Korean.
posted by smirkette at 11:58 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
English *is* hard. You want a nice, beautiful language that mostly makes sense? Try Spanish. (disclaimer: I never got past two years of study in it, but pretty much everyone I know who are fluent speakers be they native or or not, agree. And I know a lot of Spanish speakers.)
Languages are often kind of crazy because people are crazy and they move around and share words they know. English is a mishmash of largely Germanic languages (the island kept getting attacked by different folks and their language came with them), although one of its most awesome and annoying features is its readiness to incorporate words from other languages, hence its large secondary base of Latin-derived words from the formally church-educated classes who pretty much controlled written language in England for centuries.
Spelling *is* hard in English (due to aforementioned mishmash of languages), and wasn't standardized until written language and basic literacy in such became commonplace in the...18th century, maybe? Just look at all the words that Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers in any language, misspelled by today's standards.
I think the only thing I've heard everyone agree on regarding acquisition of a new language, however difficult, is immersion and practice--there's no silver bullet. If it makes your students feel any better, they no doubt speak/read better English than I speak/read Korean.
posted by smirkette at 11:58 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
I am a native English speaker. English isn't hard for me compared to acquiring another language, and I am completely comfortable with speaking, writing, and reading in English. When I learn another language, generally I have a much easier time with reading and writing than I do with speaking, partly because I am shy and tend to freeze up.
posted by gingerest at 12:01 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by gingerest at 12:01 AM on July 12, 2011
EFL teacher in Japan, and seconding all that holterbarbour has said. Much of it applies over here as well.
When I first started teaching English, what I found hard to explain (and still sometimes do) are reasons for word choices. One of the first questions I got was "What is the difference between 'made from' and 'made of'?" Just the other night, The Boyfriend (who is Japanese and getting into translation) asked me to explain the difference between a rack and a shelf. Also, when would you use follow, obey, or abide by "the rules?"
Explaining these differences in a way that makes sense take a lot of practice, but it makes me appreciate the language a whole lot more.
Also, I don't know if Korean lacks articles (the, a/an), but that, the issue of count and noncount nouns, plurals in general - all that drives people nuts here. :)
posted by MShades at 12:06 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
When I first started teaching English, what I found hard to explain (and still sometimes do) are reasons for word choices. One of the first questions I got was "What is the difference between 'made from' and 'made of'?" Just the other night, The Boyfriend (who is Japanese and getting into translation) asked me to explain the difference between a rack and a shelf. Also, when would you use follow, obey, or abide by "the rules?"
Explaining these differences in a way that makes sense take a lot of practice, but it makes me appreciate the language a whole lot more.
Also, I don't know if Korean lacks articles (the, a/an), but that, the issue of count and noncount nouns, plurals in general - all that drives people nuts here. :)
posted by MShades at 12:06 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
My friends who are learning English sometimes get stuck on homophones and tenses. Other than that, immersion with the language has been very beneficial for them.
posted by sugarbomb at 12:07 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by sugarbomb at 12:07 AM on July 12, 2011
I see many university level native English speakers who continue to have trouble with:
-subjunctive constructions
-who/whom - which to use in which circumstances
-spelling - I know many very intelligent native speakers who are TERRIBLE spellers
-semi-colons, colons, dashes/hyphens
-subject-verb agreement in complex sentences
A few have trouble with more basic things:
-knowing when to break off a sentence and start a new one
-knowing how to group ideas into logical groupings by paragraph
-idioms, especially involving prepositions (these errors are very hard to invent, sorry I don't have a good example)
-subject-verb agreement in simple sentences
Non-native speakers tend to have trouble with:
-Articles
-Idioms
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:08 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
-subjunctive constructions
-who/whom - which to use in which circumstances
-spelling - I know many very intelligent native speakers who are TERRIBLE spellers
-semi-colons, colons, dashes/hyphens
-subject-verb agreement in complex sentences
A few have trouble with more basic things:
-knowing when to break off a sentence and start a new one
-knowing how to group ideas into logical groupings by paragraph
-idioms, especially involving prepositions (these errors are very hard to invent, sorry I don't have a good example)
-subject-verb agreement in simple sentences
Non-native speakers tend to have trouble with:
-Articles
-Idioms
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:08 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
I should add to the "common problems native speakers have":
-proper use of apostrophes and quotation marks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:10 AM on July 12, 2011
-proper use of apostrophes and quotation marks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:10 AM on July 12, 2011
Not speaking from personal experience, but my parents are both immigrants, and I think the main problem with pronunciation is knowing what to do with the tongue. From the student's perspective, well, it's hard to see. As others pointed out, there are some sounds in foreign languages that don't get used in English, and vice versa. It's instinctual for us to do a hard R, but maybe not a rolled R.
So it can be kind of futile going "No, 'RRRun!' Ruh! Run!" over and over. It's like telling a golf student to hit the ball straight, but not going over swing mechanics. So I'd imagine that an effective tool in teaching English would be illustrations of tongue placement.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:22 AM on July 12, 2011
So it can be kind of futile going "No, 'RRRun!' Ruh! Run!" over and over. It's like telling a golf student to hit the ball straight, but not going over swing mechanics. So I'd imagine that an effective tool in teaching English would be illustrations of tongue placement.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:22 AM on July 12, 2011
For non-native speakers it is almost impossible to know when to use indefinite articles. As a native speaker I can't think of any rules by which this can be explained. You just have to know.
Many Korean and Chinese people have trouble telling apart voiced and unvoiced consonants, such as "g" and "k".
posted by twblalock at 12:24 AM on July 12, 2011
Many Korean and Chinese people have trouble telling apart voiced and unvoiced consonants, such as "g" and "k".
posted by twblalock at 12:24 AM on July 12, 2011
I've taught writing and composition to native and non-native speakers of English, and in my experience, both groups can have issues with correct use of verb tenses.
As I discovered while training to be an ESL teacher, one of the difficulties with English is that the same verb tense/aspect can have several different meanings. To complicate matters, we can also convey the same meaning by using different tenses/aspects.
------
example 1: same tense/aspect, different meanings
[present progressive] I'm having coffee with my sister.
This can be an answer to the question, "What are you doing right now?" In this case, the present progressive tense is used to convey the idea that the action is in progress right now.
However, it can also be an answer to the question, "What are your plans for tomorrow afternoon?" In this case, we're using present progressive to convey the idea that the action is something you are planning to do in the future.
example 2: same meaning, different tense/aspect
[present progressive] I'm having coffee with my sister tomorrow afternoon.
[future with "going to"] I'm going to have coffee with my sister.
Here we're using two different verb tenses, present progressive and the "going to" future form, to convey the same idea: you have a plan to do this particular action (have coffee with your sister) in the future.
------
Similar to the article that andendau mentioned: if you can get hold of a copy of Michael Swan's Learner English, I highly recommend you read the chapter on Korean learners and L1 interference. That book was so helpful to me when I was an ESL teacher. It addresses many aspects of spoken and written English that can pose problems for learners from various linguistic backgrounds.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:41 AM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]
As I discovered while training to be an ESL teacher, one of the difficulties with English is that the same verb tense/aspect can have several different meanings. To complicate matters, we can also convey the same meaning by using different tenses/aspects.
------
example 1: same tense/aspect, different meanings
[present progressive] I'm having coffee with my sister.
This can be an answer to the question, "What are you doing right now?" In this case, the present progressive tense is used to convey the idea that the action is in progress right now.
However, it can also be an answer to the question, "What are your plans for tomorrow afternoon?" In this case, we're using present progressive to convey the idea that the action is something you are planning to do in the future.
example 2: same meaning, different tense/aspect
[present progressive] I'm having coffee with my sister tomorrow afternoon.
[future with "going to"] I'm going to have coffee with my sister.
Here we're using two different verb tenses, present progressive and the "going to" future form, to convey the same idea: you have a plan to do this particular action (have coffee with your sister) in the future.
------
Similar to the article that andendau mentioned: if you can get hold of a copy of Michael Swan's Learner English, I highly recommend you read the chapter on Korean learners and L1 interference. That book was so helpful to me when I was an ESL teacher. It addresses many aspects of spoken and written English that can pose problems for learners from various linguistic backgrounds.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:41 AM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]
As far as learning English, my classes never did a great job of teaching grammar until I learned Latin in college. Having a better idea of subjects and objects helped me finally understand, for example, when to use "who" vs "whom," and why "This is he" is technically correct, even if it sounds funny.
In general, "Use whatever sounds right" isn't really the way to go, unless you're in casual company. And I think there are some cases where teaching the rule itself is easier to get across, and others where giving a lot of different examples is easier.
And since the internet became really popular, I've never gotten used to seeing people put apostrophes at the end of plurals just because it ends in a vowel (like "tree's"), and sometimes, not even because of that. Once in a while you even see names like "Ted William's."
This thread kinda reminds me of that "I Love Lucy" episode where Ricky has a hell of a time trying to read a story with a bunch of words ending in "-ough."
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:51 AM on July 12, 2011
In general, "Use whatever sounds right" isn't really the way to go, unless you're in casual company. And I think there are some cases where teaching the rule itself is easier to get across, and others where giving a lot of different examples is easier.
And since the internet became really popular, I've never gotten used to seeing people put apostrophes at the end of plurals just because it ends in a vowel (like "tree's"), and sometimes, not even because of that. Once in a while you even see names like "Ted William's."
This thread kinda reminds me of that "I Love Lucy" episode where Ricky has a hell of a time trying to read a story with a bunch of words ending in "-ough."
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:51 AM on July 12, 2011
OT, but the anti-phonetic alphabet may illustrate some of the issues with relating pronounciation to spelling (in an amusing way).
posted by plep at 12:56 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by plep at 12:56 AM on July 12, 2011
Is English hard for you?
Not at all. But I'm a native English speaker who reads a lot. I don't think that's very meaningful.
If you think it's hard, which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
I don't always know the names for certain aspects of grammar or sentence construction even if I know how to use them properly. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I know what "the subjunctive" is. But I wouldn't want to have to explain it to a non-native speaker.
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on July 12, 2011
Not at all. But I'm a native English speaker who reads a lot. I don't think that's very meaningful.
If you think it's hard, which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
I don't always know the names for certain aspects of grammar or sentence construction even if I know how to use them properly. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I know what "the subjunctive" is. But I wouldn't want to have to explain it to a non-native speaker.
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on July 12, 2011
My dad (a non-native) often says 'sheeps' when he means 'sheep' or 'mouses' when he means 'mice'.
This is the sort of thing I think I would have trouble with, too. All the 'irregulars' - verbs, plurals, etc. I'm a big believer in the power of rote learning when it comes to this stuff.
But hey, stop beating yourself up about having bad English! The mere fact that you're considering these issues means you have an awareness of language that many don't. There's standard and non-standard grammar, and boy am I glad that the non-standard way gives us so many more interesting, strange and beautiful options for expressing ourselves.
posted by guessthis at 2:06 AM on July 12, 2011
This is the sort of thing I think I would have trouble with, too. All the 'irregulars' - verbs, plurals, etc. I'm a big believer in the power of rote learning when it comes to this stuff.
But hey, stop beating yourself up about having bad English! The mere fact that you're considering these issues means you have an awareness of language that many don't. There's standard and non-standard grammar, and boy am I glad that the non-standard way gives us so many more interesting, strange and beautiful options for expressing ourselves.
posted by guessthis at 2:06 AM on July 12, 2011
This makes me wonder. What do you, English speakers, think about this language? Is English hard for you? If you think it's hard, which aspect of English do you find it difficult?
As most of the answerers have noted, it doesn't really matter what native speakers think about the difficulty of English. First language acquisition takes place in infancy and the processes are generally agreed to be different from post-infancy additional language learning.
In fact, even knowing what is hard for a German, Russian, Spanish or Thai speaker when learning English will not especially help your Korean students. What is important is being aware of the areas where Korean and English are different. A simple example - think about how plural nouns work in English and Korean. In English, most countable nouns are made plural by adding the ending -s. In Korean, nouns are not usually marked as plural, especially when there is a number in the sentence. (Except, I believe, pronouns and kinship nouns which take the plural suffix 들.)
Once you are aware of that, you can think about ways to incorporate reminding students to use plural suffixes into your teaching. This is one area where you, as someone who speaks both Korean and English, have an advantage over native speakers. You can think about why Koreans make certain mistakes in English and tackle the root cause, while the native speakers might be able to work it out with a great deal of work, but probably won't.
I'd third the suggestion to read the pdf in andendau's answer and second Hurdy Gurdy Girl's suggestion of reading the chapter on Korean learners in Michael Swan's Learner English.
You can make fun of me if you want due to the fact that people here thinks my English is horrible according to the two previous questions I posted here.
Since you brought it up, that is simply not true. Anyone can look back at your previous questions and see that most people said your English was basically fine, although you received lots of constructive suggestions about areas you could work on.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:23 AM on July 12, 2011
As most of the answerers have noted, it doesn't really matter what native speakers think about the difficulty of English. First language acquisition takes place in infancy and the processes are generally agreed to be different from post-infancy additional language learning.
In fact, even knowing what is hard for a German, Russian, Spanish or Thai speaker when learning English will not especially help your Korean students. What is important is being aware of the areas where Korean and English are different. A simple example - think about how plural nouns work in English and Korean. In English, most countable nouns are made plural by adding the ending -s. In Korean, nouns are not usually marked as plural, especially when there is a number in the sentence. (Except, I believe, pronouns and kinship nouns which take the plural suffix 들.)
Once you are aware of that, you can think about ways to incorporate reminding students to use plural suffixes into your teaching. This is one area where you, as someone who speaks both Korean and English, have an advantage over native speakers. You can think about why Koreans make certain mistakes in English and tackle the root cause, while the native speakers might be able to work it out with a great deal of work, but probably won't.
I'd third the suggestion to read the pdf in andendau's answer and second Hurdy Gurdy Girl's suggestion of reading the chapter on Korean learners in Michael Swan's Learner English.
You can make fun of me if you want due to the fact that people here thinks my English is horrible according to the two previous questions I posted here.
Since you brought it up, that is simply not true. Anyone can look back at your previous questions and see that most people said your English was basically fine, although you received lots of constructive suggestions about areas you could work on.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:23 AM on July 12, 2011
You can make fun of me if you want due to the fact that people here thinks my English is horrible according to the two previous questions I posted here. I deserve it. Don't complain that I teach English in this country. I'm already a huge disgrace to the native English speakers.
Just seconding BusyOldFool: your written English is perfectly acceptable. Yes, there's the odd error, but Metafilter is hardly a formal site where perfect grammar and spelling is expected. (I just mistyped "your" as "you're" for instance: something I usually manage to catch before I post anything but not always. Confusing their/there/they're is another bugbear of mine. Strangely, I only get these wrong when I'm typing, not hand-writing. Presumably the link between my brain and finger is somehow phonetic & so homophones can get confused.)
Anyway, you asked what a native English speaker finds hard. In my case, it's probably the temptation to overcomplicate my writing. For a given sentence, English has so many words to choose from, in many different registers of speech: I tend to choose the most complicated possible construction by default, and then have to go back over what I've written to pare it back to something more readable.
Native speakers don't have the same problems as non-native ones though: we tend to be able to intuit when a piece of writing "just feels wrong" even if we are completely unable to explain why it's wrong, we just know it is. This is a consequence of having been so completely immersed in the language that our brains have internalised the written and unwritten rules of the language at a subconscious level. A non-native speaker is usually taught the rules of a language consciously at first, which is completely different. I'm sure the same goes for native speakers of Korean: don't doubt that English speakers find Korean just as hard to learn.
(It probably doesn't help that English is polyglot, having taken words and structure from a range of old European languages. One of the things that native speakers can do automatically is spot when words have Old English, Latin, Germanic or French origins (the combinations of letters used to spell the word are often a clue to it's origins), which can help with pronouncing an unfamiliar word. This kind of subtlety is going to lost on a non-native speaker, who finds themselves in a maze of different spellings, all alike. (Or sometimes a maze of different pronunciations, all spelt alike!). A native English speaker can also choose to express the same concept using either Germanic or Latinate words depending on the nuances of meaning and the register in which they're speaking. I imagine these are difficult topics to convey to a student population which has no familiarity with Indo-European languages at all!)
posted by pharm at 3:13 AM on July 12, 2011
Just seconding BusyOldFool: your written English is perfectly acceptable. Yes, there's the odd error, but Metafilter is hardly a formal site where perfect grammar and spelling is expected. (I just mistyped "your" as "you're" for instance: something I usually manage to catch before I post anything but not always. Confusing their/there/they're is another bugbear of mine. Strangely, I only get these wrong when I'm typing, not hand-writing. Presumably the link between my brain and finger is somehow phonetic & so homophones can get confused.)
Anyway, you asked what a native English speaker finds hard. In my case, it's probably the temptation to overcomplicate my writing. For a given sentence, English has so many words to choose from, in many different registers of speech: I tend to choose the most complicated possible construction by default, and then have to go back over what I've written to pare it back to something more readable.
Native speakers don't have the same problems as non-native ones though: we tend to be able to intuit when a piece of writing "just feels wrong" even if we are completely unable to explain why it's wrong, we just know it is. This is a consequence of having been so completely immersed in the language that our brains have internalised the written and unwritten rules of the language at a subconscious level. A non-native speaker is usually taught the rules of a language consciously at first, which is completely different. I'm sure the same goes for native speakers of Korean: don't doubt that English speakers find Korean just as hard to learn.
(It probably doesn't help that English is polyglot, having taken words and structure from a range of old European languages. One of the things that native speakers can do automatically is spot when words have Old English, Latin, Germanic or French origins (the combinations of letters used to spell the word are often a clue to it's origins), which can help with pronouncing an unfamiliar word. This kind of subtlety is going to lost on a non-native speaker, who finds themselves in a maze of different spellings, all alike. (Or sometimes a maze of different pronunciations, all spelt alike!). A native English speaker can also choose to express the same concept using either Germanic or Latinate words depending on the nuances of meaning and the register in which they're speaking. I imagine these are difficult topics to convey to a student population which has no familiarity with Indo-European languages at all!)
posted by pharm at 3:13 AM on July 12, 2011
I agree that inconsistent spelling is the worst thing. There are plenty of place names in English whose pronunciation cannot be determined with any certainty from the spelling, even by a native speaker, which is a pretty poor state of affairs.
On the other hand, compared to other European languages English has rational gender, invariant second person, and few irregular verbs, which I would think make it significantly simpler than other European languages (including Spanish).
posted by Segundus at 3:51 AM on July 12, 2011
On the other hand, compared to other European languages English has rational gender, invariant second person, and few irregular verbs, which I would think make it significantly simpler than other European languages (including Spanish).
posted by Segundus at 3:51 AM on July 12, 2011
I just finished teaching English to second language learners in Colombia. For the most part they were very advanced, but they all struggled to no end with prepositions. Even the Colombian teachers who taught English occasionally had to ask me about them. But my students were native Spanish speakers, and it really depends on what your native language is.
I don't think English in general is easy. As people have said, it's not phonetic. I tell Spanish speakers that I think it's easier for an English speaker to learn Spanish than vice-versa, and my guess is that it would be even harder for a Korean speaker.
If your students say they can't read, speak, or understand, work primarily on understanding, since that is the easiest skill of the three. Though you should probably try and integrate the three at once as well. Disclaimer: not an expert here, just what I'd do.
posted by queens86 at 4:09 AM on July 12, 2011
I don't think English in general is easy. As people have said, it's not phonetic. I tell Spanish speakers that I think it's easier for an English speaker to learn Spanish than vice-versa, and my guess is that it would be even harder for a Korean speaker.
If your students say they can't read, speak, or understand, work primarily on understanding, since that is the easiest skill of the three. Though you should probably try and integrate the three at once as well. Disclaimer: not an expert here, just what I'd do.
posted by queens86 at 4:09 AM on July 12, 2011
I'm speaking for other people here but in the United Kingdom I notice that a lot of people have trouble using the subjunctive mood and the words "was/were".
For example, I frequently hear, even from well-read people on TV, "We was" instead of "We were". And phrases like "If I was rich, I would [..]" rather than "If I were rich, I would [..]". These are two totally different uses of was/were but people in Britain seem to trip up on these far more than any other English speakers I've come across (most of my work is with US English) so there must be an underlying issue there.
posted by wackybrit at 5:34 AM on July 12, 2011
For example, I frequently hear, even from well-read people on TV, "We was" instead of "We were". And phrases like "If I was rich, I would [..]" rather than "If I were rich, I would [..]". These are two totally different uses of was/were but people in Britain seem to trip up on these far more than any other English speakers I've come across (most of my work is with US English) so there must be an underlying issue there.
posted by wackybrit at 5:34 AM on July 12, 2011
Pronounciation. English is my second language, but you'd only really be able to tell from my mispronouncing words that I'd only ever read on paper, not heard spoken aloud.
posted by lydhre at 6:01 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by lydhre at 6:01 AM on July 12, 2011
I'm a native English speaker with some experience in other languages and I think prepositions are pretty tricky with English. I'm a writer and I often feel like it's a gut thing but I'm sure I frequently make mistakes with them. Also, there are weird regional things related to prepositions depending on where you are. For example, my husband is from Long Island and he says "get on line" when he means go stand in a queue whereas I would say "get in line." For that reason, I imagine that prepositions don't translate directly from one language to another (Spanish has at least "por" and "para" for "for") and I doubt ESL teachers, even those who are trained well and have the best intentions, may not have the best answers for why students should use one preposition instead of another.
posted by kat518 at 6:50 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by kat518 at 6:50 AM on July 12, 2011
EFL teacher here. The thing that makes learning any new language seem easy or hard is how simple or complex the various structures and rules of the language itself are, as well as how similar or different they are to the language(s) you already know.
Compared to other languages, English is simple in some ways and complex in others. Grammatically, our system of verb tenses is much simpler than Spanish or German or most of the other second-languages that English speakers usually study: most verbs only have about four forms, as opposed to dozens. But it's more complex than something like Chinese, which basically has no inflectional tense at all. Also, though the number of verb forms in English might be small, the proportion that are irregular and have to be individually memorized might be comparatively large.
As for nouns, we have it pretty easy. Other than for pronouns, English doesn't have gender for nouns like many European languages do (e.g., der/die/das in German). Same goes for cases (accusative, dative, etc.) which in some languages (like Russian) can be very complex, but which in English we only apply to pronouns, plus the 's suffix for genitive (possessive). But nouns do inflect for number in English: a simple singular-plural distinction which isn't very complex, but can still throw off speakers of other languages which don't make that distinction, including Korean. (Similarly, in Korean, nouns do have a complex case system, so again, something that seems simpler in English in principle might have been easier for them to learn if it was more complex, but more similar to what they're familiar with.)
In English we have to worry about subject-verb agreement (which they don't in Chinese) but we don't have to worry about agreement with adjectives (like in French, and German sometimes). English is not very agglutinative in nature, which makes it somewhat simpler in that regard, but also makes it very different from Korean. We have definite and indefinite articles to worry about, which are second nature to speakers of most European languages, but cause problems for many Asians (because their native languages lack such a thing).
Leaving grammar and turning to vocabulary, English is generally considered to have the largest vocabulary of any language, but even if that's true of course one doesn't need to learn all the obscure technical jargon in order to have a casual conversation. Etymologically, many English words have come from other languages, and to the extent that there are or are not cognates between English and a student's native language, that makes English easier to learn. So that's an advantage for French speakers trying to learn English, but a disadvantage for Koreans.
Morphologically, many words in English (especially more advanced vocabulary items) are made up of smaller parts that come from other languages (especially Greek and Latin) rather than from English itself. For example, "submarine" is made of "sub" (under) + "marine" (sea), so it literally means "under the sea." But that isn't immediately obvious to somebody learning English as a second language, whereas a language (like Chinese) that is much more likely to have long words made up of its own small words rather than borrowings, is more transparent to the learner in that way.
In terms of pronunciation, the English vowel system is complex and can be hard for people from other languages to get all those vowel sounds down. (It's not, of course, unique in this way: try learning Vietnamese and you'll run into the same problem. For English speakers learning Korean, there might not be as much trouble with the vowels, but I suspect some of the consonants might be an issue.) English syllables are also much more complex (and thus harder to pronounce for the unfamiliar) than, say, Hawaiian or Japanese, which often follow a simple Consonant-Vowel pattern (hence "mele kalikimaka" for "merry Christmas" and "aisu kuriimu" for "ice cream, respectively) and wouldn't allow syllables like "strengths" or "sixths", but then we English speakers look at some eastern European languages and think they look like all consonants even to us.
As for writing and spelling, Korean Hangul is wonderful, my favorite writing system in the world, and nothing else I know of quite approaches it in terms of transparency and ease of use. Also really good is something like Spanish, where if you see a word written you should always know how to pronounce it, and if you can say it then you can also probably spell it. English isn't quite as good as that; the inconsistencies in English spelling are well documented elsewhere. It can be tricky, but then again it's nothing compared to learning several thousand Chinese characters.
More specifically in response to your question, though, what native English speakers think of as easy or hard has almost no bearing on what Korean or other native speakers will think, precisely because we are native speakers: we never had to study the language. (Spelling would be the exception here.) We don't think there's anything difficult about hearing (or saying) a difference between "license - listens - lessons," or have trouble remembering the difference between "chicken" and "kitchen", and in fact we probably never even noticed how similar those words are phonetically, because they sound completely unique to our ears. We don't have to try to remember where the stress lies in "She is trying to conVERT me" versus "She is trying to make me a CONvert." When we encounter a phrase like "give up" we don't get thrown off by the fact that the meaning has nothing to do with either "give" or "up." We don't have to think about whether we should say "Jack and Jill is here" or "Jack and Jill are here," and we would probably never slip up and say something like "My parents are having big house" or "I now go give you buy noodle, OK?" because these things that other speakers have to learn rules for, we just do them automatically.
On the other hand, many of the so-called "errors" that native English speakers make, things like a previous commenter's "who/whom" issue (does anybody still say "whom" nowadays in any but the most formal contexts?) or another commenter's "If I was rich" versus "If I were rich", should not necessarily be considered errors at all in an EFL classroom, since the goal is to teach the students to speak like native speakers. If, as this commenter notes, even "well-read people on TV" are speaking that way, then it's obviously not going to cause comprehension problems for your Korean students to speak that way too, and trying to "correct" that "mistake" is a pure waste of time.
posted by jef at 7:00 AM on July 12, 2011 [11 favorites]
Compared to other languages, English is simple in some ways and complex in others. Grammatically, our system of verb tenses is much simpler than Spanish or German or most of the other second-languages that English speakers usually study: most verbs only have about four forms, as opposed to dozens. But it's more complex than something like Chinese, which basically has no inflectional tense at all. Also, though the number of verb forms in English might be small, the proportion that are irregular and have to be individually memorized might be comparatively large.
As for nouns, we have it pretty easy. Other than for pronouns, English doesn't have gender for nouns like many European languages do (e.g., der/die/das in German). Same goes for cases (accusative, dative, etc.) which in some languages (like Russian) can be very complex, but which in English we only apply to pronouns, plus the 's suffix for genitive (possessive). But nouns do inflect for number in English: a simple singular-plural distinction which isn't very complex, but can still throw off speakers of other languages which don't make that distinction, including Korean. (Similarly, in Korean, nouns do have a complex case system, so again, something that seems simpler in English in principle might have been easier for them to learn if it was more complex, but more similar to what they're familiar with.)
In English we have to worry about subject-verb agreement (which they don't in Chinese) but we don't have to worry about agreement with adjectives (like in French, and German sometimes). English is not very agglutinative in nature, which makes it somewhat simpler in that regard, but also makes it very different from Korean. We have definite and indefinite articles to worry about, which are second nature to speakers of most European languages, but cause problems for many Asians (because their native languages lack such a thing).
Leaving grammar and turning to vocabulary, English is generally considered to have the largest vocabulary of any language, but even if that's true of course one doesn't need to learn all the obscure technical jargon in order to have a casual conversation. Etymologically, many English words have come from other languages, and to the extent that there are or are not cognates between English and a student's native language, that makes English easier to learn. So that's an advantage for French speakers trying to learn English, but a disadvantage for Koreans.
Morphologically, many words in English (especially more advanced vocabulary items) are made up of smaller parts that come from other languages (especially Greek and Latin) rather than from English itself. For example, "submarine" is made of "sub" (under) + "marine" (sea), so it literally means "under the sea." But that isn't immediately obvious to somebody learning English as a second language, whereas a language (like Chinese) that is much more likely to have long words made up of its own small words rather than borrowings, is more transparent to the learner in that way.
In terms of pronunciation, the English vowel system is complex and can be hard for people from other languages to get all those vowel sounds down. (It's not, of course, unique in this way: try learning Vietnamese and you'll run into the same problem. For English speakers learning Korean, there might not be as much trouble with the vowels, but I suspect some of the consonants might be an issue.) English syllables are also much more complex (and thus harder to pronounce for the unfamiliar) than, say, Hawaiian or Japanese, which often follow a simple Consonant-Vowel pattern (hence "mele kalikimaka" for "merry Christmas" and "aisu kuriimu" for "ice cream, respectively) and wouldn't allow syllables like "strengths" or "sixths", but then we English speakers look at some eastern European languages and think they look like all consonants even to us.
As for writing and spelling, Korean Hangul is wonderful, my favorite writing system in the world, and nothing else I know of quite approaches it in terms of transparency and ease of use. Also really good is something like Spanish, where if you see a word written you should always know how to pronounce it, and if you can say it then you can also probably spell it. English isn't quite as good as that; the inconsistencies in English spelling are well documented elsewhere. It can be tricky, but then again it's nothing compared to learning several thousand Chinese characters.
More specifically in response to your question, though, what native English speakers think of as easy or hard has almost no bearing on what Korean or other native speakers will think, precisely because we are native speakers: we never had to study the language. (Spelling would be the exception here.) We don't think there's anything difficult about hearing (or saying) a difference between "license - listens - lessons," or have trouble remembering the difference between "chicken" and "kitchen", and in fact we probably never even noticed how similar those words are phonetically, because they sound completely unique to our ears. We don't have to try to remember where the stress lies in "She is trying to conVERT me" versus "She is trying to make me a CONvert." When we encounter a phrase like "give up" we don't get thrown off by the fact that the meaning has nothing to do with either "give" or "up." We don't have to think about whether we should say "Jack and Jill is here" or "Jack and Jill are here," and we would probably never slip up and say something like "My parents are having big house" or "I now go give you buy noodle, OK?" because these things that other speakers have to learn rules for, we just do them automatically.
On the other hand, many of the so-called "errors" that native English speakers make, things like a previous commenter's "who/whom" issue (does anybody still say "whom" nowadays in any but the most formal contexts?) or another commenter's "If I was rich" versus "If I were rich", should not necessarily be considered errors at all in an EFL classroom, since the goal is to teach the students to speak like native speakers. If, as this commenter notes, even "well-read people on TV" are speaking that way, then it's obviously not going to cause comprehension problems for your Korean students to speak that way too, and trying to "correct" that "mistake" is a pure waste of time.
posted by jef at 7:00 AM on July 12, 2011 [11 favorites]
To echo earlier posters, as a native speaker I don't find using the English particularly difficult. When learning other languages, however, I did often think 'my god, I'm so glad I don't have to learn English as a second language' as it seems to have so many exceptions and peculiarities and archaic weirdness and so on. (Whether this is just as true for other languages and I just don't know them as well, however, I couldn't really say.)
posted by robself at 7:00 AM on July 12, 2011
posted by robself at 7:00 AM on July 12, 2011
I really hate spelling and pronunciation in English.
In-browser spellcheckers have been a godsend for me, because they immediately flag incorrectly-spelled words and I have a chance to learn the correct spelling. (It helps if I make myself try to guess the correct spelling first, rather than picking the word out of the menu of suggestions.) However, the downside is that, about once a week, I discover a word that I've been spelling wrong my whole life, which is embarrassing. Also, there are certain common words that I just can't seem to learn right. (Case in point; I always leave the second 'r' out of 'embarrass.')
Like many voracious readers, I am most often exposed to new words in print, and often the pronunciation I come up with is incorrect, which I find out to my embarrassment when I try to use the word in conversation.
Both these problems are compounded by English's habit of borrowing words from other languages, which have their own rules of spelling and pronunciation, of which I am ignorant.
English grammar is hard, but for me, it's an interesting challenge, rather than something I hate about the language. I geek out over semicolons and get into heated (but good-natured) debates over comma placement and the use of subjunctive voice. I think it's because if I learn a few rules, I can apply them to many situations, as opposed to spelling, where you pretty much have to memorize, word by word. I'm a better rules-learner than memorizer.
posted by BrashTech at 9:10 AM on July 12, 2011
In-browser spellcheckers have been a godsend for me, because they immediately flag incorrectly-spelled words and I have a chance to learn the correct spelling. (It helps if I make myself try to guess the correct spelling first, rather than picking the word out of the menu of suggestions.) However, the downside is that, about once a week, I discover a word that I've been spelling wrong my whole life, which is embarrassing. Also, there are certain common words that I just can't seem to learn right. (Case in point; I always leave the second 'r' out of 'embarrass.')
Like many voracious readers, I am most often exposed to new words in print, and often the pronunciation I come up with is incorrect, which I find out to my embarrassment when I try to use the word in conversation.
Both these problems are compounded by English's habit of borrowing words from other languages, which have their own rules of spelling and pronunciation, of which I am ignorant.
English grammar is hard, but for me, it's an interesting challenge, rather than something I hate about the language. I geek out over semicolons and get into heated (but good-natured) debates over comma placement and the use of subjunctive voice. I think it's because if I learn a few rules, I can apply them to many situations, as opposed to spelling, where you pretty much have to memorize, word by word. I'm a better rules-learner than memorizer.
posted by BrashTech at 9:10 AM on July 12, 2011
English doesn't have gender for nouns like many European languages do
However, English does have gender for pronouns, an aspect of the language my Chinese students find very challenging -- they mix up "he" and "she" regularly (the lazy ones using just one or the other), an error no native speaker makes,
posted by Rash at 11:05 AM on July 12, 2011
However, English does have gender for pronouns, an aspect of the language my Chinese students find very challenging -- they mix up "he" and "she" regularly (the lazy ones using just one or the other), an error no native speaker makes,
posted by Rash at 11:05 AM on July 12, 2011
Asking native English speakers what they find difficult about the language is not going to bring up answers that are necessarily relevant to your students. A native speaker will have very difficult problems than an EFL speaker. For example, I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with the pronunciation of most English words (including such monsters as "sixths," which contains sounds and sound combinations that are rare outside of English), but a Korean speaker will have difficulty with that, just like I will have difficulty pronouncing Korean.
There are specific tasks that you can do in order to target some these problems, but first you have to identify what they are for your students. Listen to them. Keep track of their errors. If you have a motivated student who you are willing to work with, consider making a recording so you can listen again and pay closer attention.
Two things that I find difficult about English:
1. Understanding the conflicting social mores concerning "proper" use of English. Since we do not have an official body to dictate what is proper usage, people can have very different expectations. Navigating these expectations can be hard when they have power over you (such as when you are writing a paper or at a job interview). This is a pretty high-level concern that may not be relevant to your students at all.
2. Knowing the pronunciation of a word from its written form. English spelling is much less regular than Korean spelling. We have lexical stress, but do not indicate it, while Korean does not have lexical stress at all. This is something I can see being a concern for EFL students, and so access to a dictionary with sound clips could be very helpful.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:42 AM on July 12, 2011
There are specific tasks that you can do in order to target some these problems, but first you have to identify what they are for your students. Listen to them. Keep track of their errors. If you have a motivated student who you are willing to work with, consider making a recording so you can listen again and pay closer attention.
Two things that I find difficult about English:
1. Understanding the conflicting social mores concerning "proper" use of English. Since we do not have an official body to dictate what is proper usage, people can have very different expectations. Navigating these expectations can be hard when they have power over you (such as when you are writing a paper or at a job interview). This is a pretty high-level concern that may not be relevant to your students at all.
2. Knowing the pronunciation of a word from its written form. English spelling is much less regular than Korean spelling. We have lexical stress, but do not indicate it, while Korean does not have lexical stress at all. This is something I can see being a concern for EFL students, and so access to a dictionary with sound clips could be very helpful.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:42 AM on July 12, 2011
Something I've noticed non-native English speakers having difficulty with is confusing words that could somehow hold similar meanings, but really don't mean the same thing in most contexts.
For example, a Korean student at my university emailed many classmates "I heard we had a quiz yesterday. Is that real?" The word real makes the possibility of a quiz having taken place seem surreal, when the word true would be much more appropriate in this context.
posted by cp311 at 9:13 PM on July 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
For example, a Korean student at my university emailed many classmates "I heard we had a quiz yesterday. Is that real?" The word real makes the possibility of a quiz having taken place seem surreal, when the word true would be much more appropriate in this context.
posted by cp311 at 9:13 PM on July 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
I thought of another major difference between spoken Korean and spoken English: word/sentence stress and intonation. Here is an article that explains the differences fairly simply (the article is about Chinese learners, but the same principles apply). Here is a lesson plan that I have used successfully in the past with Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ESL students--my students liked it because it produced near-instant improvement in their spoken English, and it provided them with concrete, specific, simple rules on how to approach sentence stress.
A lot of times, non-native speakers of English are difficult to understand not because of how they are pronouncing particular words but because they aren't using correct word or sentence stress. It's a lot harder for English speakers to catch the meaning of a sentence if it's being spoken in a monotone--we rely a lot on stress and intonation for clues--and we can mishear words completely if the wrong syllable is stressed. In the article, the authors give the example of the word "terrific"--when someone stresses the first syllable ("TERiffic") instead of the second ("terIFFic"), the listener might mishear the word as "terrible," a similar sounding word with the stress on the first syllable.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:50 PM on July 13, 2011
A lot of times, non-native speakers of English are difficult to understand not because of how they are pronouncing particular words but because they aren't using correct word or sentence stress. It's a lot harder for English speakers to catch the meaning of a sentence if it's being spoken in a monotone--we rely a lot on stress and intonation for clues--and we can mishear words completely if the wrong syllable is stressed. In the article, the authors give the example of the word "terrific"--when someone stresses the first syllable ("TERiffic") instead of the second ("terIFFic"), the listener might mishear the word as "terrible," a similar sounding word with the stress on the first syllable.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:50 PM on July 13, 2011
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