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Teach English in Guhan Zhen - Changzhi Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Guhan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changzhi Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.

There are approximately 1.4 billion Chinese people living in China and 4 hundred million living overseas. It is a concern and a problem for those who suffer from not being able to pronounce their mother tongue correctly. If I have to put it in a question form, I would ask “Why do some Chinese people suffer from not been able to speak their mother tongue correctly?” In order to cast a proper view to the readers, one needs to elaborate further regarding the Chinese language. Today, Mandarin is the official language of China. There are seven main dialects within the Han (the major 98% ethnicity of the Chinese population). These dialects also branch out to hundreds of sub dialects within the provinces. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau have their native dialects which are included within these Han’s. When Han Emperor conquered and united China in AD 113, he unified Chinese characters but did not unified the language itself. Therefore, every dynasty decided on which dialect to use as the official language after that. Chinese dialects cannot be perceived as dialects in the general sense. Some of them are incomprehensible even to those who live in the same provinces but are only separated by distance. However, they can be perceived more correctly by treating them in the same way as the different European languages, which having the same Latin-based script but different phonologies. In another words, Chinese dialects should be recognized as individual languages rather than different dialects of a language. Now, the fact is that China is a vast land which has a diversity of languages, cultures, and traditions. The geographic differences also influence the ways people speak. Children were born and raised to be bilinguals. They learn to speak their mother tongue at home (their hometown dialects) before they start school and learn the official language, Mandarin. Chinese languages (or dialects) are pictographic. Their pronunciation, intonation, accents, stresses, rhythms, tones all depend on the dialects. Therefore, when it comes to adapt and adjust to the official language, Mandarin (L2). Their native tongue (L1) will be interfering their acuracy of pronouncing their L2. Mandarin has four tones or accents. Each tone represents a meaning of a word. For example, with the character “ma”, four different accents produce different characters, therefore produce four different meanings of the same syllable. Another phenomenon is that the Southerners tend to have flatter intonation. The manner of articulation is generally more relaxed and with a slower pace. Children who do not have early training will have trouble articulating their official language. Careless victims might neglect a few details such as paying attention to their tones, mixing up their articulation of the consonants such as: n and l, s and sh, n and ng, f and h, and n and r. For example, they confuse their n and l. Instead of saying the color blue “lan”, they have mistakenly said “nan”, which means difficult, etc. The Northerners have a different set of problems. They tend to add an extra “r” in the syllables, rolling their tongues while speeding their speech. This set of issues generates confusion to the listeners. Communication, itself will be interrupted. However, most of the time people still are able to understand them by their context. However, when it comes to teaching career or professional broadcasting, many of them would be considered disqualified even though they are using their native tongue. It has been predicted that Chinese language will be an important language in the future because there is a huge population in the world speaking it and the global trading going on. With that in mind, it is ironic to realize that there are many Chinese people who have suffered from not being able to pronounce their mother tongue accurately.


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