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The English language is the most popular foreign language to learn in China; it is taught from primary school through most university programs, and there is even an English section on the Chinese college entrance exam. However, despite having taken English for most of their academic careers, many Chinese students run into the same difficulties with speaking accurate English due to the stark differences between the two languages. In this essay, I will discuss common problems that the majority of Chinese English-learners encounter, namely regarding tense, conjugation, and plurals and gender. The first main issue is one of tense. In the Chinese language, there is tense, but it is much more loosely defined, and in many sentences, tense is often implied without need for any tense markers. However, because English is a low-context language, tense must be correct for the listener or reader to have a clear understanding of what is trying to be communicated. This can often lead to confusion on the part of the Chinese speaker, particularly regarding which tense is correct for which situation? One recurring problem that I have personally found is explaining the difference between the usage of indicative tenses and perfect tenses, because in Chinese, perfect tenses are mostly nonexistent. A second main issue is that of conjugation. Almost every English learner has difficulty with the dreaded “s” added to the end of the third person singular present tense, but Chinese students’ difficulty with conjugation runs even deeper than this. Chinese itself does not have any conjugations: I run, she run; we eat, it eat—all these are completely acceptable in the Chinese language. Moreover, most verbs in Chinese can act as nouns as well, making it particularly difficult to explain why a verb must be changed to its gerund or infinitive form to make it correct in context (explaining why one must use a gerund instead of an infinitive or vice-versa is a whole different monster). A third and final issue is the difficulty of plurals and gender. When listening to a native Chinese-speaker speak English, you may have heard sentences that ignore plurals, such as “I have two brother”. This is due to the fact that nouns in Chinese do not have a different form for singular and plural. In an attempt to correct this, native Chinese-speakers run into another issue regarding count and non-count nouns: “I have many homeworks to do tonight”. Because “homework” in Chinese is a count noun, some native Chinese-speakers will add plurals where none is necessary. Finally, many native Chinese-speakers mix up the genders of third-person personal pronouns when speaking English: they will say “he” when the subject they are referring to is female, and vice-versa. In Chinese, both “he” and “she” are pronounced the same way, even though they are written differently. Even those who have been learning English for ten years or more still may run into difficulties with this issue. Why learn about these common errors? It is important for EFL teachers to be familiar with the common long-term issues so that they may address them in an appropriate way, and not become frustrated when these errors present themselves over and over again. In this way, ELL teachers can ensure their long-term success as teachers in equipping their students to be able to tackle these common mistakes.
