Teach English in Houcun Zhen - Rizhao Shi

There are numerous difficulties when beginners learn English, which are both external and internal. For example, self motivation, difference between English and native language, atmosphere or lack of resources etc. This paper mainly concentrates on the difference between English and Chinese. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, while Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Without any similarities in the written form, learners may become more confused, which may hinder learners to continue. If teachers know what the common difficulties are, then they can come up with some effective solutions. So, what are they? Firstly, pronunciation difficulties. Although Chinese phonics share some similarities with English, the absence of some sounds can also bring obstacles. A typical example is the “th” sound. There isn’t a single Chinese word with the tongue between the upper and lower middle teeth. The first time when beginners imitate the “th” sound, they cannot utter any words, which is frustrating. In this case, the teacher should be patient, teaching learners how to put the tongue in the right place, and guide them. Learners will learn it gradually. Pronunciation difficulty is commonly seen in adults, but less so in children. Children are in the process of learning their mother language. They have no conditioning of what each sound should be. Their sounds can be easily corrected but it takes time in adults. A Teacher’s guidance and encouragement is of importance as adults are unable to notice their pronunciation improve at the beginning, but a teacher can. Timely encouragement from the teacher can give learners’ much confidence. Secondly, difficulties with personal pronouns. Although learners can easily distinguish different genders, confusion of personal pronouns are still common in them, especially in the third person. This lies in the difference between Chinese and English. In Chinese, the sounds of female and male pronouns as well as the possessive pronouns are the same. However, the sounds and written form of the third person in English are totally different. Chinese are less conscious of the third person. Therefore, even a learner in high level also makes mistakes with she and he, let alone a beginner. What’s more, once taking all the personal pronouns as subjects and objects; and possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives into consideration, there is confusion and complication. Teachers should conduct grammar carefully. At beginning, the teacher can introduce two or three of the personal pronouns and the corresponding adjective, such as he, his, you and your; after that, drilling should be conducted. For example, teachers display different gender’s pictures and ask learners to follow the given pattern of a sentence to make new ones. Finally, the teacher can ask learners to describe a friend or a classmate. Finally, difficulties with the Irregular changeable verb forms. Verbs always change with different grammar, some of which follow some specific regular rules, like most third person singular forms-adding “s”, or past tense form-adding “ed”. But there are always exceptions-irregular forms. Especially for beginners, the irregular forms are difficult, not only because the forms are complicated, but also because of the difference between English and Chinese. In Chinese, the need for changing form is absent, which the learners have already gotten accustomed to. Therefore it takes time for learners to build a brand new habit of changing forms-the struggle is more obvious among beginners. Without any rules to follow, they fail to deduce the changed forms, and have no choice but memorize the words one by one. Without the habit of changing forms, they will always think twice before they speak out. There is no shortcut to learning the irregular forms, learners have to do more practice as practice makes perfect. Quantity brings quality. To make the monotonous drilling more interesting, teachers can add some activities. For example, questionnaires, ask for some habitual actions in a day of a life of somebody. Also design some card games and memory pairs to match present tense with past. Although many obstacles are caused by the difference between the two languages- under no circumstances may the difference between English and Chinese be considered to attribute to the failure of learning English. English and Chinese are from different language families. The differences of usages and sounds are inevitable. To avoid influence from such difficulties, learners should always think in English, rather than be confined in their native language. If not, learners would fall into the vicious cycle of translating from Chinese to English-Learners will always seek the equivalent English words with Chinese. In fact, because of the cultural differences, learners end up failing to find the equivalent words, then they become speechless. Therefore, translating will hinder learners to express themselves. The role of the teacher is of importance as they are imparting professional knowledge, delivering interesting classes and engaging leaners in practice. Learning English is a long process and learners should prepare well for the change and persevere to defeat all obstacles.