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Teach English in Xiangyang Zhen - Taiyuan Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiangyang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Taiyuan 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.

PECULIARITIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . What are the Peculiarities of the English Language that makes it so difficult to learn ? Well, with its Homographs, Homophones, English English and American English, Pronunciations, Synonyms and Grammar, no wonder its considered difficult to learn. Most native English speakers have been taught tongue twisters like,“She sells, sea shells on the sea shore “,for pronunciations and have learnt English grammar rules such as “ i before e except after c “ .There are rules but most have exceptions. English is full of peculiarities and oddities. Sounds of letters are so confusing such as p and h can be linked together to sound like f. The sound OO or U can be spelt two,to,too,shoe and flute.The “I” sound can be spelt” ei “as in height or “ Y” as in thyme. Then we have silent letters in words like knee,knife,lamb and write. These are just a few rules we have to learn in the English Language and take for granted as a native English speaker. Words that have the same spelling but different meaning and sounds are called homographs. They too are very confusing when learning to read and write English. You can close the door and you are close by. The farmer sows seeds and feeds corn to his sows. We wind the window up and the wind blows. These are just a few examples of homographs. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelt different, also cause another problem when learning English! There is red and read,rain and reign, blue and blew, the list of words are too numerous to mention and students have to learn these by the context they are used in ,as there are no rules for these. Not only is there English English but also American English to confuse us, with the words that are spelt differently such as grey and gray, theater and theatre and words that are different but mean the same like a sweater in America is a pullover or jumper in Britain and chips in the UK are French fries in the USA . As stated by Wikipedia, this is due to spelling not been standardized at the time of the early settlers as well as influence from French,German and Latin languages. English grammar also has its peculiarities and can cause difficulties in learning to both native and non native speakers. A simple task of making a singular noun plural can be confusing. The rule is, add an “ s” or “ es” depending on what the word ends in, but then there are words which don’t change and words that change almost completely . e.g There is one fish and two fish, one mouse and two mice,one ox or two oxen and one box and two boxes. If a word ends in ‘y’ then the ‘y’ is sometimes dropped and ‘ies’ is added,‘ story ‘ becomes ‘stories’ but ‘ toy ‘ becomes ‘toys’ . There are too many examples to list ! Other grammar that is complicated are Modal Auxiliary verbs, which are used to express different formalities such as “ Can I go ? May I go?” and Modal verbs which are used to express ideas such as obligation, permission and advice. Definite and Indefinite Articles,the, a and an,can also be complicated for non English speakers to understand the concept of using them, especially students from China and Japan,where their own native language does not use them. The English vocabulary is large and has many words which have similar or the same meaning,(Synonyms). Students need to be able to decide which of these words are the best suited for what they are wanting to express in their sentence. Slang is also widely used when talking and can be confusing for non native speakers when trying to translate into proper English,as well as, how we shorten certain groups of words into one, like can not becomes can’t and should not becomes shouldn’t . The Peculiarities of the English language is quite vast and it is impossible to cover them all. As native English speakers, we read and pronounce these difficult words and expressions without thinking, not realizing how difficult the language is to a foreign learner and how lucky we are to have learnt it as our native tongue .


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