Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jifeng Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yuncheng 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.
English learners from Spanish speaking countries have some advantages over learners from Asia and even Europe. The Spanish language uses the same alphabet as the English language with very few exceptions. Spanish also has similar punctuation and grammar rules to English. Many of the Spanish speaking countries have similar values, beliefs, and cultural behavior that English speaking countries such as the US or UK have. The are advantages because everything from alphabet to culture affect how we learn. The similarities of these things from Spanish speaking countries to English help Spanish speakers understand English in a way that generally takes longer for some for example from China. In spite of these “advantages”, learning English is still a difficult and time consuming process for Spanish speakers. The difficulties that they run into while learn English have to do with sentence structure, verbs, irregularities, and spelling. Sentence structure in English is different from that of Spanish especially when it comes to pronoun and subject placement in conjunction with verbs. In Spanish, pronouns and direct objects are often placed either before or after an infinitive verb. Both ways are used equally in writing and in speech. In English however, pronouns may come before or after a verb while pronouns that are direct objects always come after the infinitive verb. Verbs are also different between the two languages. In Spanish, for example, the actual verb is conjugated (changes made in spelling and pronunciation) in order to let the listener/reader know who the subject is. In English, verbs aren’t conjugated but rather a personal pronoun is added before the verb to indicate the subject. Both sentence structure and verb changes between the two languages don’t necessarily represent an increase in complexity from the one to the other, but rather a difference that takes time and practice to learn and become adjusted to. One of the biggest changes from Spanish to English is spelling and irregular verbs. The Spanish language has a very particular set of rules when it coming to forming sentences or finding the past participle of a word with almost no exceptions. I’m English, however, there are hundreds of exceptions to rules when it comes to past and future tense verbs, spelling, and even pronunciation. These are exceptions that can only be memorized and take much time and practice to learn and master. The lack of memorization needed and used in certain aspects of the Spanish language is what makes it difficult for those learners to memorize many of the exceptions that English has. This is simply because they aren’t used to having to memorize so much, rather instead they use formulas and rules to form new sentences and words. It’s vitally important for any teaching planning on teaching in a Spanish speaking country to understand these things and to be able to develop great patience and sincere interest in the success of their students. Teachers must be able to build good rapport from the start of any given course and must be able to provide interesting lesson content and activities in order to engage students and motivate them in order for them to have patience with themselves and learn the thing they need to progress.
