TEFL Fuquay North Carolina

Introduction: A basic knowledge of china and its linguistic background is needed in order understand the kind of problems chinese may face in the learning process of english. The entire country of china is now united by one common language which is Mandarin. It has always been united by the chinese writing and its famous chinese characters. However a considerable number of local dialects (based on the same writing) have always existed. Now 56 official dialects exist in china. The differences in these languages are very important, so much that people from the same place with different dialects may not understand each other. This means that the pronunciation of chinese in mandarin and thus in their future english will have a wide range of strong accents. That being said let's consider together what problems could be face by chinese: Alphabet and pronunciation, grammar and tenses. 1. Alphabet and pronunciation Even though the chinese characters are completely different than the Roman alphabet, it might not be the hardest thing to implement for chinese people as they would be exposed to the Roman alphabet through advertisement and newspapers from an early age. However a correct pronunciation and understanding of how phonemes are formed might be more of a challenge. As each character forms one syllable, chinese would have to train hard in order to understand how english letters function with others in order to produce different sounds. As others Asians, chinese will have problems with certain sounds which do not exist in their mother tongue. For example a common difficult sound for chinese would the sound “R”. Difficulties to produce correct english pronunciation will vary from one place to another as dialects have a strong impact on their pronunciation ability. This means for english teacher that a lot of drilling, choral repetition as well as an exposure to spoken english (through audio/video recording) will be necessary. This step, though it might take more time than in other countries, is of most importance in order to lay a good foundation for the future english speaker. 2. Grammar english and chinese grammars are not so far from each other. The basic sentence order are basically the same: S+V+O. Beyond few similarities, some grammar points would need extra time to implement: the plural and singular, use of articles and the determiners. We have chosen these points simply because in chinese they are very different. In chinese plural and singular for example do not really exist as there is no way to add a sign or a particle to indicate it. It is once more deduced from the context. This means that people will need time to understand how to handle plural itself, as well as all the effects the plural of a noun will have on other words and the entire sentence. As much is deduced from the context in chinese, learner will need to express more specifically what they intend to say. 3. Tenses Tenses will be more than a mountain for chinese. As in chinese, tenses do not exist as in the developed way they do in english and other European languages. In chinese, linguists say they are three basic tenses (like Hebrew), but in reality people deduce the tense from time indicator. Having no conjugation understanding whatsoever, we easily understand how difficult it will for chinese to understand all the subtlety of the english tenses. This will require the english teacher to spend extra time and efforts on this critical part of english. Even though these difficulties may occur with chinese learners, teaching chinese is very rewarding as they are often very serious and motivated students. Little troubleshooting is to be expected from a chinese class as deep respect for teachers.