TEFL Lehighton Pennsylvania

Learning english can be very difficult as it is, but this difficulty can be multiplied depending on your own native language. I am a native english speaker but I can also speak spanish. Translating between the two is not very difficult, since most of the time it's just substituting vocabulary. Both language share much in common in terms of word order, etc. However, I tried learning japanese and had a much harder time. The reason for this was because japanese and english are on completely different language systems. The word order, sentence structure, and grammar in general were completely different. Students in South Korea face a similar problem. They are trying to learn a language that operates in a completely different way. Not only that, but english is a “hybrid” language. It is considered a “Germanic language” but it is also heavily influenced by the romantic languages. This is why english has so many “exceptions” to its grammatical rules. Differences between Korean and english range from word order to pronunciation issues. The following article will deal with some of the problems that South Korean students face when learning english. The first problem is differences in phonetics. There are many differences between the way certain sounds are pronounced in english and in Korean. There are even certain sounds that don't exist in Korean. These differences lead to many pronunciation troubles for Korean students. First, in Korean, each “letter” has a specific sound that does not really change, no matter the word. However, in english, the sounds of letters vary depending on the word. This leads to many spelling and speaking errors, because the students repeat the sound of the letter without taking the whole word into consideration. Secondly, there are many consonants in english that do not exist in Korean. For example, the english /f/ and /v/ are both consonants that do not exist. This leads to certain words, such as coffee being pronounced as cop-pee or video becoming bee-dee-oh. Many of my Korean friends always stop and think for a second when it came to pronouncing these consonants. They had to put an extra effort to pronounce it properly. Another example of hard-to-pronounce consonants is the /r/ and the /l/. I can't say that they the consonant does not exist at all in Korean, but it doesn't exist the same way it does in english. In Korean, there is the separation between the two. In english, the /r/ and the /l/ are two completely different consonants and as native speakers we have no problem distinguishing between the two. However, in Korean, the two sounds are melded into one fluid sound that doesn't exist in english. This sound is represents by the character ?. Thus rice becomes lice and bread becomes bled. From my experience with my Korean friends learning english, this was the biggest pronunciation problem they encountered. A few could not, as hard as they tried, get over this hurdle. Another problem that arises stems from the different grammatical structures between english and Korean. The word order in english follows an SVO order. In general, sentences begin with Subject, followed by a verb, and ending with an object. However, in Korean, the sentences tend to follow an SOV order. Their sentences begin with the subject, but are followed by the object, and end with the verb. This leads to many issues when creating sentences in english, because many students still follow the Korean order. They will attempt to directly translate a sentence. Instead of saying I eat chocolate, the students translate to I chocolate eat. In order to get it right, it will take a Korean student a little more time to switch the order around in their head before they say it out loud. These are only a few of the problems that Korean students encounter when they are learning english. I wish I could include all the problems I've discovered through my research, but that would easily go way over the word limit. However, this article has helped me prepare for teaching Korean students as well as understanding the root of their grammatical and pronunciation troubles. Works Cited Bauman, Nathan R. "A Catalogue of Errors Made by Korean Learners of english." KOTESOL Internation Conference. 2006. Cho, Byung-Eun. "Issues Concerning Korean Learners of english: english Education in Korea and Some Common Difficulties of Korean Students." The East Asian Learner November 2004: 31-36. Roberts, Murat H. "The Problem of the Hybrid Language." The Journal of english and Germanic Philology (1939): 23-44. Shoebottom, Paul. The Differences between english and Korean. n.d. 13 August 2012 .