TEFL Shelocta Pennsylvania

Mandarin is one of the official languages in china, which is the most spoken and extended; its characters have nothing in common with Roman alphabet, as they came from ancient hieroglyphic's meanings. However, it's easy to find chinese students who know the Roman alphabet and can perfectly recognize and write it. The reason why this happens is that they use the Pinyin system when writing with any kind of electronic device (computer, mobile, etc.). Pinyin is a quite recent developed system that's recognized internationally and was officially accepted as standard in 1982. It's a phonetic transcription of the language into Latin script. However, chinese students have problems with handwriting as they rarely have been taught properly and they usually write imitating printed letters, some other problems with punctuation and spaces between words also occur. In Mandarin chinese, the way letters are pronounced is often different from how are said in english. For example they say 'b' as we say 'p', and 'p' with an excess of air escaping from their mouths. The same problem occurs with 'd' and 't' and many others. And, of course this confusion is provoked by the inevitable comparison with their own language. It's not very hard to find even english teachers who must be reminded about how to pronounce basic english elements. In essence it's nothing that wouldn't happen in any other country where english is not the first language; but I still wonder why it's easier for some students to call me 'robot' instead of my name, Albert. And where the pronunciation similarity resides. Mandarin is a tonal language. Five different types of tones are an essential part of the meaning of every word. In fact, this part might be a nightmare for most of Mandarin students, as the same sound with different intonation makes the difference between being -for example- 'd o' or 'sit', 'horse' or 'm other'. chinese students learn that tone -in english- is mainly used to express emotions, we also can stress any part of a sentence to emphasize any element but the meaning will be essentially the same, in most of the cases. So chinese students who are learning english should be aware about the big differences in the usage of the tones. It's not as crucial as in Mandarin, it works in a totally different way, but it's important for communicating successfully. Sometimes I've noticed the problems they have in this area of the language, some students speak english like if they were androids, without any sort of expressiveness; because they know the literal meaning will not change and they don't give it importance. english grammar is definitely hard to teach in china. Their language is very rich in vocabulary, concepts and expressions, while the grammar is quite simple. Mandarin chinese doesn't need the usage of articles or prepositions, there's no need to conjugate verbs and there's no any gender rules which determine how a sentence is grammatically formed. english language posses a large amalgam of verbal tenses designed for future, present and past situations or events. Considering that communicating in Mandarin, an adverb of time could be enough -and grammatically correct- to know the time period we are talking about, and the verbs are always written and spoken in infinitive form; it would be easy to realize why teaching our english grammar could be difficult. It's obvious that, at the beginning, it might be very hard for chinese students to understand why we need such many little words -for example- to join clauses of a sentence and why we are all the time significantly changing the verb form to structure english sentences. Teaching english in china is the best experience I've ever had. Teaching english in a country where the first language is so different in nature is challenging. But I would say that, overall, chinese students are much more disciplined and respectful than any western student I've ever met. Alberto Garcia Morales Sources: My own experience and Wikipedia.