Teach English in Killamarsh - TEFL Courses

When people do an impersonation of a spanish person, or any foreign person speaking english, they will automatically mimic their traits, without having to think consciously of them, so it is no great discovery that some nationalities make particular errors more frequently than others. In order to give efl students the best chance of avoiding the stereotype, their english teacher needs to know not only what mistakes are likely to crop up, but more specifically why these occur, so that they can plan interesting and effective ways of teaching the correct english. Having read a selection of articles which focus on this area, I hope go into my first teaching situation a little wiser to these common problems, and having considered how to overcome them. Mistakes can occur in all aspects of language, be it vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, tenses, or countless other areas. Pronunciation may be the most logical area to start with, as it will be relevant to all levels of english students, and most evident in absolute beginners. There will be difficulty in remembering the correct pronunciation of english letters and sounds, which vary from word to word, not always sticking to their english ‘rules' (which can seem illogical at the best of times). spanish speakers may struggle to appreciate this, given the contrast to the spanish approach to pronunciation, in which each letter generally always makes the same sound, irrespective of the context. More specifically, there will be some letters and sounds which cause spanish speakers more difficulty than others, such as the ‘S' at the beginning of a word, which is not found in spanish. Students may compensate for this by adding a vowel before the ‘S' to form, for example, ‘eh-school'. This is an area in which drilling would be a simple effective approach. Vowel sounds may cause confusion given their multiple pronunciations in english, some of which are pronounced the same as other vowels in spanish such as ‘A' in english and ‘e' in spanish – both pronounced as [eI]. This can cause trouble in dictations and listening exercises, which may need to be slowed down or have pronunciation emphasised to draw students' attention. Sound combinations which do not exist in spanish may be problematic, resulting in sounds being omitted, particularly if there are too many consonants together, for example ‘Christchurch' becomes ‘kricha'. Again, drilling may be necessary here. english and spanish share the Latin alphabet, which I would consider, overall, to be a benefit. However, preconceived ideas of how letters should be pronounced may be engrained, and the mispronunciation of english a side effect of this. Word order in english is stricter than in spanish. In general in english you must stick to the order of subject/verb/object. This is in contrast to spanish where word order can be manipulated according to circumstances, for example introducing the object at the beginning of a sentence to clarify the topic. Although this is sensible in some respects, when applied to english, it can cause the speaker to sound muddled, and non-fluent. One approach to this as suggested in the paper from Madrid(1) is sentence halves with matching exercises for the students to identify the most appropriate way of structuring a sentence. Tenses pose another problem area, which may be due to the fact that the tense used in spanish will not necessarily have a direct correlation with an equal tense in english. For example, a spanish speaker may say ‘I meet you after work', rather than ‘I'll meet you after work'. Also use of auxiliary verbs such as ‘do' in english may be difficult for spanish speakers as these are not required in spanish, so students may form questions or affirmatives without them, for example ‘why you left?' rather than ‘why did you leave?' Word blank exercises would be one activity for this. I have tried to touch on the common errors, regrettably in limited detail. I would value the opportunity to discuss this area with someone who has more practical experience of teaching in spain or South America, and see if they had found any reliable methods of addressing these problem areas.