Your English Weaknesses I am very interested to find out if people of different nationalities have similar weaknesses in English or not. For example I was teaching in Thailand for many years and the p

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Greg Moore UK

Your English Weaknesses I am very interested to find out if people of different nationalities have similar weaknesses in English or not. For example I was teaching in Thailand for many years and the problems were very often the same problems for Thai students. They didn't have the confidence to communicate orally but their grammar knowledge was sound. Furthermore it was very common to find that they had similar pronunciation problems with certain sounds such as "p", "l" and adding "s" on to the ending of certain words. When I was teaching Japanese students they had similar problems as above with the exception that their pronunciation was generally quite clear but often students would add an "ee" sound the end of words. How about people from other countries, what are your weak areas and do you think people of the same nationality generally have similar problems? It would be very interesting to find out!

Jun 20, 2013 1:21 AM

Corrections · 6

Haha that video is super funny, I remember seeing it before! I'm sure this kind of confusion with English happens all the time around the world. Anyone ever had any first hand experience of this?

June 21, 2013

That's a funny one! Wrong pronunciation of words creates some comedy. Reading your comment I thought of this video immediately, it's hilarious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM6EX0bh_Fw. As far as I know, in India they have some problems with the /w/ too, pronouncing it as /v/ instead. In Russia you will hear the /y/ sound more often inferred in many words too. It's unavoidable sometimes. When the pronunciation of certain vowels in English in certain utterances doesn't occur in the speakers' mother tongue, they will tend to substitute it with the closest place of articulation for it.

June 20, 2013

Hi Ning thanks for your input, I think you mean word collocations right? That's to say words that go together but there are usually no specific rules to govern which words go with which, you just have to memorise them?! To be honest I don't remember that as being a major problem with my previous Thai and Japanese students. It did happen sometime, but the other problems such as pronunciation and general lack of confidence in speaking were more of a problem. I also seem to remember that Thai students often translated literally in their mind from Thai to English very often. So when they spoke it sounded very unnatural!

June 20, 2013

Meaningful topic. I think a very tough thing for Chinese English-learners is liaisons. Chinese tend to speak English word by word, leaving a short interval beween words, just as they do in Chinese speaking. Do Japanese, Koreans, Thais have such a problems?

June 20, 2013

Thanks very much for your input Susie, it's very interesting to hear the common mistakes from your part of the world. I guess the /th/ pronunciation problem is rather similar to the way French people commonly pronounce this sound too! I remember I had a very amusing lesson with a Korean student once. I asked what this sign meant (it was a no parking sign) and she replied to me "no f**king"!! I guess in that respect Korean students might have some problems in pronouncing words beginning with /p/ and use an /f/ instead. Any Korean students would like to comment on this?

June 20, 2013

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