The Difficulties Faced

by Chinese Students Learning

English
Areas of Difficulty for Chinese
Students

• Sounds
• Pronunciation
• Grammar
• Vocabulary
• Culture
• Idiom
Difficulties With Sounds
The 44 phonemes in English
Common Vowel Problems

• Ship/sheep
• Full/fool
• Cap/carp/cup
• Shot/short
Exercise: Word Pairs
• Blip/bleep
• Chick/cheek
• Chip/cheap
• Dip/deep
• Hip/heap
• Lip/leap
• Pip/peep
• Rip/reap
 Exercise: Tongue Twisters
• Let’s take a dip in the deep sea
• You’ll see sheep if you peep in the hold of the
sheep ship
• Sit on the cheap seat and sip your drink
• Keep a stiff upper lip – don’t weep if you’re
whipped
 Common Consonant Problems
• V words: invite, live
• N words: night/light
• Thin/tin/fin/sin
• This/dis/zis
• Z: rise/rice
• L and R: fried rice/flied lice
• Final consonants: duck/ducke wife/wifu
• Final L: bill/beer, school/schoor
 Consonant Clusters
• Initial consonant clusters are lacking in
Chinese
• A small vowel is introduced e.g. spoon
pronounced ‘sipoon’
• Final clusters are even more troublesome
• Additional syllables sometimes added e.g.
dogs is pronounced ‘dogez’
• Sometimes the cluster is simplified e.g. crisps
pronounced ‘krisipu’
 Consonant Cluster Exercises
• Initial clusters: drip grass prison splash
squeeze spots track
• Final clusters: effect left silk melt stamp
songs thanks student script task wisp trust
forest
• Tongue twisters: The sixth twisty crisp
• He asked whether desks were used in the
tests
 Rhythm and Stress
• Reduced Syllables are less frequent in
Chinese
• Learners give weak syllables full
pronunciation and stress
• Fish and chips
• The capital of Ireland is Dublin
 Intonation
• Chinese intonation changes the meanings of
words but sentence intonation doesn’t vary
much
• English intonation affects the meaning of the
whole message, not just the words
• Chinese learners can sound flat, jerky or sing-
song to English ears
 Intonation Practice
• I’m so sorry to hear that you haven’t been
well
• The weather is terribly hot this summer
• I’ve told you before that it’s not acceptable
to cut and paste!
• What did you say? I can’t believe it!
• No, I won’t go if you aren't going.
 Juncture
• Because Chinese is monosyllabic…
• …Chinese learners separate English words as
well, so they sound staccato
• In English, a ‘stream of speech’ is required
• Considerable practice is required to sound
less staccato
 Spelling

• Chinese writing is non-alphabetic

• English is non-phonetic
• Chinese students have great difficulty
learning how to spell in English
• Spelling errors are very common
 Common Spelling Mistakes
• Spelling conventions are not applied
diner/dinner eliminat/eliminate
• But there are few rules docter/doctor
patten/pattern liv/live anser/answer
• Mistakes from incorrect pronunciation
aroud/around swallen/swollen
• Omission of syllables studing/studying
determing/determining
 Parts of Speech
• In Chinese the same word may often have
different functions
• The set classes of English words can be hard
to remember
• Related words confused difficult/difficulty
• Wrong class of word used ‘She likes walk’ ‘It
is difficulty to convince him’
Part of Speech Function Example Words
Verb describes action or (to) be, have, do, like,
state work, sing, can, must

Noun describes thing or dog, work, music,

person London, teacher, John

Adjective describes a noun a/an, the, 69, some,

good, big, red, well

Adverb describes a verb, quickly, silently, well,

adjective or adverb badly, very, really

Pronoun replaces a noun I, you, he, she, some

Preposition links a noun to another to, at, after, on, but
word

Conjunction joins clauses or and, but, when

sentences or words

Interjection short exclamation oh!, ouch!, hi!, well

 Articles
• There are no articles in Chinese
• Students find it very hard to use them
correctly
• They omit necessary articles: Let’s make fire
• Insert unnecessary articles: He was in a pain
• Confuse definite and indefinite: She is a
tallest girl in the class
 Gender
• No gender distinction in Chinese
• He, she and it all share the same sound
• Chinese learners often fail to differentiate
them, with comical results
• I have a brother. She works in a factory.
• Look at that actress. He is beautiful!
• Ann is a good teacher. His lessons are very
interesting.
 Number

• Plurality is rarely expressed in Chinese.

• Hence –s tends to be dropped in English
• Especially in spoken English, because of the
final consonant clusters
• I’ve been to many place in China
• How many English film have you seen?
 Countable/uncountable
• This English concept can be hard to grasp for
Chinese students
• In Chinese, furniture, luggage, news etc. can
all be counted
• Hence errors like this:
• Let me tell you an interesting news
• She brought many luggages with her
 Pronouns
• English uses pronouns much more than
Chinese
• In Chinese the pronouns tend to be left out
when they are understood
• He carried a book in right hand
• No distinction in Chinese between subjective
and objective cases (I, me) adjectival and
nominal (my, mine)
• I am like she
• The book is my
 Word Order In Questions

• Chinese uses the same word order in

statements and questions
• In English the word order is inverted
• When she will be back?
• What was called the film?
 Word Order In Indirect
Questions
• Chinese uses inset direct questions in indirect
questions
• If this is done in English it leads to errors
• He asked me what does she like
• She wondered where was her friend
 Postmodifiers

• In Chinese, words, phrases or clauses used as

modifiers come before the nouns
• English postmodifiers can cause problems
• This is important something
• It’s a difficult to solve problem
 Position of Adverbials
• In Chinese, adverbials usually come before
verbs and adjectives
• Chinese learners tend to do this in English as
well
• Tomorrow morning I’ll come
• Tonight at seven o’clock we are going to
meet
 Conjunctions
• In Chinese, conjunctions usually appear in
pairs
• Chinese students tend to duplicate
conjunctions in English too
• Although she was tired, but she went on
working
• Because I didn’t know the answer, so I kept
quiet
 Prepositions
• The use of English prepositions is highly
idiomatic
• Chinese students find the correct use of
prepositions very difficult to learn
• I’ll go Yunnan in July
• She’s going to home for the holiday
• It is too difficult to me
• What will you do in this evening?
 Verbs: Forms
• Chinese is a non-inflected language
• But English changes the verb forms
• Subject-verb agreement: Everybody are here
• Irregular verbs: He hurted me very much
• Complex verb forms: The window was
breaking by the wind
TENSES PAST PRESENT FUTURE

I/we walk, s/he

SIMPLE I, s/he, we walked I, s/he, we will walk
walks

I am walking, s/he is
I, s/he was walking, I, s/he, we will be
CONTINUOUS walking, we are
we were walking walking
walking

I, s/he, we had I/we have walked, I, s/he, we will have

PERFECT
walked s/he has walked walked

I, we have been
PERFECT I, s/he, we had been I, s/he, we will have
walking, he has
CONTINUOUS walking been walking
been walking
 Problems With Tenses
• I have seen her two days ago
• We found that the room is empty
• She will go by the time you arrive
• Present tense doesn’t indicate present time.
There is a film tonight talks about the future
• Progressive (continuous) tenses cause
problems: I sit here for a long time waiting for
you
 Auxiliary Verbs
• Chinese does not use auxiliaries to form
questions and negatives
• Do/don’t present problems
• How many friends you have?
• Question tags in Chinese are converted to
‘Chinglish’
• You don’t read much, isn’t it?
 Modal Verbs
• Modals play an important part in being polite
in English
• Chinese students often can’t use modals
correctly, so avoid them, and can sound rude
• You come and sit here, please
• Shades of meaning are difficult to appreciate:
Can you do me a favour? and Could you do
me a favour?
 Vocabulary: False Equivalents

• English and Chinese words overlap a great

deal in meaning
• However they rarely produce exact
equivalents
• Incorrect selection from dictionaries can lead
to ‘Chinglish’ such as I am allergic to
grammar mistakes
 Vocabulary: Small Verbs
• Small verbs such as be, bring, come, do, get, go,
have, make, take and work have a range of
meanings
• They also combine easily with other words to make
special expressions (verb phrases) which are highly
idiomatic
• No equivalents in Chinese and difficult to handle
• So Chinese students tend to avoid them
 Textbook vs Colloquial English
• Please continue with your work
• Please carry on with your work
• He finally yielded
• He finally gave up
• Please inform me
• Please let me know
• He returned from England last week
• He came back from England last week
 Cultural Influences

• Rote learning vs communicative skill

• Fear of ‘losing face’
• The Stone Face
• Education: qualification or ability?
 Idioms Are Hard To Translate
• You have come.
• Have you eaten?
• Where are you going?
• Please eat more
• (Would you like a little more?)
• Don’t be polite
• (Make yourself at home)