Company Inclass TESOL

Problems facing students of different NationalitiesHaving studied from a country where students belong to one nationality but with different local languages, it’s important that I write about the problems facing students of different nationalities because even though my situation is a little different in that we were of the same nationality, but still we spoke different native languages and had varying cultures. Students of different nationalities face the following problems: pronunciation problems, complexity of the english language, differences in alphabets between language 1 and 2, differences in culture and to some extent the level of education and age. english is a complex language with a large stock of vocabulary so we find that students find it hard to understand and master the grammar especially tenses, prepositions, articles, modal auxiliary verbs, when and how to use them. They end up confused at times and use them wrongly for instance, students may decide to try to master the rules that govern the different language points and later discover that there are exceptions to these rules which becomes confusing and makes it hard to master. Some students suffer problems with pronunciation. Some Students find it hard to pronounce letters such as; th, sh, ch, f, v, r, and l and others use them interchangeable for example pronouncing ‘l’ instead of ‘r’, ‘s’ instead of ‘sh’ take a look at words like finish and finis, ‘de’ and ‘the’ to sight a few such speakers from India and some parts of Uganda have difficulty in pronouncing ‘l’ and ‘r’. This is largely due to their language 1 whereby some have ‘l’ but no ‘r’ in their language alphabet and vice versa. Students whose native language alphabet is totally different from the english alphabet find it a problem to read and write in english in that their Language 1 has no defined letters like those of the english alphabet for example, students from Arab countries who are used to the right to left progression, China, Greece, Israel, Japan to mention but a few. These need to be assisted to learn how to write the english alphabet before going any farther with the course. Confusing words which have sounds similar to those of english words is also another problem that students from different nationalities may face. Students tend to think that words with similar sounds like those of their language one carry the same meaning and these tend to confuse these words with their native language words which call for a lot of time to practice such words so as to be mastered. The level of a student’s education and age may to some extent be a problem to his/her learning in that once someone is old and has a low level of education, it becomes very hard for such people to learn english and usually the best they can do is to speak broken english because such people have been out of school for so long and their receptive rates are very low and also lack appropriate study skills. They even lack the time to concentrate and practice the language due to issues like businesses and family that consume them up. Lastly but not least is the differences in cultures of students. Some students come from a background which does not allow female students to sit with male ones so when such students come to a country where this can’t be observed, they always feel nervous and are not comfortable in such settings which makes interaction difficult and hence may negatively affect their learning. In conclusion, problems facing students of different nationalities are due to their language 1interferences, complexity of english and differences in cultures and therefore english teachers must understand their students, their cultures, language 1 and how they affect their learning of a second language, try to bear with them, be patient and committed to helping them to learn the language.