Struggle Pronunciation

Pronunciation Problems for Chinese Students of English As a global language, English has been popularly taught as the second language in China for quite a few years. Now there are more Chinese people learning English on various purposes, such as applying for a higher paid job, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. According to my experience of learning and teaching English, it is harder to master English pronunciation than English grammar for Chinese students. Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected Western languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum") because of the lack of inflections. Even though there are similarities...  [Read more]

  In Chantelle’s thirteenth video diary entry she talks about unit 13 of her 120-hour online TEFL course. Unit 13 covers pronunciation and phonology. As Chantelle notes there is a lot of information presented in this unit including phonology, stress, articulation and the phonemic alphabet. The unit also looks at how to teach individual sounds and when we should teach pronunciation to our students. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. The...  [Read more]

Problems for learners in a Country of your choice: Italy In this paper I will address the issues I face as a teacher from the context of living and working in Italy, as well as the common problems my students encounter while learning and speaking English. I also want to draw attention to the input culture and society has on language, and look at how these factors influence dynamics within the classroom. Of course, it is nearly impossible to view ones self outside your own given cultural perspective, so as a result of this I will also be discussing my own assumptions on how I "imagined" people might act, compared to the reality of the situation. Often I neglect to take into account these differences, simply because I was raised in America, where I am used to a different set of cultural...  [Read more]

Teaching beginner students The purpose of this article is to provide information about teaching English to beginner students. For the most part, the topic has been narrowed to young beginners. A person who is just beginning to study English has some disadvantages. They cannot read and study on their own. They will not understand English instructions. They will struggle to twist their tongues around the English sounds. But they have lots of advantages, too. Beginner students bring a very fresh, open mind to English class. They have no base or preconceived ideas about the language and their minds are ready to soak it up! They generally have no fear of mispronunciation. Nor does the teacher have to undo formerly learned bad habits or mispronunciations. They do not ‘face the mental shock of...  [Read more]

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Problems facing students from Vietnam How to deal with the difference. How does it function in my life. What do I hope my students will do according to these problems. There are three “circles” where I have to deal with these differences; In a classroom you have to discover and understand; to open up is exciting. There are differences of opinion, ideas, race, social class, spending your free time. Home and at school; different work methods and characters. Different education forms. In a classroom everybody has to try to accept and not to judge too quickly and ask yourself a question: Where do those differences, conflicts, discrimination etc. come from? Try to understand why people think differently. Differences can be exciting in the classroom, school culture, types of education. The...  [Read more]

British english vs american English With English being recognised as the global language of choice, which one is considered the official language? So just how did American English diverge from British English in the first place? American English roots back to the early colonial days of the late 16th century, were a whole gamut of cultures converged into a single society. In some colonies English wasn’t even a spoken language and in those colonies that did speak English it was quite different from the English we know today. The Elizabethan English of the day consisted of many varieties of regional English dialects. All these different dialects, intermingled with a multitude of cultures formed one big boiling pot, of which over time, a new variant was produced – American English. And...  [Read more]