English as a Second Language in China

648 Words2 Pages

In contemporary society, English, which is studied as the second language, has become an international language. China is a typical example showing the popularity of English around the world. More specifically, Chinese students have even been studying English in their primary school. Because of different cultures, histories, and religious, the Chinese and English languages have a multitude of dissimilarities. Chinese students have enormous trouble in learning English. An ESL instructor, to be successful in teaching Chinese students, should understand these profound differences in terms of pronunciation, writing, and grammar. When the Chinese students learn a new vocabulary item, they always try to pronounce it correctly. However, the totally different pronunciations lead students to make a number of mistakes. Firstly, in Chinese, one word has one syllable, but one word can be separately pronounced in several syllables in English. Secondly, there are four tones and a toneless tone, and each word only contains one tone in Chinese. If the tone changes, the word’s meaning will change. H...

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