Due date for responses: Mon., Jan. 26th, by class time.
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My reading summary was on the text called A Contrastive Guide to Teach English to Chinese Students by Nancy Duke S. Lay. In the book, Nancy discusses many issues that teachers face when teaching English to Chinese students. She talks about the problems these students have with speaking, writing, and understanding English. The text is too long to summarize fully in a short blog. However, I will summarize the differences in grammar between Chinese and English that cause these students to write with improper grammar.
Nancy explains that in Chinese word order, or syntax, determines the function of the word. The position of the word indicates numbers, persons, and tenses. A sentence in Chinese is understood by the meaning of the sentence as a whole, whereas in English the sentence gets its meaning from each word. Chinese students’ grammar problems stem from the differences in the way that words are ordered in a sentence in Chinese compared to English. Example: Chinese: I no want.
English: No, I do not want it.
Or
Chinese: She why leave?
English: Why did she leave?
These examples bring up another grammatical difference between English and Chinese. In Chinese the auxiliary verb ‘do’ does not exist. As a result, Chinese students tend to leave out verbs like do in their sentences. There is a word that is similar to ‘do’ in Chinese but it is closer to the meaning of the word ‘are’. From this confusion, Chinese students tend to write ‘are’ when they should write ‘do’ in their sentences.
One other difference that I feel would cause Chinese students to write improperly is the difference between our punctuation marks. In Chinese, a dash is used to separate a list of things in a sentence, whereas in English a comma is used. Not to mention, commas are not used in the same way that they are in English. Instead of quotation marks, they use a colon or a symbol. Their exclamation mark is used to express hope, fear, hate, or a command. Having different meanings and symbols for punctuation marks makes it difficult for these students to use the proper punctuation in English.
There are many more differences between correct grammar in English and Chinese. However, these are the ones that I feel cause the most problems for teachers to teach English to Chinese students.
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9 comments:
After reading this article I am certain that I will never attempt to learn Chinese. I can only imagine why Chinese people find the English language impossible! To have to learn to read a different way to the position of the words in the sentence that would be so confusing. I think it would be so helpful, to everyone, if there was some national grammar rules. That way everyone would have the same grammar they would just have to learn the different language. Grammar can be difficult anyway, let alone trying to learn it in a different language. I also think that this explains why a lot of Chinese don't learn the English language.
People always say that English is the hardest language to learn. I cannot really disagree because English is my primary Language. I believe it is quite easy to comprehend. Now after reading this article I am very sure that Chinese would be a very difficult language to learn, especially at my age. English grammar is hard to learn, let alone learning a whole new set of rules. The Chinese have a way to position words so different from English. I do believe it would be beneficial for there to be common grammar rules. It would be difficult but useful.
I never realized how difficult it is for foreigners, especially Chinese, to learn English. I expected it to be just as hard to learn any other language. Since the Chinese use punctuation differently than the United States does, that could be one of main obstacles to learning English as a second language. There are so many words that have a lot of different meanings and I would hate to have to distinguish between all of them. I'm not entirely sure that I would have the patience to learn another language.
I believe that teaching a second language to anyone is difficult because they have been living their entire lives speaking their native language. Knowing how much different Chinese language is makes it so much harder. Me being an English speaking student the word order looks similar to a child that has only the basics of the english language. Although if a Chinese student looks at my writing he might think the same. If only that mythical universal language really did exist imagin the knowledge that could be passed between cultures without having to spend time teaching the languages.
Learning a new language compared to someone's native language is a huge challenge. I always knew Chinese was much different in sounds and grammar than English, but I was unaware how much different it sound with simple sentences. The examples used in the blog post were very helpful in seeing that. Here we are, in probably our 14th or 15th year of learning English and it's grammar, and half of us still do not know what we are doing. I can only imagine coming from a language that much different how difficult it must be. Students who have taken the time to learn English are intelligent people who should not be judged for it still being broken when spoken. Most Americans do not even know a second language.Grammar, syntax, and pronunciation are very difficult and different in every language.
It is amazing how different cultures have their own way of communicating, and although it's different,we can understand our own culture's language. I believe it is wonderful for a person to take the time to learn another language, an I am in aww of those who learn more than two. I knew the chinese language was different but I did not realize how different it was. I really did not know how difficult it was for chinese students. Any language would be difficult to learn if you are not use to it, but I feel all schools should have personal to help students from other cultures or communities learn the English language.
Daniel Sokolowski
After reading the first couple paragraphs of the article, I realized that the Chinese language is very difficult to learn. The American language and the Chinese language are very different, because they have two completely different alphabets. English uses letters, while the Chinese language uses symbols. Recollecting back on my previous experiences Chinese American students trying to learn English the way that they read slowly and break down the sentence word by word, I found it very interesting that they read that way because grouping together words is harder for them to do. I believe that American students should be taught foreign languages at earlier ages so they can get help from their teachers as well as their fellow classmates. This will make the ESL student with learning the American language.
I have a friend who went abroad in China, and she said it was easier to pick up just from being around the people rather than from trying in a book, allthough without the combination of the two she would have never understood it. I think in teaching chinese to speak english it is more feasible and accompliashable to teach them english that can be understood rather than proper english. I think trying to teach them proper english would be overwhelming and way to complicated and even discouraging. i think once they were able to speak and understand simple english then it would be easier to go from their and teach proper english.
After reading this article I understand that learning the chinese language would be extremely difficult. I understand that the chinses language has a totally different set of rules. I am not sure on all of my own language's rules and English is the only language I have spoke my whole life! I now understand how important translaters are now! After reading this article I do not think that I would have the patience to try and learn chinese.
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