August 13, 2007
The English Language
Written by Shana in Jaunty PostAll summer I have been working part-time teaching English to non-native speakers. I have students from all over the world—Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Libya, Mali, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, Venezuela and more. I teach two classes daily. One is Level Pre-One and the other is Level 5.
The Pre-One students came in at the beginning of the summer not knowing any English. On day one, we started with the alphabet. I think we studied the alphabet for about a week. I thought I would die of boredom. Then, slowly, we moved onto numbers. Gradually, my students started to catch on. Now, almost all of them can understand basic English. I still get a lot of blank stares, but I don’t feel like I’m just talking to myself.
My Level 5 students can speak English and read English. They are unfamiliar with some vocabulary and get confused by a lot of our idiomatic expressions, but they catch on quickly.
I love English. I love our words and our grammar and even the diverse pronunciations, but there is nothing like teaching English to confuse you about English.
Sometimes I am asked to repeat a word 5 or 10 times so that a student can get the pronunciation correct. In the meantime, he or she is saying it back to me—usually incorrectly. After I say the same word about 5 times, and hear it wrong 5 times back, I start to wonder which pronunciation is correct. My students pronounce soup as soap so often that today I found myself saying, “I want to eat some soap.” Argh!
Oh, and try explaining all the homonyms. We spent 10 minutes today on gulf and golf and bare and bear. And then there are the words whose pronunciation depend on their context—like wind and wind and read and read. (The wind is blowing. I need to wind my watch. I read that book. I like to read.).
No wonder people say that English is such a tough language to master.
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Pat L. Says:
My husband teaches English to the adult foreign born. He likes it much better than teaching to teenagers as they WANT to learn. His students love him. And yes English is a hard language to learn. I can only speak English and have nothing to compare it to but that is what I hear from one and all.
Have a great week everyone.
Shana Says:
The students are so thankful, too. Everyday they tell me thank you for the lesson. I don’t know that I ever told any of my teachers thank you until recently.
brownone Says:
Yeah..I think one of my Spanish teachers was telling me that English is one of the hardest languages to learn because it is such a mish-mash of other languages. Most of our words are derived from other languages i.e. greek, latin, etc.
Kathryn Says:
English is a fabulous language. I find it to be very unique.
Living in Montreal, I am fluent in French and I have a smattering of high school Spanish and Latin (ugh!). Yes, English is a hard language to learn, but I am always impressed by people who make the effort. Language can be quite an issue here in Quebec, but I think You can only expand your horizons by trying to learn and a little effort goes a long way (on both sides).
Clarisse Says:
English is the “Borg” of languages: everything we meet, we absorb. I love its vocabulary density where we have a multitude of words for the same thing or condition. But the homonyms and the words that look alike but are pronounced differently must be so confusing for people trying to learn the language.
Stefanie D Says:
Hi,
I libe in Belgium, so my native language is not English but Dutch. Of course it’s never to learn a new language (I still write errors and don’t know every English word) But I have to say that for me, English isn’t a very hard language to learn. French, for example, is much harder! When you listen to the radio or watch tv, many songs/films are in English, so you already hear and learn a little English. There is also only one member word in English: the. In Dutch there are two: de and het. And in French there are 3: le, la and les. (In German there are about nine, I think) And could go on like this.
So no, I don’t think that English is one of the hardest languages to learn.
AndreaW Says:
Thank goodness for people like you, Shana, who are willing to teach people our language.
Bonnie Says:
I taught English in a small, rural school. Suddenly we had an influx of Russian emigres. The children were dropped into our school system with no preparation. I became the go to person because I had had some Russian in high school and college. The big difficulty for the children was switching from the Cyrillic alphabet to English. The alphabets shared some symbols but they represented different sounds. It was a total immersion for the new students and most of them learned quite quickly. Needless to say, the parent teacher conferences were quite interesting.
Clarisse Says:
I worked as a volunteer with a resettlement program for Polish political refugees back in the 1980’s and communication was fascinating. Several of them did speak excellent English to begin with so they were our primary translators, but when they were not available it was sometimes pretty comical. There was a wonderful older gentleman among them who spoke Russian, German and Italian as well as Polish. I remembered enough high school Spanish to be a danger to myself and others. He and I had this convoluted trial and error approach to communicating which was based on the German and Latin root words in English: Try an English word and hope it was a gerund for something germanic or latinate. If it didn’t ring any bells, keep working your way through synonyms until you hit something recognizable. It was amazing how well we could work our way through understanding each other (although sometimes it got really confusing and sometimes we would realize that when we had thought we understood each other we were both totally off base on what the other was saying).
ladydawgfan Says:
Kathryn,
Je parle français un peu, mais je comprends le français seulement si vous parlez très lentement.
Actually, it’s been a long time since high school French, but living so near the PQ border, as well as receiving the French Canadian channel on local cable, I hear more French than you would think.
One of my college roommates was from Seoul. She tried to teach me Korean. Boy-O, let’s talk about a difficult language to learn!!!
Shirley Karr Says:
I had four years of German and in some ways it’s much simpler than English. Its grammar has rules, and there are a few exceptions to the rules. In English, there are exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions. (And then the nonsensical stuff, like we drive on a parkway but park in a driveway, etc.)
Clarisse, you’re right, American is the Borg of languages, assimilating from all the other languages. It makes sense for our language to be a melting pot since our society is, too.
I feel the need to learn Spanish just so I can understand the clerks working the drive-thru windows.
Lacey Says:
My head hurts
Natasha Yi Says:
Hey!…Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts about The English Language comin..holy Friday .
Natasha Yi Says:
Hi there…I Googled for basic korean language, but found your page about The English Language…and have to say thanks. nice read.