Why is Learning English So Difficult?
Second Most Spoken Tongue Is Complicated for Foreign Students
Oct 16, 2008
While it's true that at the basic level English might appear to be simple for ESL students, trying to speak like a native is a much different story. It's not the most complicated language in the world but it's far from the easiest. With strange, unpredictable spelling and a baffling morphology English teachers in foreign countries have difficulty explaining why it's spoken the way it is. Below are some other obstacles encountered by students when studying English as a second language.
Phrasal Verbs
These would be perfectly clear to native speakers, but to a class of beginner and lower intermediate students these combinations would be confusing and illogical.
- Come forward with
- Come up with
- Come down with
- Go through with
- Drop in on
- Drop out of
- Check in on
- Check up on
- Look up to
- Look down on
- Look in on
Tenses Used in English
To communicate adequately students in an English class would have to grasp the following basic tenses.
- Present tense (I do)
- Present continuous tense (I am doing)
- Present perfect tense (I have done)
- Present perfect continuous tense (I have been doing)
- Past tense (I did)
- Past continuous tense (I was doing)
- Past perfect tense (I had done)
- Past perfect continuous tense (I had been doing)
- Future tense (I will do)
- Future continuous tense (I will be doing)
- Future perfect tense (I will have done)
- Future perfect continuous tense (I will have been doing)
Irregular Verbs
There seems to be lots of these used in the English language, and the rules can be hard to understand for lower level students.
For example, sometimes the verb changes completely.
- Base form - sing
- Past simple - sang
- Past participle - sung
Sometimes there is a partial change.
- Base form - buy
- Past simple - bought
- Past participle - bought
And in some cases, there is no change at all.
- Base form - cut
- Past simple - cut
- Past participle - cut
Bizarre Vocabulary
How would you illustrate the difference between fat chance and slim chance? How about a wise man and a wise guy? The plural form of goose is geese, tooth becomes teeth and foot becomes feet. But, two notable exceptions are moose and sheep. They stay the same in the singular and plural forms. Try explaining this to a class of ESL students.
Pronunciation and Reading
English is not a phonetic language. Many words look exactly the same but are pronounced differently. An example is, "I have read that book," and "I like to read." In other instances it's the other way around, such as "I have read the book," and "My favourite color is red."
The syntax of English is inflexible compared to other languages. Sentences always follow a subject-verb-object structure. This isn't the case with some European languages like German or Dutch, where in some circumstances verbs come at the end of a sentence.
