Job Discussion Forums

[7969]

can we compile a list of the commonly made errors in spoken english? it'll be useful for me in this new place of work.

i'll begin:

1. confusing "have" and "has"/"he" and "she"
2. improper use of the articles, in particular "the"

any more would be welcome, i'd like to build a list here.

7969

[tw]

Answering "Do you" questions with "I have" or "I like", e.g.

"Do you like playing football?" "Yes I like."

"Do you have a brother?" "Yes I have."

[erinyes]

Use of EVER in the wrong context
Like in English we say "Have you ever done this?"
The students in my school answer "I have ever done this."

Speaking constantly in present tense, never past,
e.g. About 5 years ago, I go to school.

[bearcanada]

I have two car.
I have no any beer.
They bought me lunch because they wanted to nice me.
And, of course, common "erros" in english by chinese speakers. :)


Disclaimer:
"Do not eat. Not for use by children under 3. Do not leave in direct sunlight. May cause headache if worn instead of hat. Colors may vary. Batteries not included." (Courtesy of DOS)

[Ricepaddy]

"How do you think of China?"

[bearcanada]

Also, in speech, failing to pronounce the last consonant sound of a word seems a universal tendency by almost all Chinese regardless of original dialect.


Disclaimer:
"Do not eat. Not for use by children under 3. Do not leave in direct sunlight. May cause headache if worn instead of hat. Colors may vary. Batteries not included." (Courtesy of DOS)

[Midlothian Mapleheart]

Edited to remove offensive content.

Middy

[7969]

thanks. this is a good start. seems to me if a lot of these small but all too common errors are corrected, the english by a lot of these students would sound a lot better.

[sheeba]

'wo hen xi huan beijing translates 'i very like beijing' so what do you always here ?

xiu xiu ran hou shang liang shang liang qu nar wan -direct translation is - take a rest and then talk about where you will PLAY .

How many times do you here your students inappropriately say 'at the weekend i played with my friend ?' bear in mind your student is 22 .

I don't think you can change these mistakes . What you can do is teach them something else -try to teach a different way to explain they 'played ' with their friends . I always say 'oh so you had fun with your friends ?'

I'm starting to lose interest in the fact that they make these mistakes . To me communication is the key . I'm more concerned that my students do not even understand that when someone talks to you you usually listen

[Don McChesney]

The almost nationwide error is the misuse of 'he' and 'she'.
These are often mixed in the same sentence. Talking of a girl
"He said that she wants to go . . "
I find they hang onto the final consonants in many words, and say 'dogger. catter, blacker-board' etc etc.

[Paul Barufaldi]

Here are a few off the top of my head:

Subject/verb agreement has to be the number one error, particularly pluralizing verbs -also the use of the word be to describe the static state of something in the future:

He say he will here soon.
He says he will be here soon.

Many do not follow the subject/verb rule for sentences. Of course, they also add phrases based on Chinese rather than English grammar:

Everyday go to school take bus.
Everyday I take the bus to school.

The word very should not preceed a verb. Ask them to substitute really.

This is an interesting thread. I'll try to contribute more examples once I get a chance to compile them.

[Gregor]

This IS a good thread.
Rather than present more examples, though, I want to point out an explanation that a lot of less-experienced teachers don't think of.
For example, I encountered, in a lesson about giving instructions ("first, then, next, after that, finally"), I had a student say that, when you see a doctor, you "take a medicine note." In her context, it was perfectly understandable English. I mean, she's a 45-year-old mother. If she were to give instructions to an English-speaking youth who had to go to the doctor for some problem that obviously required medication, she could tell her to be sure to "take a medicine note," and the younger person would immediately understand that she meant for her to get a prescription. There is nothing technically wrong with the student's English. So why was the phrase "wrong"?
Or, "...I went out of the room as fast as I could!" What's wrong with that? We understand it perfectly.

The answer is, it's not idiom. Strong pre-intermediate students on up need to learn this. Especially considering that their English teachers have traditionally been Chinese. They aren't native English speakers, so they don't have a strong command of idiom.

Idiom refers to how the language is commonly used, by native speakers. It's not, technically, correct to say that the speech I gave was "laughable" unless you mean to ridicule me. How is "laughable" different from "funny"? Idiom.
Or to say that my wife's cooking is "odorous." Right. Durian is odorous.

Here's an example from my own life. My (Chinese) wife once said that I was "childish," and that sparked a pretty serious argument. I got defensive. I thought she was angry with me, because the tone of voice seemed to me to be neutral, so I had to go on the words themselves, and "childish" is not a nice thing to say.
But she meant "childlike." She wanted to say that I was cute, in that context. "Childish" does not carry that connotation.

THIS is a common problem with Chinese English students, and it largely comes from their reliance on those bloody electronic dictionaries. The e-dictionary is also the source of the out-dated terms the come up with, as well.

Idiom is a feature of their own language; indeed, of ANY language. This is one of my favorite things about teaching in China - the students are not ignorant, as many are, in other countries. Generally speaking, you can assume a level of education and global awareness that their counterpart in our own countries would likely have. They just don't know the English words for the terms.

In other words, it's a grave mistake, in China, to confuse a student's ignorance of English with an ignorance of the world around them. They are PERFECTLY capable of understanding the concept of idiom, and they very much appriciate a teacher who is aware of this fact.

A lot of my experience teaching comes from Lebanon and Indonesia, and Mexico. Chinese students tend to be better educated than students from those other countries, I hate to say. But it's true. I used to piss off students by making that mistake - by assuming that they were uneducated and uninformed. They are, generally speaking, neither.

[Roger]

This is not a new topic, by the way, we had similar ones many times in the past.
First off, I do not agree with that poster who feels it is not necessary to take cotgnisance of these errors; my personal gripe is that our English learners cannot understand good English and are expecting us to go along with their bad version of it.
Most errors could be extirpated if students became aware of how misleading some of their statements are. If they learnt to speak English in their capacity as individuals we would see much better results; however, they are learning English in a group in which the single student merely emulates others.

The most recurrent mistkaes occur in:
1. Grammar:
- (already pointed out: no SVA, hence all verbs without the 3rd person final -S;
- no care for the tenses either;
- no care for numbers (plural versus singular);
- the subjunctive;
- 'even if' clauses without 'if';
- insufficient grasp of the articles' function;
- the phrase "there is/are" gets sinicised as "there have...".
- The confusion of 'he' and 'she' is deeply ingrained.

2. Phonetics:
- a very Chinese phenomenon is the unsettlingly common use of a schwa
- every day I get accosted by girls offering me 'massagee...";
- vowels are mispronounced as follows: diphtongs such as 'I' in 'bike'
become a monophtong, so the word sounds like 'back'...
- long or short syllables: ship and sheep, bit and beat...
- consonant mispronuncation: 'TH' sounds like 'S'; 'X' is mispronounced
as 'S' ('espression') as is a redupplicated 'C' as in 'accident' which
sounds like 'assident'.

Due to these shoddy pronunciations confusions occur between numbers
such as 13 and 30, 14 and 40, etc.
3. Syntax:
Inversion of sentences that are transformed into negative statements or questions:
I no have money/Why the man pay for me? Etc.

I am not saying we need to take a fanatical stance vis-a-vis these problematic misusages, but it is our daily job to do remedial work, and we clearly have our job cut out for us. If you cannot get any human response from your charges to your prodding in class, take this to heart: work on their typical mistakes and use thus their time productively! They have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

[vikdk]

wouldn't a thread called common errors in the chinese education system be a more fitting subject for this forum?

[stil]