Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

Actually, most mistakes are pretty predictable - in that 'ed/-ing category, you can add 'interested/interesting';
in the adjective versus noun confusion trap you get 'safe' and 'safety' confused, as well as virtually all country names with their adjectival forms (note how pronuncation changes in 'Italy' versus 'Italian', which the CHinese fail to note).

We did a number of CHINGLISH threads; I am sure you will find a lot of useful information there.

[Zero Hero]

I suppose by 'predictable', 'Roger' may be alluding to and thus loosely invoking the transfer and interference hypothesis. This old chestnut certainly accounts for many non-native-like errors, but by no means all that are consistently produced by, in this case, Chinese learners. Indeed, there is some true interlanguage (in the sense of non-native-like language not predicted by the interference model) to be observed when witnessing speakers of the Chinese languages tackle, and make progress in, English.

In simple terms, ignoring phonetics and phonology, and, but for the final example, semantics, the most common examples of non-native-like language would be (not in any particular order and certainly not in any order of acquisition):

Parts of speech, e.g., 'I find that interested'.

Subject-verb agreement, e.g., 'Everybody are here'.

Aspect, especially present continuous aspect, e.g., 'Where you go?'

Auxiliaries, e.g., 'How many brothers you have?'

Articles, e.g., 'I heard it on radio'.

Gender, e.g., 'I have a brother. She works in Shanghai'.

Number, e.g., 'I've seen a lot of movie lately'.

Countable/uncountable, e.g., 'Let me tell you an interesting news'.

Question tags, e.g., 'You like burgers, is it?'

Prepositions, e.g., 'The book is difficult to me'.

Imperative mood, e.g., 'You come and sit here'.

Word order, e.g., 'Tomorrow morning I'll come'.

Conjunctions, e.g., 'Because I don't know her, so I didn't say hello'.

[Zero Hero]

[Roger]