English as a Second Language to Chinese

As the world's most populous nation continues to forge to the front of the global economic community, the popularity of English as a second language to Chinese will continue to increase. The notion that ESL education is a homogeneous system is one of the most common misnomers in education. The speaker's particular native language influences every aspect of English learning process. A native Italian speaker, because of the syntactic, semantic, and phonetic qualities of Italian, will have a markedly different experience learning English as a second language than a speaker of Chinese. For as many languages as there are in the world, there are an equal number of unique relationships with English as a target, or second, language. When students are in the process of transitioning between their native language and their target language, an interlanguage is developed. Because of the pronounced formal and phonetic differences between English and Chinese, students trying to learn English as a second language to Chinese will face specific challenges. Knowing what these issues are likely to be will help educators anticipate and prepare for the educational needs of this growing population. English as a Second Language to Chinese Notable Challenges Any attempt to learn a second language is wrought with difficulties. New words, new grammar systems, and new pronunciations are challenges that are universal to everyone who attempts to learn a new language. When English is the target language for a native Chinese speaker, a particular set of situations arises that is somewhat unique to this particular situation. The most important of these differences are listed below. Phonetics One of the most fundamental differences between English and Chinese is the fact that Chinese is a tonal language and English is not. A tonal language is one in which the way a phoneme (or a distinct symbol of sound) is modified through tonal inflection changes the phoneme's meaning. Chinese uses four tones that are pitched and a fifth neutral tone. The first tone is high and level, the second starts in the middle and rises to the top, the third starts low, dips to the lowest point, and rises nearly to the top, the forth starts at the top and falls quickly to the bottom, and the fifth

is flat with no emphasis. The phoneme Yi, for example, might mean something like "doctor" in tone one, "to shift" in tone two, "already" in tone three, and "strange" in tone 4. Because inflections in Chinese are so fundamental to meaning, Chinese speakers do not express their personalities and regional dialects in the random and sometimes playful manner that English speakers do. This important difference suggests the issue with personal expression that arises when Chinese speakers set out to learn English. Alphabet Chinese's use of a logographic writing system, meaning it does not use an alphabet but rather a system of individual symbols that represent words, is a major difference between Chinese and English. The number of Chinese characters is listed at over 47,000, although the common characters used in daily life are typically considered to be around 4,000. However, English's use of an alphabet that uses only 26 letters is often a tremendous challenge for learning English as a second language to Chinese. Grammar Verb tense in English is handled by a complex system of verb inflections and auxiliaries. The copula "to be" and all its forms (is/are, was/were) and the concepts of progressive and perfect tenses are ideas that are taken for granted by native English speakers. Chinese, on the other hand, does not handle the concept of time through verb forms, so ESL students typically struggle greatly with the intricacies of the English verb system. In addition, Chinese uses no articles. Because articles are typically more stylistically important than vital to the understanding of a sentence, Chinese speakers often struggle with articles long after they have developed competency in other aspects on the English language. Supporting the Chinese ESL Student Any educator who thoroughly understands these particular complexities between Chinese and English will have a renewed respect for the challenges that Chinese students have when they are learning English. Knowing which areas are likely to cause Chinese students difficulties allows an instructor to tailor lessons to focus specifically on the areas where students need the most support.

English as a Second Language to Chinese

Submitted by: Anne Mae Perez ITIA Submitted to: Prof. Romeo Y. Martin