Learning The English Language

Teaching English

Teaching English

Although English is not more complex than many other languages, there are several factors that can create difficulties for those wanting to learn the language and those trying to teach it. There may be difficulties with English pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, the differences between spoken and written English, as well as the different varieties of English.

The British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) are the historical home of English, and each region has significant differences in pronunciation, accent, vocabulary and grammar. Furthermore, the British colonies that adopted English as their official language also differ significantly, from New Zealand English to American, Canadian, South African and Australian. It doesn’t help that there is no one organisation that determines the most prestigious or ‘correct’  form of the language, as the French and Spanish do.

Difficulties of Teaching English

One of the things that can be difficult for those learning English is the sound represented by ‘th’. This sound is relatively rare in other languages, even others in the Germanic family. Another issue may be the numerous vowel sounds in English. The exact number differs depending on the variety of English, but for example, in Standard British English there are twelve monophthongs (single vowels), eight diphthongs (double vowels) and two triphthongs (triple vowels). By comparison, many other languages have fewer vowels or only pure ones, and so have trouble distinguishing the sounds and pronouncing them.

English also tends to be a stress-timed language, that is stressed syllables are roughly equidistant in time no matter how many syllables come in between. Most of the world’s major languages are actually syllable-timed, with each syllable coming at an equal time after the previous one. English language learners may have difficulty learning the correct way to stress words and syllables, whether for emphasis, contrast or for emphatic apologies.