Problems in teaching and learning English

Abstract

Teaching of English as a foreign language is a difficult task.A five year old child acquires mastery of speaking the native language.With respect to a foreign language like English, the mastery is achieved very very late.For free flow of language the vocabulary in store and the correct usage help one.listening comes first and speaking comes next.mother tongue plays a dominant role in learning any language.languages differ in their structures.In amny languages there is one to correspondence between the letters and pronounciation.In English it is not so and hence the difficulty in learning the language.The word”but” is pronounced as/b^t/ whereas the word “put” is pronounced as/put”.

When we read the words know,dept,psyche and walk we omit the letters k,t,p and l. A teacher has to teach and a student has to learn the nuances of English. A European and an umbrella are correct.prepositions can change the meaning.Example He set fire to me.He set fire for me.Bread and butter is my bread fast and Bread and butter are sold here- stand examples for concord.

Problems can be over come through skillful teaching and sincere learning.

Full paper

English is accepted as a universal language.it is spoken all over the world. It is named as the window of the world.if an individual knows English he/she can go round the world without any language problem. For many of the people English is the mother tongue.many talented persons learn English and have competence in using the languages.Some gifted scholars are branded as silver tongued orators and they even surpass the native speakers. English is a growing language.It enjoys the pride of having more than 50,000 words to it’s credit. English has a hand in all fields where the human beings tread on. It has borrowed words from almost all languages of the world and has enriched its vocabulary.

Now a days English has become a must in many walks of life.The necessity of learning English has become more and more important. A native speaker of English is at a privilege of getting masters over the language with in five years. He or she becomes competent in using the language either in the spoken form or in the written form. Those who don’t have English as their mother tongue try very hard to learn the same to attain the level of the native speakers. While learning the new language a student has to know the structure of the language . language structures differ from language to language. Anyhow mother tongue plays a dominant role in learning a foreign language.

The Sentence pattern can be taken first,

Tamil sentence (in tamil)

I eat a fruit.

S V O

In Tamil object precedes the verb. In English verb precedes the object.

Tamil sentence (in tamil)

He went there.

S V A

We notice the change.

When we say (tamil sentence) .we get

Birds fly. Here no change in the order.

S V

Let us take another sentence.” I have never seen such a beautiful flower”. When the sentence is re written beginning with ‘never’, we have “ Never have I seen such a beautiful flower”. But in tamil no such change taken place.

Subject verb agreement is an another area where the students come across problem.

1. Bread and butter is my breakfast.2. Bread and butter are sold here.

The same subject takes a different verbs because of the usage.

To spell a word rightly is a problem for many . For example the words believe, relieve, deceive, protein have the sound /I:/ in the middle. But the spelling is different,

In the word gaol, the pronounciation (jail) doesn’t agree with the spelling. In the word “ lieutentant” there is no ‘f’ sound in spelling we have to note the difference in but /b^t/ and put /put/.

Silent letters are another problem we have to omit the k sound on the words “know”, “knife”, “knowledge”, and the t sound in dept,often. The sound p finds no place in psyche,psychology.

Some peculiar words like vendezvous never fail to confuse the students. The pronounciation is /rondeivu:/ .

The past tense and past participle of some verbs misguide the students.

Reach - reached - reached , Preach – preached – preached

But Catch – caught – caught, teach – taught – taught, sing – sang – sung. But bring – brought – brought, live – lived – lived. But give – gave –given. Do these help our students really?

Degrees of comparison is yet another problem to our students.

Long –longer- longest short – shorter- shortest

Beautiful – more beautiful- most beautiful intelligent – more intelligent – most intelligent

Good/well – better – best bad/ill – worse – worst much/many – more – most

Old –older –oldest little – less – least. Some times we use “ the lesser of the two evils”.

The wrong use of prepositions may change the meaning of a sentence totally.For example let us see these two sentences.

He set fire to me. He set fire for me.

He is up stairs is enough.we not write He is in upstairs.

Idioms and phrasal verbs have to be taught and learnt with great care.

“It rains cats and dogs” means it rains heavily.

Carry on means continue and put on means to wear.put by means to save.

The problems in teaching and learning English will be succeeded following Bacon’s words- Conference makes a ready man and writing makes an exact man.