Unit 1: The TEFL World

In this Unit, we will explore two very important elements. Knowledge and understanding of
these elements will serve you well on your TEFL journey.
The first of these elements relates to some specific characteristics of the English language.
1. Some Specific Characteristics of the English Language
Why would you want to learn about some specific characteristics of the English language?
Well, we imagine it’s quite helpful and interesting but there are other reasons.
You may be sitting in the staffroom one day when, say, a native-Chinese teacher colleague
asks you this: What is special about the English language? How will you feel if you cannot
answer this?
Your colleagues-to-be in many countries will view you as an expert and will believe you
know everything about the English language. Again, this question may come up in an
advanced class.
This has happened to us and it could easily happen to you. So, absorb this and it will serve
two purposes: it will provide help and interest for you, and it will get you out of a tricky
situation.
But there is also another critical reason. You need to be fully aware that there will be key
differences in language structures, grammar, vocabulary usage etc. in the native/first
language of the learners you will be teaching, compared to your native English language.
You’ll have grasped the importance of this already if you have studied a foreign language at
school or university, or if you are a seasoned traveller who likes to pick up a bit of the
native language of the country you are visiting.
Specific
Characteristics

Here are some specific characteristics of the English Language:

Fairly easy to learn
English is one of the simplest and easiest natural languages in the world.
Of course, the concept of easiness is relative, and it depends on which language a learner
knows already. However, the concept of simple is undeniable. English is a fairly easy
language to learn, understand and speak when compared to very complex languages such
as Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Japanese.
Latin alphabet
The English language uses the Latin alphabet, the most universal, simple and short
alphabet (only the Greek alphabet is shorter and simpler). In addition, in English, the Latin
alphabet presents its most clean form as a true alphabet with only 26 basic letters.
Its simple inflection
Inflection is the name for the extra letter or letters added to nouns, verbs and adjectives in
their different grammatical forms, e.g. cat, cats; eat, eats; big, bigger.
English is considered a weakly inflected language when compared to, say, French or
Russian. Its nouns have only traces of inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular
verbs have only four forms, e.g. look, looks, looked, looking.
Even for irregular verbs, there is almost no variation in person (except the 3rd person
singular in the present tense, e.g. I eat, you eat, she eats). The English language can
indicate the relationship of words in a sentence with only the minimum of change in their
structure. There are other languages which do this but this is a strong characteristic of
English.
Its receptiveness
A major characteristic of English language is its receptiveness to accepting and adopting
words from other languages. Here are a few examples from Spanish:

 alligator from el lagarto meaning the lizard

 barbecue from the Chibcha word barbacoa, meaning a wooden framework for sleeping
on, or for storing meat or fish to be dried
 cargo from the verb cargar, meaning to load

This is regarded as an extraordinary feature of the language. It has accepted and adopted
words from Asian, European, African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and other languages. And
English has kept an open-door policy of accepting words from classical languages like
Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.
Its (generally) fixed word order
Another strong characteristic of English language is its (generally) fixed word order. Most
English sentences (clauses) conform to the SVO word order. This means that the Subject
comes before the Verb, which comes before the Object. Examples:

 I (S) bought (V) a new computer (O).

 She (S) doesn't like (V) dogs (O).
 Why did you (S) do (V) that (O)?

There are other word orders in English but this is by far the most used, making it easy for
learners to grasp.
No markings on letters
There are no diacritics (a mark that is placed over, under, or through a letter in some
languages to show that the letter should be pronounced in a particular way) such as
happens, for example, in Spanish:

 exámenes
 muñón
 muñones
 canción

The exception is words imported from other languages, e.g. rôle and naïve from French.
Pronunciation
The pronunciation of English words such as this, thin, clothes, thirteenth, months inevitably
causes problems for learners who do not need to use the tip of the tongue to produce
words in their own language.
Continuous tense
Many languages do not have a continuous tense form, so English learners may make
mistakes such as: I had a bath when the phone rang; instead of I was having a bath when
the phone rang.
Articles (a, an, the)
The article system is another feature of English grammar that causes some students
enormous difficulties; particularly, of course, those whose native language does not use
articles.
Phrasal verbs
A phrasal verb is an idiomatic phrase consisting of a verb and another element, typically
either an adverb, as in break down, or a preposition, for example see to, or a combination
of both, such as look down on.
These phrasal verbs are a VERY significant feature of the English language and can cause
severe difficulties for learners. Sentences such as I put it down to the weather, or I made it
up with my sister, are usually gobbledegook to beginner non-native speakers.
Unfortunately for the English language learner, phrasal verbs are extremely common in
colloquial English language.
Non-tonal
English is a non-tonal language.
In tone languages, e.g. Chinese and Vietnamese, pitch (the degree of highness or lowness
of a tone) is used to distinguish word meaning. So, a word said with high pitch may have a
different meaning from the same word said with a low pitch.
In English, changes in pitch are used to emphasise or express emotion, not to give a
different word meaning to the sound. It is not surprising that native speakers of tone
languages often have strong accents when speaking English.
Sound and spelling
A final feature of English that is enormously problematic for non-native learners and some
native-speakers is the unpredictable correspondence between word sound and word
spelling.
It is often impossible for learners of English to predict the spelling of an English word they
first encounter in speech, or the pronunciation of an English word they first encounter in
writing.
In fact, the majority of English words do conform to spelling patterns. The difficulty for the
learner, however, is that the words which don't conform are some of the most common
words in the language, and thus the ones that learners encounter first. For example:

 Words containing ough: thought, although, rough,

 Words which have the same sound but different spellings: ate, eight; hear, here; their,
there
 Words with silent letters, not pronounced: know, could, hour
 Words that look exactly the same but must be pronounced differently: read (present
tense), read (past tense); present (a gift), present (to give to); close (near); close (to
shut)

Let’s explore the second element which covers how important it is for you to recognise
some key differences in some languages compared to English.
2. Examples of key differences in some languages compared to English
It’s important to be aware that there will be key differences in language structures,
grammar, vocabulary etc. in the native/first language of the learners you will be teaching.
Never assume that your students’ native language will be structured or pronounced in the
same way as English. If you do, this may lead to confusion in your classroom.
Note that this is simply an awareness session, to emphasise this point. So, you don’t need
to ‘learn’ the materials in this section if you aren’t teaching either Spanish or Chinese
students.
The key learning point is that all languages are different and it’s wise to learn a bit about
your students’ native language to ensure you choose the right strategy when teaching them
specific elements of the English language.
You don’t need to be able to speak or write your students’ native language; it’s just so
helpful when you know some of the key differences between their native language and the
English language.
Let’s have a quick look at this in practice. Imagine you are teaching a group of either
Spanish or Chinese students. What are some of the key differences you need to keep in
mind from day 1?
Remember! Note that the points below are generalisations based on our TEFL
experiences; individual students may differ.
Here are some general observations:
Spanish EFL Students
1. Gender and articles: In Spanish, all nouns have gender, whereas we just use a,
an, and the no matter the gender:

 a boy: un niño; a girl: una niña

 the boy: el niño; the girl: la niña

Also, there is no equivalent in Spanish for it that we use for inanimate objects.
Note that there are situations where we do not insert articles but these will usually be
inserted in Spanish. Their article for the is underlined in these examples:

 Cars are a hassle: Los coches son una molestia.

 Mr. Smith is here: El Sr. Smith está aquí.

2. Relationship between sound and spelling: In Spanish, words are spelled as they
sound and vice versa. In English, there is little correlation between sound and spelling.
3. Vowel sounds: Spanish has fewer vowel sounds than English. The length of the vowel
sound in Spanish is not so important when distinguishing between words; there is little
distinction between short and long vowel sounds. In English, however, there are many
more vowel sounds and the length of the vowel sound is very important.
Thus, Spanish learners have a lot of difficulty in first distinguishing differences in vowel
sounds and then producing them. This results in confusion when hearing and pronouncing
many groups of words, for example:

 ship/sheep
 fool/full
 cat/cut
 beat/bit
4. Consonant sounds: Spanish-native speakers frequently confuse the
consonants v and b in English, and the first sounds in words beginning with y as
in yacht and j as in jeep with ch as in cheap. Some speakers also have difficulty with
sounds at the end of words such as thing/think.
5. The s sound: Spanish words do not start with an s sound. As a result, they often add
an e sound to English words beginning with the s sound, resulting in utterances such as I
come from Espain and I went to eschool in Barcelona.
6. Consonant clusters: These are groups of consonants which have no intervening
vowel, e.g. split. These are much more common in English than in
Spanish. Sometimes they may add in a vowel sound or an extra syllable when tackling
these, e.g. ad-vance-ed. In addition, sometimes they ‘swallow’ sounds when faced with a
cluster, e.g. next becomes nes.
Remember: A syllable is a part of a word that is pronounced with one uninterrupted sound.
7. Syllable-timed and stress-timed languages: Spanish is a syllable-timed language,
where an equal amount of time is given for each syllable when syllables are expressed. On
the other hand, English is a stress-timed language where stresses tend to occur at regular
intervals and unstressed syllables are squashed in between the stresses to maintain the
regular beat of the stress.
So, what does this mean? It means that many Spanish learners have difficulty in mirroring
the combination of stress, pitch and rhythm required to project the exact meaning of their
utterance in English. That is, their flattened, slightly robotic-like and evened-out syllable-
timed speech in English makes it difficult for native English speakers/listeners to grasp the
important words in the sentence.
A popular example used to demonstrate this difference in TEFL classes is:

 The Beatles were bigger than Elvis: English, stress –timed, stress bolded
 The / Beat / les / were / big / ger / than / El / vis: Spanish, syllable-timed, each syllable
in each slash pronounced in an equal timing

Overcoming this flat-sounding intonation is very important, particularly in formal and

important situations in English, where clarity and stressing a point are paramount.
8. Pronouns often omitted: When speaking Spanish, native speakers of Spanish will
often drop the pronoun subject unless they're stressing it to avoid ambiguity, because
whom they're referring to, e.g. you/they/he is normally clear from the Spanish verb
conjugation.
So, this can transfer across to English. You may find Spanish speakers making
expressions such as:

 Came with me to the train station, when they mean He/She came with me to the train
station.
 Is Carlos here? Yes. Is here.

9. Word order: In English, the word order in everyday statements is generally: subject,
verb, object. In Spanish, though, more variations are allowed:
Here are three variations of the same meaning: Carlos wrote the letter.

 Carlos escribió la carta. (subject, verb, object; very common in Spanish and the same
order as in English)
 Escribió Carlos la carta. (verb, subject, object; very common in Spanish but not used in
everyday English)
 La carta la escribió Carlos (object, object pronoun, verb, subject; not as common as the
two above but it is used.)

The opportunities for making errors in the word order of everyday statements in English,
due to the influence of their native language, are self-evident.
10. Prepositions: English has many prepositions, much more than many other languages.
Most English prepositions have multiple meanings. In addition, many are monosyllabic and
are thus difficult to pick up in rapid speech.
Also, non-native speakers cannot depend on prepositional knowledge from their first
language. For example, the Spanish por could be expressed in English by the
prepositions by, for, during and through. You can see the potential for error when they are
attempting to use English prepositions.
11. Adjectives: In English, an adjective generally comes before a noun but in Spanish it
generally comes after the noun. But there are Spanish adjectives which come before the
noun. And note that Spanish adjectives have gender and also have plural forms with plural
nouns.
12. Possessive apostrophe: In English, we express possession in one of two ways. We
use the possessive apostrophe: the boy’s book, or the of construction: The wellbeing of the
refugees is paramount. Spanish uses only the ofconstruction.
The possessive apostrophe is probably the greatest challenge for all native-English writers,
so you can imagine how difficult this will be for Spanish learners.
Chinese EFL Students
1. Different writing systems: A major difference is that the Chinese languages use a
logographic system, whereas English uses an alphabetic system. Some Chinese learners
may be fully au fait with pinyin, a system of writing Mandarin Chinese which uses the Latin
alphabet. However, pinyin is a phonetic system and so the sound to letter correspondence
differs in various areas.
2. Lack of cognates: Lack of cognates is a second major difference. Cognates are words
which share an historical origin, which makes the learning of some words in a new
language easier to grasp.
Although we majored above on the differences for a Spanish native learning English, one of
the great advantages is that there are many cognates Spanish natives can lean on to help
them guess the meaning of English words. But Chinese learners do not have this
advantage.
In addition, there are very few borrowed words from English in the Chinese lexicon
(vocabulary).
3. Syllable-timed and stress-timed languages: The third major difference is that, similar
to Spanish, Mandarin is a syllable-timed language whereas English is a stress-timed
language. Thus, Chinese learners also have difficulty in mirroring the combination of stress,
pitch and rhythm required to project the exact meaning of their utterance in English.
4. Uninflected language: Although we have said earlier that English is, generally, a
weakly inflected language compared to some other languages, it does convey much
meaning by using auxiliary words (often called ‘helping verbs’) and verb inflections
(changes to the verb structure): is/are/were, eat/eats/ate/eaten, etc.
In contrast to this, Chinese is an uninflected language which conveys meaning via its word
order, context and adverbials.
5. Consonant sounds: In Mandarin, there are only three consonant sounds which can be
used at the end of a syllable. Chinese speakers thus have great difficulty with the
pronunciation of any English words that end with any sound outside of the three they are
familiar with and, as a result, the final consonant is often omitted.
6. Some other common difficulties:

 Distinguishing the difference between l and r, and so they may

mispronounce rake and rice as lake and lice.
 Getting to grips with unfamiliar sounds, e.g. v, so that very may become wery
 Pronouncing each syllable in an English word too clearly (because Chinese is a
monosyllabic language where each character has only one syllable)
 Placing adverbial phrases of time and place at the end of a sentence as these are
never placed at the end of a sentence in Chinese
 Confusing personal pronouns, e.g. he and she, because these words have the same
pronunciation in Chinese
 Omitting the verb to be before an adjective, e.g. He sad, and omitting articles as these
don’t exist in Chinese