Words Mispronounced

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Mapo Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Jining Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Several years of teaching English in China, and many more years of living and studying there, often interacting with language learners and people eager to practise their English with a native speaker have led me to notice several pronunciation problems common to many Chinese learners of English. In deciding when and how to help people with these pronunciation problems,...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Kangning Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Luliang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. All languages have their peculiarities when it comes to pronunciation. However, while the way of articulation common for one language is easy to adapt to that of a different language (let’s say any two related Western European languages), others can be quite tricky to adjust (Russian->English, Chinese->English, etc.), thus making it hard or sometimes even...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Dagao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Binzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Throughout the world different countries have difficulty pronouncing other sounds from different languages. For many native English speakers learning Mandarin, pronouncing the “x”, “sh”, “q”, “ch”, and “z” sounds are not easy obstacles to overcome. Based on my own experience it takes plenty of repetition to master how to pronounce each of these...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xingping Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Shangluo Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. There are thousands of languages around the world. Each language has its own peculiarities. The grammar of some languages is sort of complicated. Some languages do not have an ample variety of words. Others don’t have any script. Some languages are spoken by millions of people while others by just a few hundred once. Beauties of English are several. Of all the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Throughout the world, different countries have difficulty pronouncing other sounds from different languages. For many native English speakers learning Mandarin, pronouncing the “x”, “sh”, “q”, “ch”, and “z” sounds are not easy obstacles to overcome. Based on my own experience it takes plenty of repetition to master how to pronounce each of these sounds. Chinese students have a similar problem when trying to pronounce certain sounds in English. The three sounds that come to mind are “th”, “v” and the difference between “r” and “l”. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jonathan A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. As a mentor for...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Zhuangmo Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Xinzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Students learning English as a second language will always face some difficulty whether it be with pronunciation, grammatical structures, or complex phrasal verbs. Difficulties may even lie outside of the language structure itself and instead lie within the cultural differences of the country. Students whose native language is Japanese face a variety of challenges...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Siqian Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Weinan Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. English has its place as the most frequently required subject of mostly Philippines’ school and universities. This is because of the belief of most Filipinos that the mastery of the English language is the most important demands globally. We grew up believing that learning a second language is not an easy task, although other nationalities find that it is easy for...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Cuifeng Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Jinzhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. This essay aims to deal with problems of pronunciation that are peculiar to Czech students of English. As a starting point I will look for the causes of the difficulties in the norms of the L1. I will also assume that difficulties not rooted in the norms of Czech speech are not L1 based problems - which is to say that they may occur to any student or native speaker...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Brazilians are learning English all over the country, for various reasons and with diverse goals. In this text, I would like to approach some very common deviations to standard English dialects, such as General American and Received Pronunciation, by Brazilian speakers. I have chosen to address some problems in phonetics and pronunciation that are the most frequent in my classes. I also give attention to some problems in word linking that generate tough challenges for English teachers. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Linecker M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The country's official language is Portuguese. As a result of the colonization process that was the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences One of the most important problems encountered while learning a foreign language is undoubtedly pronunciation. Knowing a language fluently may not always be enough. Fluency level may be open to discussion if an accurate pronunciation is not used. Therefore as teachers, we must teach our students how to use the correct pronunciation. However, pronunciation can be a nightmare for some students, especially for young learners. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Selin K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are some languages, in particular, no matter what language they speak, we understand where they come from by hearing their accents. French is one of them. French...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Like we all know, the English alphabet has 26 letters. These 26 letters can make 44 different sounds or phonemes – 20 sounds come from the vowels a, e, i, o and u; and 24 sounds come from the remaining 21 consonants. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. If we consider sounds made simply by the letter ‘a’ for instance, in the word ‘apple’ – it’s /ae/, in ‘car’ – it’s /a:/, in amount – it’s /a/, and so on. This, consequently, makes English a non-phonetic language, which means that the pronunciation of a word is not dependent on its spelling. Now in order to pronounce a word correctly, we need to get three factors in it right - vowel sounds, consonant sounds and syllable stress. In this...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas After China adopted the Open Door Policy, the English language not only gained popularity but also became indispensable in international communication and trade. It was introduced in public schools as an obligatory foreign language and English teaching centers started spreading across the country. Even though Chinese people approach learning English with a great dose of enthusiasm, it poses several challenges, both linguistic and cultural. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Weronika S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Chinese language (Mandarin) is an example of Sino-Tibetan language, whereas English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages therefore, from a...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas According to a study by scholars and experts in the field of linguistics, more specifically in the article of Riney & Anderson-Hsieh from International Christian University, the native language (L1) is a good predictor of pronunciation accuracy in English as researched by Suter in 1976. In the same article, it was mentioned that a subsequent study by Purcell and Suter in 1980, found that non-native speakers who are most likely to pronounce English (L2) poorly, fit the profile in Japanese ESL students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Cherryl T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In my two years of teaching ESL online, I’ve come across different pronunciation...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Most researchers agree that the learner’s first language influences the pronunciation of the target language and is a significant factor in accounting for foreign accents. So-called interference or interference from the first language is likely to cause errors in aspiration, stress, and intonation in the target language. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Vesna A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Some Chinese students tend to have difficulty with English sounds because they are deeply influenced by similar Chinese sounds. However, they are very different from each other. A particular sound which does not exist in the native language can, therefore, pose a difficulty...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Songbǎi Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Rizhao Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. From my experience, teaching beginner students can be one of the most rewarding and challenging experience for any teacher. In this essay, I would like to put my perspective on what any teacher, experienced or not, can stumble upon when teaching students that have absolutely none or insignificant level of English. One of the greatest advantages of teaching beginner...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In my experience with teaching Chinese students, most pronounce the unvoiced ‘TH’ sound correctly. To account for the difference in sound between the unvoiced ‘TH’ and the voiced ‘TH’, most students seem to have developed the habit of placing their tongue either on the back of their front teeth or on the roof of the mouth immediately behind the front teeth to create a plosive ‘TH’ sound which sounds most closely like and’ sound. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Michael D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The student cannot correct the problem if they do not understand that there is a problem. Many students do not seem to realize that their...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Over the decades, the English language has reached the status of a global language and is commonly known as the lingua franca around the world. It has become one of the most widely spoken language as a mother tongue, international communication as well as language taught in millions of schools around the globe. The use of the English language is widespread in many sectors in the global market as many organizations begin to adopt the language as an official language. In the economic world, the language plays a significant role in international trade/business between two of the most powerful global economic powerhouse mainly the United States of America and China. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate LAM P. Please note that this...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas There are many different types of peculiarities when concerning the English language, and this essay is aimed at the difficulties in teaching those peculiarities to learners that are not fluent in the English language. It can be difficult for native English speakers to progressively learn the subtle nuances as children graduating to young adults and navigating complexities of the language as adults; deciphering whether or not these peculiarities warrant further investigation or retention based on usage and context. These oddities of the English language can be exponentially more difficult for those attempting to learn the English language as a second language, having fully grasped the complexities of their own language only to have to navigate the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Today, Vietnam is entering the world stage as a united and independent country, eager to learn English, but unable to meet its standards for EFL education. Vietnamese students are a victim of several unfortunate coincidences in pronunciation, and often complain that reading and writing are easy to learn but speaking and listening simply impossible. Two huge differences in the way these languages differentiate words have made English communication into a “black box” for the Vietnamese, more difficult for them to penetrate than for other Asian peoples. Among these differences are the very small number of shared sounds, as well as tonogenesis, a pitch-based method of differentiating Vietnamese syllables that is not present in English. This essay...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences English has its place as the most frequently required subject of mostly Philippines’ school and universities. This is because of the belief of most Filipinos that the mastery of the English language is the most important demands globally. We grew up believing that learning a second language is not an easy task, although other nationalities find that it is easy for us to imitate and practice the language. However, that is not the case. The problems of teaching and learning a foreign language, specifically English, have suggested some studies of the errors made by most Filipino students. In spite of the knowledge of English of the Filipino, there are times that most students make errors serious enough that a Filipino English teacher can hardly...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Yuehe Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Shangluo Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. As I prepare to return to China for my second ESL journey, I find myself reflecting on some of the problems that I noted which Chinese ESL learners experienced. Below is a description of several of the challenges encountered at an English training centre. Chinese scholars are drilled at school in grammar and vocabulary. Many students had large vocabularies, and some...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Zhaoling Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Xianyang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. For this task I have selected Korea as a choice for some students having difficulty learning. Korea is one of the countries investing a lot in the field of English education. Also, results achieved by Korean students on the TOEFL test improved by 10 points over the past six years. However, there still seems to be less proficient skills in writing and speaking in...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Liulin Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Bazhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. In such a vast country, several factors interfere in the completion or even attendance to education in a second language. There are many variables, both political and linguistic, to be considered and seen as milestones to get by in terms of learning. The educational system in Brazil has always been linked to political bias. Every four years since its independence, a...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiwangzhuang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Zaozhuang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Teaching online is quite a different process than teaching in a classroom, and this is true for teaching English as a Foreign Language as well. When approaching this form of teaching, it is important to be aware of what activities will not work for online teaching, and which ones will. It is also important to be aware of the time and effort needed by the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences For this task, I have selected Korea as a choice for some students having difficulty learning. Korea is one of the countries investing a lot in the field of English education. Also, results achieved by Korean students on the TOEFL test improved by 10 points over the past six years. However, there still seems to be less proficient skills in writing and speaking in English. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Heejeong K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When I taught teenage students in Korea, I watched them being reluctant or struggling to speak and write in English even though they had more than average scores in reading and listening tests. I think this problem has...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Several surveys, such as EF (Education First), have shown that France has the worst English level in the European Union. We shall explain, firstly, why French students have problems in learning English and what these problems are. Then, secondly, we shall share solutions to these problems. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Mohamed S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Indeed, the difficulties that French students face are not recent but have deeper origins which are historical. As you may know, there has been a rivalry between the French and the English dating back to the Hundred Years War (1337-1453,) when the two countries fought to achieve succession to the French...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Sunzhen Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Binzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Having seen Thailand being ranked 64th globally and 16th in Asia in the EF English Proficiency Index 2018, it triggered me to look back on how most Thai students including me learned English in schools. Based on my experience as a student who studied English both in a bilingual-programme private school and a Thai government school, plus my experience working at Wall...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas For the past four years, I have worked in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) of English. Before this, I had limited experience operating in a conventional classroom, teaching young learners. I trained adults who were self-motivated and designed curricula for vocation institutions. Now, outside of my expertise, here I am teaching at a junior high school – my base school and an elementary school. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Aeika P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The city in which I live is very rural, farming and fishing are traditional careers; and while there is an increase in tourists numbers, more international...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Having seen Thailand being ranked 64th globally and 16th in Asia in the EF English Proficiency Index 2018, it triggered me to look back on how most Thai students including me learned English in schools. Based on my experience as a student who studied English both in a bilingual-program private school and a Thai government school, plus my experience working at Wall Street English and Shrewsbury International School, I would like to group the major problems for Thai learners into 3 main topics, i.e. the quality of the teachers, the teaching approach and the attitude of the students towards English. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Pannee W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Being able to communicate in English is probably one of the most beneficial things anybody in the world could be able to do today, especially if you are wanting to work, or simply explore in any field on the international level. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Meara B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. It is one of the most widely spoken languages and one of the fastest-growing in the entire world. So much in fact that in many countries English is a required academic course in their school curriculum, sometimes starting from as young as the age of 5 and carrying through to college. I believe that one reason for this, and possibly the biggest one out there, is the...  [Read more]