Common Pitfalls an ESL Student Faces and How to Overcome Them
Making your protégés powerful communicators by teaching them how to get beyond greetings and pleasantries.
By Tom Duda
Teaching ESL is a beautiful and rewarding experience. When an instructor witnesses his learners grow from the point of not being able to speak at all, to people who can actually communicate their thoughts in English, it is thrilling to say the least. Yet, many of the English learners that I met outside of my classroom had extensive vocabularies, were able to pass written exams, and were able to hold a simple conversation. However, when a conversation turned a bit more complex or deep, there were misunderstandings and various types of miscommunication. I experienced this same type of situation when I was the foreigner living in another land, trying to communicate in a second language. For instance, I often asked for directions and ended up in a strange part of the city. Or, if asked for an item in the supermarket, I would find myself holding a chicken when I thought I had asked for bread. These experiences caused me to have both a sympathy and a respect for people learning English as a second language, and their subsequent efforts to communicate in English. Consequently, I always try to raise my English pupils to a level above the greetings and pleasantries aspect of English, while working to make them powerful communicators. I wanted them not only to go through the motions of speaking English, but to have the ability to communicate complex thoughts and avoid unnecessary pitfalls when communicating with a native speaker.
Avoid Overcorrection
One must keep in mind that in the classroom, an instructor must correct his pupils' mistakes. However, there is the danger of overcorrection. This is bad for two reasons. First, it can make a person feel uncomfortable and/or embarrassed in front his fellow classmates. These feelings will cause some learners to quit speaking in class. A language learner must speak to learn. Secondly, it can make one lose his train of thought. An effective method for correcting, but not overcorrecting my pupils is to actively take notes while they are speaking. Generally, I will see a trend and/or some common mistakes. To offer this feedback, I either allot time in class, or have occasional, brief one-on-one conferences to help learners understand and correct their mistakes.
Most Common ESL Pitfalls
Here is my list of the nine most common errors I find with English learners from a variety of backgrounds. They are not in any particular order because the order of importance varies from student to student. Taking an active role to point out and correct these common pitfalls will help your English pupils move to a new, higher level of communication.
1. Countable and Uncountable Nouns
Words like money, wisdom, love, and jewelry are all nouns, but they can create great confusion for the non-native speaker. One may say that “an album contained many photo of my trip”, or “the electrician has lots of equipments.” When he really meant to say “the album contains many photos of my trip” and “the electrician has lots of equipment.” One reason for the confusion is because non-native speakers may not recognize the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. It will help your learners if you define a countable noun simply as "something that someone can count." Dog, book, day, hour, all of these nouns are countable. Here are a few tips for the use of articles, plurals etc. with a countable noun. Uncountable nouns are abstract, they "cannot be divided or counted." For example, one cannot count water, happiness, or food. The tricky part here is that one can count glasses of water or trays of food. I suggest you look at these tips before teaching your English language learners about these quirky words. Errors with countable and uncountable nouns can be overcome, but it takes continual practice. After telling you earlier in this article to avoid overcorrection, I am going to say here that with these nouns, consistent correction is paramount because memorizing the rules just does not give a student a solid methodology for using these words.
2. Incorrect or Missing Article
Three little words can certainly cause confusion for the English learner. Actually, there are only two articles in English. A, which is used before a consonant sound, and an, which is used before a vowel sound. A/An are indefinite articles because one is not speaking about any one particular object. Then we have the definite article: the. The is used when one is speaking about a noun in particular. A learner may wish to talk about how much he enjoys "seeing a beautiful sunrise,” but it will often come out as, “I seen the beautiful sunrise” I try to explain that there were many beautiful sunrises in the past and there will be many more in the future. We are not talking about one thing in particular. Here, again, writing and speaking repetition is the only way to overcome this flaw.
3. Preposition Error
Prepositions, like articles, are such little words, but they can cause such big problems! Time confusion, such as on March or in Monday, is quite common. Similarly, prepositions of location are confusing for those who are learning English. Often they say they are "going from my house,” when they mean they are leaving their house, and heading to somewhere else. In the case of prepositions, I have found that teaching expressions and idioms is most helpful. As pupils hear and memorize set expressions, such as "I am in Starbucks, I am at Starbucks, or I am going to Starbucks" they begin to incorporate the proper prepositions into their everyday communication.
4. Repeated Subject
Learners of English love it when they learn pronouns. They are somewhat easy to wrap one’s head around, as they exist in a majority of languages. However, the trouble begins when trying to explain that the subject of a sentence should not be repeated in pronoun form when in it is the same sentence. For example, “My ESL teacher he is very smart,” is not correct, but is definitely a sentence my pupils would use. In my experience, this is a common mistake, but one that is generally pretty easy to correct. A few corrections, and asking the speaker to repeat the correct sentence after me, tends to fix the problem. Of course, repeatedly using the example, "My ESL teacher is very smart," makes them smile, but it also embeds it in their memories!
5. Wrong Verb Tense
Verb tenses are quite difficult to learn. Many languages do not view time as English speakers do, and of course, tenses are completely about how one perceives time. One may wish to say that he has waited for a long time (past perfect), yet he says it in the present tense: “I wait for long time" (did you notice the missing a? This is an article bonus!). So many students come to me and ask what they should do to learn the tenses. I always tell them not to memorize them. One really has to feel the way something is spoken, more like becoming comfortable with what sounds right when listening to the language. If someone has to think too much when communicating, the words will come out too slowly. As learners become more comfortable with the flow and sentence structure of the English language, they will begin to naturally identify right and wrong verb tenses. Watching TV shows and movies will help with listening to the flow of the language.
6. Irregular Verb Errors
When I teach students the simple past tense, I start by explaining that one forms the past tense of a verb by adding -ed to the regular form of the verb. This is when the verb is in the affirmative. If it is a verb in the negative and/or a question, one only has to use the base form of the verb. This seems doable until I pass out a list of irregular verbs. Memorizing these verbs didn't turn out to be a very good method for teaching new language learners. Additionally, I found that knowing when and how to use irregular verb forms is a problem that plagues non-native speakers until they are speak at an advanced level. Now I pass out that list and ask my students to memorize the verbs, but I follow it up with a tremendous amount of practice. Using irregular verbs is vital to learning how, when, and why to use them. I suggest orchestrating many special lessons to give your learners sufficient practice with irregular verbs.
7. Wrong Order of Adjectives
Language learners love adjectives. I always have to stop them from using too many in one sentence. Sometimes, even after my cautions, they just can't help but string a bunch of adjectives together because they are so excited to use their newly acquired knowledge. When they insist on doing this, capitalize on the situation by teaching them the proper sequential order. To the native speaker, this is natural, but English language learners need instruction in this art. Try teaching them this order: 1. Article (i.e. most) 2. Judgment (i.e. unfair) 3. Size (i.e. small) 4. Shape (i.e. round) 5. Age (i.e. modern) 6. Color (i.e. green) 7. Nationality (i.e. Dominican) 8. Material (i.e. stone). A student may say, “I just bought a German big silver new car.” Remind him of the adjective order, and he will correct himself by saying, "I just bought a big, new, silver German car."
This is the biggest hurdle for anyone trying to become fluent and understandable in a second language. Speaking with an accent is very frustrating for the speaker as well as his listener. It causes the most misunderstandings. Sometimes, speaking with an accent (at least in my opinion) makes one sound classy and/or well-traveled. Unfortunately, if the accent is such that one's listener can not understand what is being said, it becomes prohibitive. Furthermore, I have heard horror stories of discrimination where a person with an accent has been denied housing or employment. Accent reduction is complex, and there has actually been a fair amount of effort put into figuring out how to help a second-language speaker reduce his accent. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you read my previous article on accent reduction.
Helping the English Student Avoid Pitfalls
I hope this list helps teachers and students alike to identify and avoid common language-learning pitfalls. Knowledge and awareness concerning the most common mistakes that English learners make will give an instructor the arsenal he needs to help his students succeed. Over the years, I have seen teachers avoid teaching some of the more difficult second-language topics to their pupils; but in my opinion, this is a huge disservice. Nothing is more gratifying to a teacher than having a protégé advance from a complete neophyte to someone who can communicate with power. That is why we teach; not for money, but for the legacy we leave behind.