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Essay / English as a Second Language in China - 648
In contemporary society, English, which is studied as a second language, has become an international language. China is a typical example of the popularity of English around the world. Specifically, Chinese students even study English in their primary school. Due to their different cultures, histories and religions, the Chinese and English languages have a multitude of differences. Chinese students have enormous difficulty learning English. An ESL instructor, to successfully teach Chinese students, must understand these profound differences in pronunciation, writing, and grammar. When Chinese students learn a new vocabulary item, they always try to pronounce it correctly. However, the completely different pronunciations lead students to make many mistakes. First, in Chinese, a word has one syllable, but a word can be pronounced separately in several syllables in English. Second, there are four tones and one toneless tone, and each word contains only one tone in Chinese. If the tone changes, the meaning of the word will change. H...