Tag: ELT Articles and Research Papers

English remains an often confusing and difficult language to learn (and teach!) for many reasons. The common “gap” between how a word is spelled and how it sounds is one challenge. Another source of confusion and many headaches remains the surprisingly large number of homonyms and homophones, different words with the same sound. Just as computer speech software programs like Siri on the iPhone find it difficult to distinguish the number 2 from the preposition “to” from the word “too”, so do many listeners.

Some English students make learning English even more difficult by expecting themselves to speak “perfect”, with “no accent” just like ” a real native English speaker.” May I suggest that this noble goal is both very difficult to achieve – especially for adults – and often even unwise.

THE teacher who corrects your correspondent’s awful Mandarin is soft-spoken, authoritative and far away. Thanks to Skype, you can have face-to-face lessons with native speakers of more or less any language without stirring from your chair. Technology may one day make language-learning redundant (see article); meanwhile, it makes it easier.