The mistakes that nearly all learners make in the early stages are:
Omission of third person 's' in present simple *he go, instead of he goes
Regularising irregular verbs in the simple past *he goed instead of he went
Using no or not instead of don't / doesn't / didn't *I no go *He not see me
Getting word order wrong in embedded questions *Do you know where is Paul? instead of Do you know where Paul is?
Many pronunciation errors are specific to particular language groups. Speakers of Far Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai find it hard to pronounce /l/ and /r/ in the right place, hence all the 'flied lice' jokes.
Relatively few of the world's languages have the 'th' sounds in 'thing' and 'then', so you hear 'ting' and 'zen' very often.
I have never met a student that didn't at some point confuse 'kitchen' and 'chicken'.
More advanced learners are often unaware of the potential double meanings of what they say, so one of my students wrote 'I spent the summer travelling round Spain picking up fruits' when he meant just 'picking fruit' and another describing the appearance of a bride groom said 'he had a carnation in his bottom hole'.
What should they learn? Just to keep on keeping on - you cannot make progress without making mistakes, and you just have to be patient with yourself.
2007-12-31 02:55:09
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answer #1
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answered by vilgessuola 6
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Even though I originally spoke Russian, I learned English when I was like 4, so I couldn't say how it's sounds to me because I practically learned it as soon as I started communicating with my new American family. Put it this way. A French I students learns this level of french for 4 years, (I know that might seem REALLY slow) and then suddenly, in about 8 months, advances up to French 5. But I feel the Russian language sounds gruff, German sounds un-pleasant, and French and Italian sound beautiful. Please don't take what I said about the German language as offense. Because I think it's a great language to learn, it's just not the most pleasant sounding language.
2016-05-28 05:35:58
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answer #2
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answered by bev 3
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I think it depends on what their native language is - they will bring rules from that language and graft it onto English when they don't understand what to do! And sometimes their languages don't have sounds that we do - you hear jokes about this...like Germans have a hard time with voiceless 'th' like in 'thinking' it sounds like 'sinking' or Asian people have a hard time with 'r' and 'l' and 'w', French speakers don't have the 'th' either, or the 'dg' sound.
But I think orthography is really hard - because we don't spell anything like it sounds!
2007-12-31 03:09:46
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answer #3
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answered by an bhuil gaeilge agat? 3
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wrong pronunciation. Bad grammar. Very Bad intonations. To teach them starting to sing abc (like your 2 year old child) then read dictionary and follow how to use the word and how to say it right (follow the dict instructions). 5 words a day right after they woke up.
2007-12-31 02:36:55
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answer #4
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answered by john amalo 1
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As a transcriptionist I have to listen to foreign people all day. I think that the most common mistake I come across is that they don't pronounce certain letters correctly. For example they will say dank you instead of thank you or wolume instead of volume. It can be pretty confusing.
2007-12-31 02:32:43
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answer #5
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answered by The Crimson King 2
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Pronunciation of the words. Learn the sounds, and learn them well. Slow down on trying to speak in English as it is difficult to understand with an accent of any country.
Speak this until it is perfect:
The big black cow jumps over the moon.
Lip formation and mouth and jaw movement is important in pronunciation. Use a mirror and practice practice practice.
2007-12-31 02:30:30
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answer #6
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answered by Toffy 6
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The grammar. They tend to know the words but place them in the wrong order... using their own language as reference to the order the words should be in.
2007-12-31 02:29:21
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answer #7
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answered by Anonymous
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How to spell difficult words like envoriment
2007-12-31 02:28:57
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answer #8
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answered by parsamhmhpa 1
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It's not a Foreigner mistake in English it's the way English is setup that trips everyone up. English is the only Language that I know of that tells you about the thing before it tells you what it is. for example," THE GREEN CAR". perfect English but every other language tells you what it is first then describes it. for example Spanish, " The CAR GREEN" So when learning English remember we are backwards when describing things.
2007-12-31 02:28:25
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answer #9
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answered by Lance R 6
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they pronaunce, like "esteve" instead of "steve"
2007-12-31 02:26:41
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answer #10
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answered by mommy 2
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