EFL

EFL refers to the use or study of English by speakers with a different native language. Language teaching practice often assumes that most of the difficulties that learners face in the study of English are a consequence of the degree to which their native language differs from English. A native speaker of Chinese, for example, may face many more difficulties than a native speaker of German, because German is closely related to English, whereas Chinese is not. This may be true for anyone of any mother tongue setting out to learn any other language.
Language learners often produce errors of syntax and pronunciation, thought to result from the influence of their first language, such as mapping its grammatical patterns inappropriately onto the second language, pronouncing certain sounds incorrectly or with difficulty, and confusing items of vocabulary known as false friends. This is known as "language interference". However, these transfer effects are typically stronger for beginner's language production.
Some students may have very different cultural perceptions in the classroom as far as learning a second language is concerned. Also, cultural differences in communication styles and preferences are significant. For example, a study looked at Chinese EFL students and British teachers and found that the Chinese learners did not see classroom discussion and interaction as important but placed a heavy emphasis on teacher-directed lectures.

This is the last of our 5 languages in 5 days posts.

Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi is a standardised register of Hindustani identified with Hindus. It is one of the 22 official languages of India and is used as the primary official language of the Republic of India along with English. Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khariboli dialect.
The number of speakers of Standard Hindi is ambiguous. According to the 2001 Indian census, 258 million people in India regarded their native language to be "Hindi". However, this includes large numbers of speakers of Hindi dialects besides Standard Hindi.
The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is khariboli, the common language of the Delhi region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court." After independence, the Government of India set about standardizing Hindi as a separate language from Urdu.

Come back tomorrow for English as a foreign language

Chinese

The Sinitic languages, more broadly known as Chinese is a language family consisting of languages which are the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Over one billion people, about one-fifth of the world’s population, speaks some variety of Chinese as their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, rather than separate languages. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin which is spoken by about 850 million people.
Standard Chinese is a standardized form of spoken Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is influential among overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong(together with English).
Old Chinese, sometimes known as "Archaic Chinese", was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE–256 BCE), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artefacts and the poetry of the Shījīng. The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights.

Come back tomorrow for Portuguese.

You must be joking?

It’s interesting really, when you think about it. I think the importance of communication is often underplayed. Take a joke for example. A joke has the power to make people fall down in tears of laughter. It has the power to bring amazing happiness to those people that hear it, and we have such a fascination with jokes and laughter that we spend hours and hours of our lives watching comedy films and going to see stand up comedians- a good sense of humour is even something most people look for in a partner.
Yet, on the other side of the coin- jokes can often be misunderstood. People can be hurt, offended and even feel bullied by not understanding a joke. Interestingly, humour is something that a lot of people find very difficult to translate into a different language. This is because the things we find funny are not just the words themselves, but the common associations we have with them.
I suppose, in theory, it is possible to learn a language from a text book. I suppose that all a language really is, is a series of words in specific patterns and structures that could quite easily be portrayed in a book or on a website. How hard would it be to learn what to say? Then again, I think the skill lies in how to say it. Nothing compares to learning a language from a real breathing human being. Human beings possess all the appropriate word associations and feelings, not just to say the right things, but to make sense.
For example, if you found someone attractive, you could say “Your face is aesthetically adequate” and you never know, it may be well received- but I personally feel that a phrase like “your very pretty” would go down with more success.
Do not settle for merely being heard. Aim to be understood.

Its all in the accent

When attempting to perfect a new language, the pinnacle achievement is that of acquiring a genuine accent to go with it. Some accents, like the Australian for example, stand out quite significantly where as other accents, like a softly flowing Irish accent- are more subtle and harder to detect by those who do not know how. In truth, there are a vast amount of different accents, in every language. I can think of at least 9 different types of French accent, just of the top of my head.
Let us take a quick look at the British and American accents. Both are English (although there are those that disagree) but they sound drastically different. The reason for this is that they are spoken using different areas of the mouth. Americans don’t distinguish so much between different sounds and speak with the back of the mouth and the nose, where as the Brits speak with the front part of the mouth and the tongue, carefully articulating each sound.
It is really very normal to have an accent, as an accent is merely the way in which we use our mouths to pronounce words. The best way to pick up an accent is to “reverse engineer” it. Listen to a native speaker speaking your language and listen to the accent they have. For example- When English is your native language and you wish to learn how to speak German- listen to how a German person speaks English. You will notice that they speak very much with their breath- paying particular attention to letters “s” and “z”- When next speaking German, do the same and you shall find your accent improved.
The best way to pick up a genuine accent is to learn from a native speaker. Get in touch with Just Languages and give it a try.