verbs

1. Difficulties in English learning
The word verb is used to describe an action, occurrence or state. The Verbs form the most
important parts of the sentence since it describes something about a subject of a given sentence.
In this regard, the verbs have to be correctly used in order to bring out the intended meaning
(Juiland 6). The English verb system poses certain difficulties to learners of English.
a) Difficulties posed by English learners as a result of English verb system
One of the difficulties experienced by the learners is the inability to determine the right verb
to express a certain idea. It is extremely difficult for them to decide on the type of tense that is
supposed to be used in relation to the time the action took place. The action could have taken
place in the past, in the present, or in the future. This calls for use of different tenses such as past,
present or future tenses when describing the actions (Miendt 200). The learners are hence unable
to correctly use them due to their inexperience in the use and meaning. The difficulty can be
avoided by extensive reading in order for a learner to get used to tenses, as well as, continuous
practice and use of English in everyday life.
The other difficulty is poor formation of the verb string. There are some sentences that have a
complicated structure. For example, a single string may comprise of auxiliaries and principles, as
well as, a modal verb. The learners are unable to collect the parts of the string and put them in
the correct order. This makes the learners use them incorrectly thereby distorting meaning. Multi
–word verbs also pose great difficulties to the learners. These difficulties present themselves both
in grammatical form and lexical meaning. Due to the fact that the verbs have more than one
meaning, the learners have difficulty in interpreting the meaning where the same phrase is used
in different contexts. These challenges can be overcomed by use of simple sentences that are

2. easy to understand, as well as, making sure the learners understand the various meanings of each
verb (Leech 11).
b) Specific difficulties in English pronunciation
The Chinese learners have difficulty in pronouncing English words correctly, as well as,
reading English texts. This is because the Chinese words are not made up of letters as in the case
of English where there are alphabets. The Chinese also have difficulty in stress and intonation.
Since certain English phonemes do not exist in Chinese, it becomes difficult to pronounce these
words properly, as difference in meaning is often distinguished by the pitch of the phoneme
sound in Chinese language. It is important to note that phoneme sounds in English are used to
give different meaning to the sound (Llurda 102).
The Chinese has fewer vowels than English. This therefore makes it difficult for them to
pronounce words such as sheep, eat or it, fool or deer among others. The learners mostly shorten
the words into one vowel hence unable to bring out the meaning clearly. The Chinese also have
difficulties in differentiating [l]and [r] in their pronunciations. They, therefore misspell words
such as love, rice, road among others (Richard 99).
The learners also have difficulties in pronouncing the final consonants in English. They
add an extra vowel or fail to pronounce the consonant (Davis 106). This is because this feature is
not common in Chinese. A good example is words such as hill or hall that are spelt without
double [ll] and instead spelt with a drawn out [l].
In conclusion, it is clear that the English language learners are faced with several
difficulties. These difficulties have been identified and learners are being assisted on how to
pronounce them correctly. The Chinese have specific difficulties due to huge difference between

3. Chinese and English. However, since the major mistakes have been identified it is possible to
assist the learners.
Works Cited
Barbieri, Maureen. Change my life forever. Giving voice to English- language
learners. portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002. Print.
Davis, Kathryn. Critical qualitative research in second language studies: agency and
advocacy. Charlotte: Information age pub, 2011. Print.
Hearly, Alice. Foreign language learning. Phycholinguistic studies on training and
retention London: Elbaum associates, 1998. Print.
Hua, zhu. The language and intercultural communication reader. London: Routledge, 2011.
Print.

4. Juiland, alphonse & James, Macris. The English verb system. The Hague: Morton, 1962. Print.
Leech, Geoffrey. Meaning and the English verb. London: Longman, 1961. Print
Llurda, Enrich. Non- native language teachers.perceptions, challenges and contribution to the
profession. New York: Springer, 2005. Print.
Miendt, Dieter. An empirical grammar of English verb system. Berlin: Cornelsen, 2000. Print.
Richard, Brian.vocabularies in first and second language acquisition. The interface between
theory and application. New York: Palgrave macmillan, 2009. Print.