Woodward  +  1708 Fri, 04 Jul 03 03:36 PM What areas of ENGLISH do you think are the most difficult to learn? What areas of GRAMMAR are the most difficult for you to learn? Woodward Joined on Tue, Jun 24 2003 A New Zealander in Chile Senior Member 2,747 Don't let schooling interfere with your education. www.grammar.cl - www.vocabulary.cl Grammar

	Woodward  +  1839 Tue, 08 Jul 03 04:48 PM Also teachers...... What areas do you think your students have most difficulties with? Woodward

	Svetlana  +  5185 Thu, 21 Aug 03 08:10 PM For me, learning words i.e. building up my vocabulary, (for GRE) is the toughest thing. But once you know the root of any word, it become easy to understand words which cognate, as one root is origin of many words. so, to make english easy, i think the roots of all words should be taught, in school itself Svetlana Joined on Sun, Aug 17 2003 India New Member 03 Vocabulary

	Woodward  +  5187 Thu, 21 Aug 03 08:20 PM Thanks Svetlana , Do you have any problems with the pronunciation of the new words? Woodward

	Elena  +  5246 Fri, 22 Aug 03 08:10 AM Listening comprehension is a weak point and secondly to fix in my mind/pronuntation the rules like assimilation, elision, liasion and so to be able to talk fluenty, not cutting the sentences , not because of extremely difficult but painstaking work. I think the solution must be the continue use rather than the learning by sounds like /ksO/ becoming /ksOr/ and so. Fixing new vocabulary is problematic too and the pronuntation too and of course the correct accent.......people know I am Spansih even when I speak English in Norway :( No problems with any Grammar area. Elena Joined on Thu, Jul 31 2003 Regular Member 827 Enjoying my English study Accents, Vocabulary, Grammar, Speak English

	geebeens  +  5274 Fri, 22 Aug 03 02:40 PM As a teacher, my students have difficulty with tenses which don't exist in their language - for example, present perfect. Learning vocab is always a matter of memorising unfortunately, and jokes and colloquialisms are also very difficult. I sometimes feel like a really bad stand-up comedienne when my 'jokes' in class fall flat. (smile) As a student (I've had to learn 3 different languages in the last 8 years) speaking is the hardest thing to do, no matter how good my grammar is. My students HATE speaking English, so I make sure that I have activities in class where they can't get out of it! I, however, try to avoid speaking in my bad foreign accent at all times. I'm such a wuss. geebeens Joined on Wed, Aug 20 2003 Junior Member 53 Accents, Grammar, Jokes, Speaking English, Tenses, Present Perfect, Colloquialisms

	Woodward  +  5276 Fri, 22 Aug 03 03:19 PM Elena, thanks for your reply. Geebeens, That is sometimes a problem for me too. I love to make jokes and have fun in class though as you say, every now and then one of the jokes falls flat and there's nothing worse than after having had to explain the joke, they still don't get it. There's no perfect tense in Portuguese? Do they always use the past tense instead? Woodward Jokes, Tenses, Past Tenses

	geebeens  +  5311 Fri, 22 Aug 03 09:48 PM Yup, although I don't want to say I'm an expert on Portuguese - I'm still learning (badly and slowly). They have, I think, past simple (preterito perfeito) and preterito imperfeito, which is the same as in spanish I think. And probably French too. And I have trouble working out which past tense to use - so I usually use both and hope that someone will correct me! There are rules but as I said I'm learning badly and slowly. So teaching present perfect can be tricky (I haven't yet, but we've had some workshops and other teachers here have told me various ways of doing it, so - fingers crossed.) For example, the sentence "We have been here for 3 weeks" translates as "Nos estamos aqui por tres semanas" which literally translated would be 'we were here for 3 weeks'. You see? geebeens Tenses, Past Tenses, Past Simple, Present Perfect

	maj  +  5312 Fri, 22 Aug 03 09:55 PM In Spanish it would be the same "hemos estado aqui durante tres semanas". But there are other uses which are completely different. maj Joined on Mon, Mar 31 2003 Senior Member 4,756