Here is a situation:

You have two students who want to learn English, considering both have good knowledge of English grammar but can't speak English at all. One speaks Spanish and other speaks Japanese. Teaching which one is more difficult than other? As I am working in Japan so I can explain about Japanese learners only.

Japanese student learning English :
1. Teacher has to work on his accent as he has monotonous rhythm.
2. Japanese language has fewer sounds than English. Therefore student needs to learn new sounds which are used in English.
3. Sentence order in Japanese is different from English.
4. Japanese has adopted some English words but changed them into "Japanese-English". For example "Computer" is spoken as "Kaampyutaa". Again, teacher needs to work hard to have his student use correct sound of English words.

Spanish student learning English :
- ?
- ?
- ?

I am sorry I don't know anything about Spanish language. The question may be a little different e.g. Japanese student Vs German student. But I don't know German either.

Could anybody please help me to explain the difference?

Thanks in advance!

Thank you so much dear Mister Micawber!
As you have mentioned about your experience with Japanese students, could you please tell me more about the problems they face while learning English? Currently I am working in Japan but I am not a Japanese and I have only one year experience of teaching so far.
Thanks again for your help!
I am looking forward to know more about your experience.

meg,

What does 1. mean?

The teacher has to work on their own accent? or they have to work on the students' accent?

The question overall is a little unclear. Teaching which one would be difficult in what sense? What would you be teaching them? Why would you want to draw a comparison between the two?

However, I might hazard a guess that it is more difficult to teach a student when you are unattuned to their L1 system. I say this because, when we understand the L1 system of our students we can more readily understand some of the reasons they make mistakes or encode language in the way that they do because of intereference from their L1 system.

In this way, we can anticipate errors and also consciously avoid helping the students fossilize language through applying various strategies that accomodate common patterns in the students learning preferences.

Arguably, this could be negligable if say you had a good rapport and personal understanding of both students.

Hello meg2589 and all,
I almost exclusively teach Spanish students, with the exception of some American students who are learning Spanish but this is a different story. I can tell you the most common mistakes and difficulties that we, Spanish people, find when studying English.
The first problem that you mention is the 'false cognates' which we call 'false friends': they are similarly written words or expressions that have different meanings in both languages. The funniest example I can give is 'to be constipated', which I'm sure you know the meaning. Well, in Spanish we have 'constipado' which means to have a cold: not at all the same meaning
The overuse of articles is also a problem. But students learn the rules of when to use it and when not.
As for more grammar mistakes:
- 'Auxiliary verbs': there is no such thing in Spanish, so a lot of emphasis must be put on the use of them. A useful and popular exercise is to change an affirmative sentence to negative and interrogative.
-Third person singular s in the Present Simple: Even with 18-year-old students, we still have this problem. They simply skip it and we, teachers, must put a lot of emphasis in this simple aspect of grammar.
-Adjectives: 'they have no plural form'. I repeat this sentence thousands of times and they don't catch it. This doesn't happen in Spanish: adjectives have gender and number, unlike English. The same happens with the order: in Spanish they usually go after the noun, not before it.
-Speaking of order...: Word order in a sentence. In Spanish it's much more free, but in English is more fixed. Another point to be taken into account if they want to be understood. Common mistakes are, for example, Said the teacher that would give we more homework which should be The teacher said that he would give us more homework Do you see what I mean?
Well, the list would go on and on, but I'm giving you some examples. I don't know if you were looking for this. If I'm right, feel free to ask for more, and I'll post more examples of common mistakes Spanish students make.

See you.

Ha ha, yes it's very funny. I've just remembered something that happened to a friend of mine when living in London. She run out of batteries for her walkman and she went to a shop to buy some. But she didn't know the word in English for this. We, Spanish people, think that everyone can understand us, no matter if they speak Spanish or not. So, she asked the shop assistant for some "piles" which is very similar to our word for batteries ("pilas"). I can picture her saying: "Please, I need piles, you know, for my walkman". I can also picture in my mind the assistant's puzzled face. Ha, ha
I know so many people living now in England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, etc, that I have some very funny stories about misunderstandings in another language, but the funniest for me was this one.

See you