I am writing this while on vacation with my family in Europe. Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. So hot, but so many beautiful places. We’re a group of 13 with varying levels of English. Everyone speaks Mandarin. The incident that got me thinking about the difficulty of learning English involves my daughter who is getting ready for the Cambridge A2 Key exam, and my second oldest son, who is getting ready for B2 First. While out sightseeing, my daughter bought a souvenir for 3 Euro. The clerk gave her 2 Euro change rather than 7, and she was quite upset when she realised a minute or two later. My wife asked me to go with her to the cash register and ask for the extra 5 Euro, but I insisted that she first tries on her own and I will watch from a distance. Easy because they look Asian, and I don’t so it isn’t always clear I am the father.
Anyway, my son offered to help, and for a few minutes, the exchange was fascinating. The clerk was frustrated because he lacked the English ability to ask for greater clarification or explain why they couldn’t give her the 5 Euro, and my children lacked the ability to negotiate much other than state what had happened. After a minute or two of communication and trial and error, the manager just gave them 5 Euro, and they were happy.
Now, I am 100% sure they did make a mistake and she did pay with a 10, but as I explained to my wife later, if I intervened initially, it generates a language power dynamic that is overpowering, while with the two of them, it is helpless, and people are more likely to help what they perceive as helpless. But it also made me consider what exactly it is that creates that power dynamic and what makes English easy or difficult in terms of communication and learning.
The argument for difficult
Consider these words: tough, though, through, thought, thorough, cough, and bough.
Wow, each one sounds different. For learners of English, this must be an absolute daunting experience. Especially if they are from environments where the written system is completely phonetic, which could be most of your students. Korean, Spanish, Arabic, etc. There are those whose L1 is not phonetic in terms of writing, like Mandarin Chinese, but then surely the amount of spelling exceptions makes English impossible, right? Not to even mention silent letters. Why not just remove them if they are silent. Surely ‘iland’ is easier to remember than island? Surely color is better than colour (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Now consider these sentences, particularly the words in bold.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
When she saw the tear in her painting, she shed a tear.
What? The same word is pronounced in two different ways, and you even have a name for it? Heteronyms. Do teachers even know this word?
Now think about phrasal verbs. And idioms. It is a minefield and mountain of things to memorise before you can even begin to call yourself capable, right? Then add historical leftovers that don’t really make sense. Drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? Cargo on a ship and a shipment in a car?
And suddenly you feel like it is just a mountain too steep to climb.
The argument for easy
Now, let’s look at the other side, and some opposing arguments to the points above.
If you ignore the L1 of your learner, and just think about different languages, English is easier because:
Nouns have no gender.
Adjectives don’t have to change to describe different nouns.
While verb conjugation is a pain, it is significantly easier than many other languages.
Spelling rules: While the examples above are true, the vast majority of words do follow very set pronunciation and spelling rules. Cake, bake, retake, take, make, remake all have the same sound for the letter ‘a.’ The word ‘have’ doesn’t. OK, one exception. Neither do palace or furnace. Fair enough, but the stress doesn’t fall on the ‘a’ as they do in the most other words. What about retake, and remake. Fair point, and rather than venture into a 500-word explanation, I did say vast majority.
While phrasal verbs are ridiculously difficult, prepositional verbs (which are often just grouped together with phrasal verbs) really are not difficult. And then add delexicalized verbs and they’re even easier.
Last point for it’s easy would simply be that your learners, or you if you are a learner, are already surrounded by or somewhat immersed in English. And the amount of loan words across languages or the similarity of new words that are just transferred like email, or selfie makes English available in some form pretty much all over. Add the internet, and movies, and music, and suddenly you realise how much English there actually is around us.
What can we learn from this
When you as a proficient user or native speaker engage with people who do not speak English, they automatically become fearful if they feel they might not understand or communicate well. As a participant in the conversation or interaction, it is your responsibility to make sure communication is effective. But how?
Swap idioms and phrasal verbs for ‘plain verbs’ where possible. For example, change ‘Let’s call off the meeting and touch base next week’ with ‘Let’s cancel the meeting and talk next week.’
Stick to the same noun or term throughout. For example, don’t change between ‘proposal,’ ‘draft,’ ‘plan,’ and ‘paperwork’ because it makes it more difficult to follow.
Give the listener time to think and respond. Don’t fill time.
Use visual anchor points or the things around you.
Back to the original
I cannot recall the exact conversation my son and daughter had with the clerk, but it went something like this.
‘She bought this (showing the object) and gave you ten. It’s 3 dollars, and you gave her 2 dollars. You must give her 5 more.’
And imagine if it was a ‘native speaker.’ ‘My younger sister bought a fridge magnet roughly 5 minutes ago. The displayed price is 3 Euros. She paid with a 10 Euro note, but the change you gave her was only 2 Euros, meaning you shortchanged her by 5 Euros.’
Do you see the difference? That’s lesson 1.
And lesson 2 for me. Sometimes when your students are trying to negotiate meaning or figure something out, stay away. Just let them get on with it. They might be more successful at negotiating and establishing meaning or a result than you.
Looking forward
I think those two lessons really speak for themselves. So often when we think about communicating in English, we think from the learner’s point of view. We should sometimes also consider ourselves. Are our instructions clear? Is the purpose to communicate and is that communication effective both inside the classroom and outside? How can we let our learners experience that kind of communication inside the classroom? Regardless of whether English is easy or hard, reflecting on these questions can help us all move forward.
