Common mistakes in English – for Chinese speakers

This article is about some of the typical problems Chinese speakers have with writing English both in IELTS and general English. The idea is to underline the importance in the checking process in IELTS writing and suggest ways of making that process as efficient as possible. One of the best ways to do this to be aware of the problems you have because of your own language background.

The idea

This is a brief summary why it is important to be aware of your language background in IELTS:

  1. In writing, it is important to check for mistakes.
  2. If you check for everything, you may find nothing – especially in IELTS where time is short.
  3. A solution – make a list of your specific problems
  4. If you check for a specific problem, you are much more likely to find it and correct it. There are 2 steps: know your mistakes and have your practical way of identifying them and correcting them.
  5. One specific problem you are likely to have comes from your first language

For more detail on this, see my overview on the editing process.

Some specific Chinese language speaker problems.

Please note that this list is by no means complete Chinese and English are very different languages: rather these are problems that many of my Chinese speaking students have had and I would personally identify as high priority;
  • Articles number and countable and uncountable
  • Word order – particularly in question forms and with adverbs
  • Passives
  • Time and tense
  • Parts of speech

Quiz

<a href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act88499/mini/go/common_chinese_mistakes” mce_href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act88499/mini/go/common_chinese_mistakes”>common_chinese_mistakes</a>

This is a quiz adapted from mistakes made by some of my Chinese language learners – it is designed to illustrate some of their more common problems. Try it for yourself, but the main point is to identify the mistakes you make personally and check for those mistakes.


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4 Responses to Common mistakes in English – for Chinese speakers

  1. Aiping December 21, 2010 at 9:08 am #

    Hey Mr Cole,
    Thank you so much for all the helpful materials.

    Could you do me a favour to supply more materials about general writings?

    Thank you in advance

    Aiping

    Reply
    • Dominic Cole December 21, 2010 at 12:30 pm #

      No problem. What are you interested in? Letters?

      Reply
  2. Tina October 7, 2011 at 3:37 pm #

    Hi Mr Cole

    Could you do a tutorial about listening section 3 and 4? How to work on these parts in an exam situation? I totally can catch all the details if I just listening. However, I found the time for reading questions in section 4 is too short to go over all the questions. This makes me always cannot pay full attention on listening when I do the question and listening at the same time, always miss pieces of information when I reading. Sometimes, miss one sentence makes me cannot follow the whole story. Also, the questions cannot be followed with write answer.

    Do you have any suggestion on hoes to work on these teo sections? Especially the section 4, which has 10 questions and long multiple questions and options. I just cannot finish them well in the short given reading time. Am I wrong to trybto finish them before listening?

    Thanks
    Tina

    Reply
    • Dominic Cole December 8, 2011 at 8:53 pm #

      I need to do more listening. I shall see what I can do.

      Reply

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