Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

Username

ydnews9

Member Since

January 16, 2019

Total number of comments

1

Total number of votes received

5

Bio

Latest Comments

In my experience of tutoring Asian students on how to write the basic, four-page, college-level analysis paper (aka "bonehead English" as required for all graduating from the University of California, etc.), the biggest difference between Asian and English/European languages is SYNTAX.
As we use it in both English and European languages, syntax provides the purpose of constructing a sentence/phrase with a concept of order. Example: The brown dog jumped over the fence to chase a blue ball. Some European languages place adjectives after the noun, but the basic syntax is still noun/verb with modifiers such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. So although the words are different in English and European tongues, the concept of a sentence is the same. Not so for the Asians. I am not fluent in any Asian language, but helped dozens of Asian-first/English-second speakers pass required college writing courses by focusing on sentence structure and emphasizing how they needed to use it to make points in essay-style writing. Perhaps someone else can better explain this from an Asian-speaker's point of view. I only can say what worked from my view as a college writing tutor while helping mostly math and engineering majors learn to construct proper sentences and graduate with Univ. of Calif. bachelors' degrees.