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.
Why Asian English Speakers Are Hard to Understand
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.