ENGLISH GRAMMAR ASPECTS THAT ARE DIFFICULT FOR SPEAKERS OF CHINESE
Chinese-speaking students often struggle with English grammar because the two languages encode grammatical meaning in fundamentally different ways. English depends heavily on fixed word order, obligatory articles, auxiliary verbs, and a rich tense-aspect system, while Mandarin Chinese is an analytic language with minimal inflection, no articles, and no verb conjugation for tense or agreement. In Chinese, temporal reference is typically expressed through context, time adverbs, or aspect markers such as le, zhe, and guo, rather than through changes in verb form, and grammatical relationships are largely determined by word order and discourse context rather than morphology. Consequently, many distinctions that English marks overtly—such as tense, aspect, subject-verb agreement, and definiteness—are not grammatically encoded in Chinese. As a result, Chinese learners of English often have difficulty with verb tense and aspect (especially past tense and perfect forms), the use of articles (a, an, the), auxiliary verbs (do, be, have), subject-verb agreement, plural marking, and the appropriate use of prepositions. Here's a list of common trouble spots:
ARTICLES
Chinese has no article system at all, so learners often omit articles or use them randomly.
Examples:
❌ I bought car yesterday.
✅ I bought a car yesterday.
❌ Teacher gave us homework.
✅ The teacher gave us homework.
VERB TENSE & INFLECTION (ESP. PAST TENSE)
Chinese verbs do not change form for tense; time is expressed through context or particles.
Examples:
❌ Yesterday I go to school.
✅ Yesterday I went to school.
❌ She eat lunch already.
✅ She has eaten lunch already.
PLURAL MARKING
Plurality in Chinese is often optional or inferred from context.
Examples:
❌ Three student are waiting.
✅ Three students are waiting.
❌ She has many problem.
✅ She has many problems.
SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT
Since Chinese verbs don't change by person or number, agreement feels unnecessary.
Examples:
❌ He go to work every day.
✅ He goes to work every day.
❌ She don't like coffee.
✅ She doesn't like coffee.
COPULA 'BE' (MISSING OR OVERUSED)
Chinese often omits a copula or uses it differently.
Examples:
❌ She very smart.
✅ She is very smart.
❌ He is like coffee.
✅ He likes coffee.
COUNTABLE & UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS
Chinese uses measure words, not countability distinctions like English.
Examples:
❌ Two breads
✅ Two pieces of bread
❌ Many furniture
✅ A lot of furniture
WORD ORDER
Chinese typically follows time → place → verb, which conflicts with English patterns.
Examples:
❌ I yesterday in the library studied.
✅ I studied in the library yesterday.
❌ She tomorrow will go Beijing.
✅ She will go to Beijing tomorrow.
PREPOSITIONS
Chinese often expresses relationships without prepositions.
Examples:
❌ I look you
✅ I look at you
❌ She arrived school early
✅ She arrived at school early
RELATIVE CLAUSES
Chinese relative clauses come before the noun, leading to heavy or awkward English structures.
Example:
❌ The I yesterday met man is my teacher.
✅ The man (who) I met yesterday is my teacher.
OVERUSE OF SIMPLE SENTENCES
Because complex clause marking is different in Chinese, learners often rely on short, sequential sentences.
Example:
❌ I was tired. I still finished the work. It was difficult.
✅ Although I was tired, I still finished the difficult work.
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