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  • [VoiceTube ProTip: 4 Common English Problems I See in Taiwanese Students.]

  • Hello, everyone, I am the director of education at Easee Globe.

  • And I'm here today to talk to you about common things an English teacher might come across in Taiwan and how we solved it.

  • First, I would like to talk to you about grammar.

  • I know you don't like it.

  • English grammar's crazy.

  • WHY?

  • And I know you understand it.

  • But the problem is using it.

  • So, a couple of mistakes we see a lot.

  • No s's on verbs.

  • Did you know that "s" is our favorite letter?

  • We love the sound of s's.

  • Where are your s's?

  • Also, "-ed"

  • Chinese doesn't have past tense, but English does.

  • And we really need to hear that sound, or else it hurts my ears when you're talking.

  • I don't understand what you're saying.

  • Number 2, English grammar.

  • Yeah, we just talked about it, more?

  • I know!

  • So English grammar's really hard.

  • All of my students say "I want really long beautiful sentences!"

  • We don't talk like that.

  • Americans, we're lazy.

  • We use "S.", "V.", "O."

  • "subject", "verb", "object"

  • Who is doing the action?

  • What are they doing?

  • And what is the object of the action?

  • So, easy, "S.", "V.", "O."

  • Number 3, Common words.

  • So many students tell me they need so many words.

  • How many words are in Chinese?

  • How many words are in English?

  • Thousands and thousands.

  • You'll never learn them all.

  • But every day, we only use a few thousand words.

  • Three, maybe four, maybe five thousand words.

  • Grammar words, verbs, mostly.

  • After that, it's a bunch of nouns you'll never need.

  • So study the most common words.

  • Part number 4.

  • There are three or four different steps to learning a language that are critical.

  • Input.

  • You have to listen and read English to learn it.

  • But you also need output.

  • You have to say English to learn it.

  • And number 3, critically important is frequency.

  • Don't quit, keep going, keep going, keep going.

  • Another really important part at Easee Globe, as we take into consideration, is the difference between students' needs and students' wants.

  • Most students know what they want, but they don't understand what they need.

  • There is a real difference between needs and wants.

  • And what do I mean by this?

  • The student would come to you and say,"I want, as a student, business English.", "I want grammar.", "I want pronunciation."

  • I have this goal, and I'm gonna hire a teacher to walk me across a bridge.

  • But it doesn't work like that because the goal and the needs are the same.

  • It's more like building a building, like Taipei 101.

  • You have to build on it, layer by layer.

  • Fluency comes from frequency.

  • You have to get the input.

  • What can you do?

  • At home, you can read the newspaper in English.

  • You can listen to the news, BBC.

  • You can watch TV.

  • This is frequency.

  • There is also a process involved.

  • So, it's one layer by one layer.

  • You can't just say, "OK, I'm gonna build the bridge and then be better at English."

  • Because it doesn't work like that.

  • Also, you have to give me your opinion.

  • The output part.

  • When your teacher asks you a question, or when I ask a student a question, and they say, "yes.", they say "no".

  • That's not practicing.

  • That's not building fluency.

  • In the USA, when I ask my friend, "Hey, what do you think about Barack Obama?"

  • He's not going to say, "I don't know."

  • He's going to say, "I think this, this, this. Because, because, because..."

  • These are perfect opportunities to practice your English.

  • That's all I have for today, guys.

  • Thanks, and see us again.

[VoiceTube ProTip: 4 Common English Problems I See in Taiwanese Students.]

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