 Re: Top Ten Errors
As the posts indicate, there are universals like articles and plurals. There are also problems that come in at the lower levels because of direct translation. For example, low level Japanese speakers of English tend to use the present progressive far too much, because it's often used in Japanese. But even at higher levels, the errors that students make tend to result from their native language.
Then there's culture to consider. How much of the students' culture gets translated (or mistranslated) into English? For example, Japanese are often accused of being indirect by Westerners, because of the whole upsetting the harmony thing. Wouldn't this also be an error of language, albeit a slightly different one, because one needs to understand the culture that goes along with langauge? |