• Contact: telw.delhi@gmail.com

Why Learning English is Difficult

  • Why Learning English is Difficult
  • /
  • Home

Why learning English is difficult

1. Translation

The most common difficulty the English learners face is they think in their mother tongues and then translate it into English, and then speak. They become personified Google Translators!  This changes the English word order.

English follows the SVO word order, where the ACTOR is followed by the ACTION, and then, if the situation demands, the RECEIVER.

But the English learners tend to translate from their mother tongue, which might follow a different word-order. For instance, in Hindi, the word order can be roughly be said to be SOV. Thus a simple English sentence could be:

I eat apples.

When translated from Hindi, it becomes:

I apples eat.

The basic word order therefore can be stated simply as the ACTION-ACTION-RECEIVER.

Sometimes we don’t have any receiver, and sometimes we also have ‘beneficiaries’ as well. A beneficiary is a thing or person that receives the benefit of the action, and not the action itself. It is called the ‘indirect object’.

For example:

I presented my proposal to my Board.

Here,

I is the ACTOR

Presented is the ACTION

my proposal is the RECEIVER — it received the action presented

the Board is the BENEFICIARY — it received the receiver proposal.

Normally, this sentence is better written as:

I presented the Board with my proposal.

So, the accepted word order is:

ACTOR-ACTION-BENEFICIARY-RECEIVER

But note, the ACTOR always comes before the ACTION when the voice is active.

(Incidentally, also, note the word with. The chunk is present someone with.)

Let’s look at the English word order in the following 6 categories:

  1. Affirmative sentences
  2. Negative sentences
  3. Questions: Yes/No
  4. Questions: Wh-
  5. Adverbs (of degree, frequency, place, manner, and time)
  6. Adjectives