Surely you have ever wondered why you are so bad at learning English. It has always been more difficult for Spaniards to learn languages, and English resists for most of us, despite the fact that obviously there are Spaniards who speak and handle English perfectly. The truth is that we do not stand out for being good at learning languages.
English is one of the easiest languages to learn, but we often find it very difficult to learn English. Therefore, we are going to see some reasons why it is usually so difficult for us Spaniards to learn English.
ENGLISH IS NOT WRITTEN AS IT IS PRONOUNCED
Unlike Spanish, English has a fairly broad phonetics in which each vowel can have very different phonemes. So when you read a word you don’t know if you’re pronouncing it correctly or not. For example, the word “hate” is pronounced heit. In addition, when listening to English it is difficult for us to differentiate the different sounds, since our ears are not used to differentiating so many sounds.
THE SPANISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
The problem that Spanish education has always had when it comes to teaching languages, specifically English, is that they try to teach the same as history or literature, by memorizing. English is not picking up the book and studying and memorizing to pass an exam and then forgetting it and moving on to the next topic. This language is not learned like that, English is learned by listening, speaking, understanding and practicing.
ENGLISH HAS A LOT OF IRREGULAR VERBS
We all remember that long list of irregular verbs that were conjugated differently from the regular ones and that had to be learned by heart. Knowing all the irregular verbs is somewhat complex, and, for the Spanish, these are quite difficult to learn, also taking into account that their pronunciation and writing are different.
THE “FALSE FRIENDS”
These words called “false friends” are words that are written and pronounced similarly to a Spanish word but that mean totally different things, for example, the word “deception” means deception, not disappointment. As you can see, these types of words can confuse people who are learning English.
THE NUMBER OF DIALECTS
Every English-speaking place has its own dialect and accent. This can be overwhelming for a person learning English, since British English is taught in Spain, but many times we watch movies or listen to songs with an American accent and this can confuse us. That’s why you should focus on learning English from a single site, and once you know English you can focus on other dialects.
HOMOPHONES IN ENGLISH
English has a lot of homophones, words that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings. This makes it difficult for us to differentiate some words from others and ends up confusing us. Some examples of this type of words can be “write”- “right” or “see”- “sea”.
ENGLISH IS NOT TEACHED AT THE UNIVERSITY
Once the students pass high school, they enter the university and completely forget about English. This is an error that leads them to not progress with learning or to lose the knowledge that they have been able to obtain from the language. Although students study specific things at university, there should be an English subject related to the degree. In addition, when you finish your degree, you are required to have a B2 level in English to work or even to get a university degree.
DO NOT TRANSLATE LITERALLY
It is obvious that translations are necessary to know the meaning of things, but literal word-for-word translations are the worst thing you can do to learn English. What you have to do when reading or listening to sentences in English is relate what you have understood and try to give it meaning. It is about understanding as a whole, not knowing the translation of all the words.
We hope that after this list of reasons why you may find it difficult to learn English, you will be able to continue your English learning without giving up and giving up.
