The differences between British born children speaking English and foreign students.

 The time has come for the British weather to make its feeble attempt to bring summer to the "Sunshine coast", and along with it many tourists and foreign students from around the world who have come to learn English and use their skills first hand by living in a country where it is their main language.

 So it got me thinking, do British born children make the same mistakes as foreign students do when learning to speak English?

 Inevitably children pick up language much faster than adults do due to many different factors. In David Crystal's book "Listen to your child" he explores the fact that as soon as a child is born they are exposed to constant noise. Over time your screams turn into gurgles as you communicate with other as you see people doing around you all the time. This means that British born children have a constant supply of language around them along with dedicated teachers (your family ect.). This is also the case for non-English children growing up in an environment dominated by the English language so these factors still apply.

 In the case of adults learning English as a second language, its proven much harder. In an article in the Telegraph by Anne Merritt I found that many of the mistakes made when speaking English is due to these reasons; Firstly there is no 'silent period' just listening to the language and picking it up, also many adults lack the curiosity that children have in wanting to learn new ways of communicating more efficiently ect. Linguists studying this field saw that ridged thinkers with low tolerance levels also find it particularly difficult as they only stick to set methods of learning instead of combining talking with fluent English speakers and 'parroting' (as children do) with dictionary exercises and lessons.

 So what mistakes do children and foreign speakers make?

 Healthwise staff produced a piece on the WedMD website that highlighted the common factors that children make when speaking. Many of the misunderstandings made are due to the mispronunciation of certain words as their vocal cords develop to make different sounds, For example caterpillar is pronounced "capitilla". Another common example is when children replace the 'r' sound in words for 'w', like "wabbit" instead of rabbit.

 However some mistakes that are made are logical, saying things like "goed" instead of went and "mans" instead of men.

 Whereas children have a smaller vocabulary that is limited by the surroundings and their guardians/parents foreign speakers tend to learn the 'basic' communicative language first, like greetings and asking directions, instead of learning the sounds. They tend to mistake countable and non-countable nouns, i.e. "mouses" instead of mice, as well as verb tenses and forms being jumbled. A good source for exploring these differences is in "Learner English" edited by Micheal Swan and Bernard Smith.

 Overall foreign speakers miss out on the fundamental foundations that children start with and as a result their problems seem more 'complex' than those of the British born children.

Yasmin McAndrew