What mistakes do you usually make when learning a foreign language?
I am a Cambridge certified English teacher. I have worked with many Czech students since I started my teaching career in 2000.
In this blog post, I’d like to share some of my observations regarding the differences between Czech an English. I hope that my insights will help other teachers avoid possible lexical difficulties in their classroom.
There are numerous examples of vocabulary that students have a
difficulty with. These are mainly ‘false friends’ such as the verb ‘to
control’ which in Czech means both ‘to control’ and ‘to check’. Students
often say ‘My teacher controlled my homework’ or ‘I must control if my
car is OK before going to Italy’. The same substitution might happen
with words ‘kind’ and ‘sympathetic’. Students also mix up the meaning of
‘nice’ and ‘attractive’ and one of my students often says ‘chief’ when
speaking about her boss.
Prepositions are also confused with some regularity, so students say
things like ‘Next weekend I will go on the cottage‘ or ‘I’m prepared on
my exam tomorrow.’.
Why, how and when do we need to correct these mistakes?
Martin Norling, LOS Founder & CEO