As a native English speaker, I never realized how difficult it was to learn English until I took a certificate program to teach English as a second language. English is, in some ways, one of the most difficult languages to learn for non-native speakers. After all, it has so many different rules, exceptions, and stumbling blocks that can make it overwhelming to grasp.

Here are some reasons why English is incredibly difficult to learn:

Many English words are pronounced the same but have different spellings and meanings

A few examples of words with the same pronunciations but different spellings and definitions are “bear” versus “bare” and “then” versus “than.” In English, these words are a huge roadblock for students trying to learn and understand the language. Student often find it difficult to learn when to use which spelling and meaning of a word.

Additionally, many English words do not sound like they should when broken down into parts. When pronunciation causes issues, the learner will often get the word wrong and search for one that they think is right, which causes them to get the meaning totally incorrect. “There” and “their” are perfect examples of this.

In a class I was teaching, I used the following sentence: “Their cat often came into my yard to visit my birdfeeder.” Subsequently, the students asked me if the word “their” meant that the cat was “there” right now. I had to explain that when spelled “their,” the word meant that something—in this case, the cat—belonged to my neighbors, whereas when spelled “there,” the word denotes a place or a location.

Spelling is not always phonetic, which can be challenging for those new to the English language. While teaching a lesson plan about animals, for instance, I used a picture of a bear as an example. When I presented the picture, the students giggled nervously. Little did I know that, earlier in the day, they had learned the word “bare,” so they thought I was talking about being naked. After I explained the difference between not having clothes on and the carnivorous mammal, they all broke down in laughter.

Thus, for the unaccustomed speaker, the fact that some words of the English language aren’t spelled the way they sound causes a great deal of confusion, which is often attributed to trying to understand the word and know what it means. My students struggle with this because it applies to the very basics of English: how a word is spelled and its definition.

English has a million grammar rules 

English grammar rules oftentimes contradict themselves. For example, the grammar rule “i before e, except after c” doesn’t always apply.  The rule is difficult because new learners think that most English words are spelled with the “i” before “e.” Because this isn’t always true, such as with “weird,” “caffeine,” and “neighbor,” the reasoning for the exceptions does not make sense to them. It places major stumbling blocks in the students’ comprehension of written and spoken English.

Grammar is difficult in any language, but English makes it especially hard because the rules are so confusing and flexible. For example, English employs frequent comma usage to break up sentences that, in other languages, would not be broken up. Also, verb tenses, such as the simple past and the present perfect, are difficult to understand.

I recently taught a grammar lesson about the aforementioned verb tenses, and my students, who had intermediate English skills, were confused by the function of each. The simple past is used to show when exactly in time a situation or activity took place. The present perfect is used to show that a situation or activity took place at an unspecified time in the past. The confusion arose from the difference between how each showed time.

It took a number of examples to explain it and some serious practice to get them to form sentences that showed each function. They constantly wanted to just say that something happened in the past, regardless of time. They even got frustrated, which resulted in some of them giving up because the rules of English grammar are so complicated.

…and don’t forget the contractions

Additionally, both spoken and written English display a number of contractions, such as “shouldn’t,” “couldn’t,” and “wouldn’t.” A non-native speaker has most likely never seen these before, so contractions make no sense to them, which makes the words hard to work out.

Teaching across barriers (tips for ESL teachers)

One of the complications that I have run into involves figuring out how much of my lesson plan the students will understand and where they will struggle. Even if you know what level the students are supposedly on, you will still need to assess and adjust the lesson plan as the term goes by. For instance, you might focus on how advanced you want your vocabulary to be, how to find the right pace for the entire class, how to deal with students who are ahead or behind of the rest of the class, etc.

Additionally, while you can add them to a lesson plan, cultural things, such as holidays, history, rules of etiquette, and fashion, can be tricky to teach. You should avoid discussing religion, politics, and sex at all costs. If you want to teach about culture, you need to do it with the knowledge that depending on the topic, you must be sensitive to your students’ backgrounds and beliefs. Lastly, as a teacher, you need to know that many of the adult students come into class very knowledgeable and experienced with English and other languages; therefore, you need to be respectful.

Although it takes a lot of work to understand and move past the issues, that doesn’t mean English is impossible to learn. But, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn if you are a non-native speaker because of all the rules and exceptions to the rules; it is not a straightforward language at all.

Ultimately, English is not a language that someone can just pick up and learn. Instead, it is a language that I imagine foreign speakers have a love-hate relationship with. Yes, they want to learn English, but in order to do it, they have to forget everything they know about their native language and start from scratch.

That said, I have learned to make sure that my lessons are planned to perfection, and that I am explaining everything well enough so there is minimal confusion. I have also learned that I have to think of the questions that they might ask in relation to the lesson I might not have put into the lesson plan to begin with.

Additionally, I’ve developed a great respect for the adult learners as they are typically well educated either here or from the home countries. They come to class highly intelligent, eager to learn the English language better, and willing to work and practice in order to learn it. Many are looking for everyday conversational English to help them live here in the US. Overall, after doing the ESL certificate program, I gained a great deal of respect for those trying to learn my terribly difficult language.