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What types of construction, syntactic elements and vocabulary make language easy or difficult for learners of English to understand?

Are there significant differences between the difficulties encountered in spoken and written language for learners? (And therefore the kinds of guidelines we might want to give teachers, and helpers of English language learners)

This might relate to written or spoken instructional and presentational language (in classrooms or in textbooks), or for example posts on ELL, where we might consider a lot of the answers to be either instructional or presentational .

This question is really important for teachers and people who want their posts to be accessible. It's also important for teachers who want their language presentations and classroom language to be understood by learners.

I'm interested in advice supported by evidence, and not looking for opinions or (primarily for) anecdotal answers.

Araucaria - Not here any more.
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    +1, but IMHO it's not about the set of vocab or grammar, but it's about the closeness of the specific grammar/vocab to the learners' L1. L1 is often grasped naturally, thus anything like it fits their "instinct". (Not the best choice of words, but I hope you know what I mean) – M.A.R. Apr 14 '15 at 18:12
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    I believe that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English are worth looking for. Or in (my version of) plain English: These two pages have good information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English – Damkerng T. Apr 14 '15 at 18:21
  • @ColleenV I'm looking for anti-opinion, anti -"This is what I think and I post on ELU but have no experience" posts. I'm looking for informed opinion from research, language teacher-training, applied linguistics, DELTA or CELTA courses, people who've been teaching for five/ten years or more, anybody who has some reason to back up their ideas that doesn't derive from mere opinion or having put posts on here or on Wikipedia ... – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 14 '15 at 18:24
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    But … but … but, it's the pure opinion posts that get the most up-votes! :D – F.E. Apr 14 '15 at 18:25
  • @F.E. There's nothing wrong per se about opinion posts as long as they're recognised as such - imo :D Erm that doesn't mean that any particular opinion post will be ok... But at the same time I'd advocate for pure grammar junkies alongside people who can describe stuff with no meta-language whatsoever and just help students do what they need to do being appreciated on here ... :) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 14 '15 at 18:29
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    I think it would be helpful if you limited your question to either what makes written language difficult or what makes spoken language difficult. – Shoe Apr 14 '15 at 18:32
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    I think this would depend highly on the native language and the language being taught. For example, someone teaching French to English students can afford to drop in words like "admirer", "élégant", and "simplicité" without even having to teach them as vocabulary, while if they are teaching a student who only speaks Chinese these kind of words won't be obvious. Beisides vocab, this kind of thing probably also applies to grammatical categories like inflection for tense, case and number--if the student has something similar in their native language, it will be easier for them to understand. – sumelic Apr 16 '15 at 03:03
  • Because of this, you might want to clarify if you want to learn about different problems faced by speakers of specific languages, or only about "universal" kinds of strategies for making yourself better understood to English language learners of any origins. – sumelic Apr 16 '15 at 03:08
  • Suggestion for clarifying the question: Instead of just saying what you don't want (opinion regarding understandability for advanced learners), try saying what you do want, as in your comment above. – Ben Kovitz Apr 16 '15 at 05:21
  • Here's a possible source of information: The Simple English Wikipedia is specifically intended to be read by English learners. I took a quick look starting here but didn't turn up any research on what constructions are easier or harder to understand. But if you ask here, you might get an answer from someone with a lot of relevant knowledge or experience. – Ben Kovitz Apr 16 '15 at 05:48
  • @Shoe I think you might be being influenced by another post of mine? I'm specifically asking about instructional language, not really about, for example extended reading for pleasure, or academic reading. Neither am I talking about films and so forth. I've put an explicit sentence about that in the question now. Perhaps there is a big difference between what people can do to make instructional language clear when speaking or writing, but as far as I know, the principles are largely the same? – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 16 '15 at 23:16
  • @Araucaria. Well, your question refers to the language of people's answers on this site, which is written English, and classroom language presentations, which I interpret as spoken English. You are right that there is a considerable overlap in what makes both types of language incomprehensible to learners, but I still feel the question should focus on one or the other. If you are interested, I have written about both aspects in articles for non-language teachers of non-native English speakers: http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/listen.htm and http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/commun.htm – Shoe Apr 17 '15 at 04:53
  • I think this would be an awesome question for language learning. I may steal it if you don't want to the proposal :) – ColleenV Mar 29 '16 at 19:57
  • @ColleenV By all means please do adapt it for LL. However, the frequent and well-recognised difficulties with English are not the same as they are for other languages. So for example, the high frequency use of modal verbs, phrasal verbs and remote conditional language pose severe problems for learners of English which aren't so problematic in other languages. (Other languages have special verb forms for conditionals, and their idiomatic language is easily recognised by teachers and writers as idiomatic). ... – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '16 at 21:32
  • I don't think there should be any trouble asking a question specific to English, as long as it's about the process of learning the language and not about the language itself. I'm certain Japanese, for example, has challenges that would require an approach unique to the language. – ColleenV Mar 29 '16 at 21:32
  • @ColleenV ... Teachers and writers of posts and textbooks don't recognise when they're using opaque idiomatic phrasal verbs, or using tense in a remote conditional way.So if you say "find out", for example, to a low level learner, they'll be stuffed - even though they know what find and out mean. – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '16 at 21:33
  • @ColleenV The thing is, for me at least, that I understood this as a site for English Language Learners and learning. Questions about language learning should never have been off topic here. But they were always closed as opinion based. Now, if they were opinion based before, they still are - whether on another site or on here. But they weren't then and they aren't now. I am in favour of a general language learning site - if the people who post have any expertise or experience. But I think language specific questions should be on the learner site for that language. But that's just me. – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '16 at 21:37
  • I don't think this particular question is off-topic on ELL, and I've voted to re-open with the edits that focus it a little more, but I do think that there is an issue of underlying language acquisition that you're glossing over. Does it help a learner to have instructional texts be simplified to make them easier to understand, or is it better to expose them to more challenging but typical language? That would be the gist of the question I would ask on the Language Learning SE, and thinking about it, it really is completely different from your question. – ColleenV Mar 29 '16 at 22:33
  • @ColleenV If you post your question on LL then let me know. I'd be happy to do an answer post. :) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 30 '16 at 20:32
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – ColleenV Mar 30 '16 at 20:40

3 Answers3

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Regularity and a minimization of the need for rote memorization. Specifically:

  • Irregular verbs are a pain in any language. You want consistent conjugations, not inconsistencies like "am/is/are".

  • Needless genders drive learners nuts. In French, men's shirts are feminine while women's blouses are masculine. WTF? These take time to learn that could be spent on expanding vocabulary or grammar.

  • Accents. I don't think I need to go into details here; they're just more memorization that would be nice to not have to bother learning.

Kurt Tappe
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    I think this is answering a different question from the one that was asked. The OP's question is about passive comprehension of language; for example, students in a language-learning class listening to their teacher, or reading a handout. In this context, it's hard for me to see how gender or accents could be a real confusion. Verbs that are irregular enough to be unrecognizable in some of their forms might be more difficult to understand, but usually there are only a few of these and these are the first words learners learn. – sumelic Apr 16 '15 at 02:57
  • Could you please try to put your answer on this question too: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/328911/170668

    I'm puzzled with this question, i will be waiting for your answer

     – yubraj Jun 01 '16 at 01:44
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While working with an international company, I've come across a few reasons that learning (and using) English can be a challenge.

I think that the biggest source of language issues is colloquialisms, idioms, and slang. The reason I give for this being the biggest issue is that native speakers do not realize how much of their writing and speech doesn't translate literally or very well at all.

Another source of language translation issues is multiple definitions.

Lastly, homonyms like too, to, two; their, they're, there are a challenge for natives and learners alike.

MikeP
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    +1 I absolutely agree about idiomatic language. It's not easy for teachers and writers of instructional and presentational English to monitor their own use of idiomatic English when presenting to language learners. And this causes loads of problems for learners. – Araucaria - Not here any more. Jul 20 '16 at 07:47
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I think people tend to think "irregular verbs" ( I mean, especially inflected verbs and adjectives so on ) are difficult, I hear this kind of voice many times, but to me, mostly uninflected lanuage, whose ideal model would be English, is in a different way difficult.

This kind of uninflected tends to have accumulate the vocablaries than the other types of languages, especially it becomes much clearer when we pay our attention to verb + particles, prepositions etc.

Why are there so many verb+*** types even just for one verb, get?

Examples are...

get in

get away

get into

get on

get along

get up

get down

get to

and furthermore these verbs + **** have more variables and we learners don't exacly know when to use most appropriately.

So, in conclusion, I think any language is actually "same", I mean in tems of the languae itself, only the difference among them is not the language itself but the power or the influence level of the nation of the language spoken ( think about the U.K English and American English ), so well, what we learners need to master for any language is, "just get used to it

I think.