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Rates of learning of different nationalities

Posted by emile · December 8, 2006 · 3 replies

Hi all,

I heard once that different mother tongue speakers learn English at much different rates due to the similarity/difference between L1 and L2. Apparently, German speakers pick up the language 5 times faster than Chinese/Vietnamese speakers.

Does anyone have any info on this or personal experience?

3 Replies

Well I would imagine that Germans or French would learn English a lot faster than Korean, Chinese and Japanese simply because we use the same alphabet.

To be honest I know quite a few Canadians that are not totally native speakers in English but can "pass" as an English teacher in Korea and although they might make a couple of mistakes here and there, they are the next best thing to a native speaker and I believe that a lot of people in Europe can speak English far better than the majority of Asians can.

To be honest I know quite a few Canadians that are not totally native speakers in English but can "pass" as an English teacher in Korea

...took me a minute there to figure you were talking about French Canadians...

emile wrote:...took me a minute there to figure you were talking about French Canadians...

Haha sorry I should have made that clear 🙂