Different Text Structure

One of the issues that Chinese ESL students face is having to adapt to a completely different text structure.

• European foreign students typically have their romance language be of a Romanic or Germanic type, which is very similar to English (English being a West Germanic language).
  • Many words in English are taken from these languages:
    

    The word ballet comes from the French word “balle”, meaning bullet, or ball.

     

• However, for Chinese, the language is completely different.
  • It is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages.
  • The language is not alphabet based, instead being more about symbols.
  • Pieces of these symbols resemble ideas and objects, and when put together they form words.

Read more at http://www.languagehelpers.com/languagefacts/chinese.html.