Teacher Feature: What Is the Biggest Mistake Your Czech Students Make?

“The most common mistakes Czech students make are the following.”
–Tracey Ennor, UK, Private English teacher

False friends

• Using “control” to mean “check”.
• For example: “I went to the doctor for control yesterday” or “Please can you control my writing.”
• Saying “concrete” when they mean specific. “I gave my husband concrete details and he still bought the wrong thing.”
• Also words like “accurate” vs. akorát (just enough).

Pronunciation

• The sound in “these” and “thought”: often pronounced as dese and dawt.
• “Bought” is often pronounced bawft.
• V and W: especially at the beginning of a word, think vork (work), vish (wish), and vhen (when).

“Even Czechs who have a good level of English make [tend to] make mistakes with prepositions, articles, and syntax.”
–Gillian Pritchett, UK, Business English instructor

Misuse of prepositions

• For example, if I asked a Czech if I was expected to come and teach this summer they would answer: “Yes I’m counting with you”  rather than “I’m counting on you” or possibly “Yes, we’re expecting you.”

Word order

• Since Czech is less strict on word order syntax can be an issue. A good fix for this: Reading more in English helps as well as giving lessons that cover word order and doing drills.

Articles

• Often Czechs will start a sentence without an article and omit articles within sentences. For example: “Reason why I am leaving the college is that I was offered manager position.” This should be “The reason why I am leaving the College is that I was offered a manager position.”