一个关于英语国家语言习惯的问题.有趣,请畅所欲言我上外教课,我观察到外国人人家说话和我们国内教的语法有很大的差异.有的不按我们的语法走,但有的是严格遵守语法的,比如说这个名词

Question

一个关于英语国家语言习惯的问题.有趣,请畅所欲言
我上外教课,我观察到外国人人家说话和我们国内教的语法有很大的差异.有的不按我们的语法走,但有的是严格遵守语法的,比如说这个名词复数加s,就一次也没有错过.则是为什么,该如何区分真正实用的语法和中国人给自己编的语法而在外国并不常用的?并且希望给讲一下这个外国人说语言（英语)的思维方式,他们是如何构成句子,什么词可以加,而什么词可以不加.望在海外待过的朋友和已经能熟练运用英语的高手多多帮助,写一下你们说英语感觉和数汉语本质区别和思维方式的不同,和上述问题.

Answer 1

I think the radical reason is that most Chinese students go through two steps when they speak English:organize the sentences in Chinese in mind first,then translate them into English (usually for long or complex sentences,I mean).I really doubt your example that "Chinese never make mistakes in plural form using".I guess by this you mean writting English,not speaking.My roommate,a guy from Newyork,said it is interesting that I often make mistakes on he/she,plural forms and tense when I 'm speaking English.It's simply because I'm a Chinese and we never have those things in Chinese speaking.Another example of the influence brought by Chinese pattern of thinking could be the wrong order of words in a sentence.I often hear Chinese students unconsciously say this:XXXXX is what/when/where?Well,I'm just saying written and spoken language are very much different.The grammar that most Chinese students learned is the grammar for writting.An American friend of mine once told me:when you speak English,pronounciation is far more important than grammar.It's definitly ture to me.
When I speak English,two troublesome problems to me may be 1) chaotic words order and 2) the lack of vocabulary.
For instance,due to the Chinese patterns of organizing sentences,I prefer to put the time and place in the middle of a sentence rather than put them at the end."Have you in Lordon worked?" fits the Chinese ways of expressing but never the English ways.
The lack of vocabulary is universal to all secondary language speaker,I guess.You may know the idiom "that ship has sailed" but you may not know "that log has become a boat" (Chinese idiom,means the same).Anyway,the accumulation of knowledge takes time :-)