12 Common English Mistakes Taiwanese Learners Make | 中式英文常犯錯誤

After twenty years teaching English in Taipei, I can usually spot a learner’s first language within two sentences. Not because the grammar is bad — plenty of my students score above 800 on the TOEIC — but because the same handful of errors show up again and again, and almost all of them trace back to one thing: translating directly from Chinese. These are the common English mistakes that survive years of study and still slip out in a job interview or a work email. The good news is that once you can name a mistake, you can kill it. Here are the twelve I correct most often, with the fix for each.

1. “Open the Light” — Translating Chinese Word-for-Word (直譯的中式英文)

This is the classic. In Chinese you 開燈 and 關燈, so “open the light” and “close the light” feel completely logical. In English, lights, TVs, computers, and taps all use turn on 그리고 turn off. You turn on the light, turn off the AC, turn up the volume. The verb “open” is reserved for things with a lid, a door, or a cover — you open a window, a box, or a bottle. Whenever a phrase feels like a straight swap from Chinese, treat it as a red flag and check how a native speaker would actually say it.

2. Dropping the Plural “-s” (忘記複數)

Mandarin nouns don’t change for number — 一本書, 三本書, the word 書 stays the same. English forces you to mark it: one book, three books. “I read two book last week” is the single most frequent grammar slip I hear, and it’s an easy one for listeners to notice. Train yourself to hear the number and the “-s” as a pair. If a number or a word like “many,” “some,” or “a few” comes first, the noun almost always needs its plural ending.

3. Skipping Articles: A, An, The (冠詞問題)

Chinese has no articles, so English “a,” “an,” and “the” feel like decoration you can drop. They aren’t. “I am teacher” should be “I am a teacher.” Use “a/an” the first time you mention a countable thing, and “the” once both people know which one you mean. It’s the hardest feature of English for Chinese speakers precisely because there is no equivalent to transfer from — you have to build the habit from scratch. When you write, pause before every singular countable noun and ask which article belongs there.

4. “I Very Like It” — Adverb Placement (副詞位置)

In Chinese, 我很喜歡 puts 很 (very) right before the verb, so “I very like it” feels natural. English doesn’t allow “very” to modify a verb. You have two clean options: use “really” or “a lot” — “I really like it” or “I like it a lot” — or attach “very” to an adjective or adverb instead, as in “very good” or “very quickly.” Keep “very” away from verbs and this mistake disappears overnight.

5. Forgetting Past Tense (時態消失)

Chinese marks time with words like 昨天 (yesterday) or 了, not by changing the verb. So “Yesterday I go to Taipei 101” sounds complete to a Chinese ear. English makes the verb itself carry the tense: “Yesterday I 갔다.” The time word is not enough — you have to change “go” to “went,” “eat” to “ate,” “buy” to “bought.” Irregular verbs are the tricky part, which is why they deserve their own study session. A quick test: say what you did yesterday out loud. If every verb still looks like its dictionary form, your tense marking hasn’t become automatic yet.

6. Bored or Boring? The -ed / -ing Trap (形容詞混淆)

“I am so boring” is a sentence students say when they mean the opposite. An “-ing” adjective describes the thing that causes the feeling; an “-ed” adjective describes the person who feels it. A long meeting is boring; you are bored. A movie is exciting; you are excited. So “I am boring” literally tells people you are a dull person. The same trap catches interesting/interested, tiring/tired, and confusing/confused.

7. “Fun” vs “Funny” (有趣還是好笑)

Both translate loosely to 有趣, but they aren’t interchangeable. Fun means enjoyable — a trip to Kenting is fun. Funny means it makes you laugh — a comedian is funny. Call a party “funny” and you’ve just said the party was a joke. If you enjoyed something, it was fun; if it made you laugh, it was funny.

8. Say, Tell, Speak, Talk — Four Verbs, One Chinese Word (說的四種說法)

Chinese leans heavily on 說 and 講, so English gives learners four verbs where they expect one. You say something, you tell someone, you speak a language, and you talk to a friend. “He said me the news” should be “He told me the news.” The quick rule: “tell” is followed directly by a person, “say” is not. I’ve broken all four down with examples in our guide to the difference between say, tell, speak, and talk.

9. Wrong Time Prepositions: In, On, At (時間介係詞)

“See you in Monday” is a small slip that instantly marks a non-native speaker. English sorts time words by size: ~에 for clock times (at 3 p.m.), ~에 for days and dates (on Monday, on July 21), and ~에 for longer stretches (in July, in 2026, in the morning). Picture a zoom lens — the more precise the time, the smaller the preposition. Prepositions rarely translate one-to-one from Chinese, so memorize these three as fixed pairs.

10. He, She, and the Missing “-s” (第三人稱單數)

Spoken Chinese uses one sound, tā, for he, she, and it, and verbs never change for the subject. English does the opposite in the present tense: “He 공장 in Taipei,” “She likes coffee.” That third-person “-s” is easy to drop because Chinese never asks for it. It’s worth drilling, because “He work here” is one of the most noticeable errors to a native ear. Our full walkthrough of subject-verb agreement covers the trickier cases.

11. Pronunciation: Dropped Endings and L / R (發音問題)

Mandarin syllables mostly end in a vowel or a nasal sound, so English final consonants tend to vanish — “rice” becomes “rye,” “cold” becomes “coh.” The L and R sounds also blur, turning “rice” and “lice” into the same word. These aren’t grammar problems, but they cause more real-world misunderstandings than any tense error. Slow down and finish your consonants; it does more for clarity than a bigger vocabulary. We break down the specific sounds in our English pronunciation guide for Taiwan learners.

12. “Too” vs “Very” (太 vs 很)

“I’m too happy to meet you” is meant as a warm greeting, but “too” carries a negative edge in English — it means more than you want. “Too hot” means uncomfortably hot; “too expensive” means beyond your budget. To simply intensify something positive, use “very,” “so,” or “really”: “I’m 그래서 happy to meet you.” Save “too” for when there really is a problem.

How to Actually Fix These Common English Mistakes (如何改正)

Reading a list won’t rewire a habit — output will. Pick the two mistakes on this list you recognize in yourself and hunt for just those for one week. Record a two-minute voice memo describing your day, play it back, and count how many times the plural “-s” or the past tense slips. Awareness is most of the battle; the errors you can hear are the errors you can stop. Keep a running note on your phone of every correction a colleague or teacher gives you, and review it on your commute.

Here’s the part most textbooks skip: these mistakes cluster. A learner who drops the plural “-s” almost always drops the third-person “-s” too, because both come from the same root cause — Chinese verbs and nouns simply don’t change shape. So you rarely have twelve separate problems to fix. You have two or three underlying habits, and each one clears several items on this list at once. That’s why I tell students to stop chasing individual errors and instead ask, “What Chinese rule is my brain still applying here?” Answer that, and the corrections start to feel obvious instead of endless. Progress in English is rarely about learning more words — it’s about noticing the pattern underneath the slip.

One more thing worth saying plainly: making these mistakes doesn’t mean your English is bad. It means your brain is still running on Chinese grammar, which is completely normal and totally fixable. Every fluent speaker you admire made this exact list of errors on the way up. Focus on the patterns, not on being perfect.

Watch: Common Mistakes Taiwanese Learners Make (影片)

This short video walks through several of the same Chinglish patterns with spoken examples — useful for training your ear alongside the reading.

자주 묻는 질문(常見問題)

What is the most common English mistake Taiwanese learners make? Dropping the plural “-s” and translating phrases directly from Chinese — like “open the light” — are the two you’ll hear most. Both come from the fact that Chinese doesn’t inflect nouns or use phrasal verbs the way English does.

Is Chinglish (中式英文) a bad thing? Not at heart — it’s a normal stage. It only becomes a problem when a habit sticks so long that it stops sounding like a mistake to you. Naming the pattern is how you move past it.

How long does it take to fix these errors? A specific habit, worked on deliberately, usually softens within a few weeks. The key word is deliberately — passively consuming English won’t do it; you have to produce and self-correct.

Sources (參考資料)

1. Cambridge Dictionary — English Grammar Today — reference for articles, prepositions, and adjective forms.
2. British Council LearnEnglish — Grammar — verb tense and subject-verb agreement explanations.
3. 메리엄-웹스터 사전 — usage notes for confusable words such as “too” and “very.”
4. Purdue OWL — Writing Mechanics — guidance on common grammar and word-choice errors.