Canadian teacher David Murphy believes he is qualified for his job as an EFL (English as a foreign language) teacher, as he knows non-English native speakers' difficulty in learning English.

"I speak both English and French, as Vancouver, where I live in Canada, is a French-speaking region," the teacher in his 20s said. "I also learnt Chinese during my three years in China, helping me to understand the difficulty of learning a foreign language."

He said learning Chinese is tough for him, especially the characters and tones.

"Although there is no quick fix in learning a foreign language, there are certain approaches to accelerate your progress," said Murphy.

The Canadian said he improved slowly in the first couple months of learning Chinese, until he tried different approaches.

"English learners should use all approaches including listening, speaking, reading and writing to grasp the language better," he said, based on his own experience.

"I notice that many Chinese learners pay less attention to listening and speaking in their daily practice. However, all language learning begins from listening. If you can't understand what other people are saying, you can't communicate," he said.

"More students learn better by using visual stimuli and therefore rely on reading and writing to improve their language skills. But this makes them forget the basic function of a language, to listen and to speak," said Murphy.

He said many students only use one or two approaches in their daily practice, forgetting the others.

"When you find you are only making slow progress in learning English, try other approaches, using either visual or audio," he said.

Thanks to his own experience in learning Chinese, Murphy said he could understand non-English native speakers' problems especially when they make slow progress. He believes it should be a prequisite for teachers to be aware of students' difficulties before teaching them.

Murphy spends most of his time working. During his spare time, he prefers to stay at home and prepare for lectures.

After teaching in Beijing and Guangxi for two years, Murphy joined an English training center in Shenzhen early this year.

"I'm happy that I can help Chinese learners here, they pick up the language very fast," he said, saying that he decided to stay in the city longer than he originally planned.