welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English where I teach English lessons for
intermediate and advanced English learners who want to be successful in school and work
in today's video I'm talking about mistakes that English speakers make but I'm not talking about
English learners I'm talking about native speakers people like me who grew up speaking
English as their first language did you know that native speakers make mistakes in English
all the time so in today's video I'm going to show you 10 common mistakes that native speakers make
in English before we get started please give this video a like leave a comment and subscribe if you
find this video helpful thank you so much so why am I talking about the mistakes that
native speakers make first it's important for English learners to be aware of common mistakes
that native speakers make because English learners usually think that native speakers
are an example of good or correct English English learners will listen to the English
that native speakers say or they will look at the English that native speakers write
and they see those examples as a model of good English so when an English learner sees a mistake
that a native speaker makes they may feel confused why did the native speaker make that mistake what
is the correct form so it's helpful for English learners to know what the common mistakes are
another reason that you should know about common mistakes is that it's important to recognize that
native speakers make mistakes when they're speaking and writing all the time so before
we get into the 10 common mistakes that native speakers make I'm going to give you a little quiz
I'm going to show you a few sentences and I want you to try to find the mistake
after we do that then I'm going to show you 10 common mistakes that native speakers make
so number one Me and my friends went swimming. can you spot the mistake in this sentence
number two Maria invited Bill and I for dinner.
number three My cat lost it’s toy.
number four This issue effects me.
number five I didn't used to wake up early.
can you find the mistake in this sentence? number six I read for 10 minutes everyday.
number seven I love my job, however I want to try something new.
and the last one I will be available all day, please stop by my office.
okay so feel free to give the video a pause take a look at these sentences
see if you can find the mistakes I also have these sentences in the description box below so
you can look at them there as well and then we'll come back and we'll look at 10 common mistakes
let's get into those 10 common mistakes number one Me and my friends went swimming.
so I think you were able to identify the mistake in this sentence and it should be My friends and I
why does this mistake happen well this is a very common mistake among young people especially
children in fact my younger son says this all the time me and my friends or me and my brother and
they use this as the subject but it is incorrect so the correct form is that you need to use the
subject pronoun because this is the subject of the sentence you can see that it comes before the verb
and the subject of course is I so you will hear this a lot in the United States but it is wrong
also I want to point out that when you use the subject I it always comes last so you can say
my parents and I my parents my brothers and I my family and I but we never say I
and my family or I and my parents we never say that I always comes last all right let's move
on to number two Maria invited Bill and I for dinner. so what's happening here?
well this is an example of a super common mistake that happens because people are overcompensating
for the previous one so what I mean by that is that people are so aware of this as a common
mistake that they have it in their brain that they always need to say my friends and I or Bill and I
so they end up using that in other places in the sentence and a lot of people don't realize that
because this is the object of the sentence it's the object of the verb invited it needs to have
the object pronoun and the object pronoun is me not I also one way that you can check this is that
you can take Bill out and you say Maria invited me we don't say Maria invited I so that's one
way that you can check that one all right moving on to number three another pronoun problem and I
also think that this is overcompensating for number one people know that this is a common
mistake they're trying to avoid it so they say myself and Jose or Jose and myself this
is completely incorrect because this is also the subject of the sentence it comes before the verb
and myself is not a subject pronoun myself is a reflexive pronoun reflexive pronouns are used
when the subject and the object are the same person for example I talk to myself or I can't
hear myself so we never use myself as the subject of the sentence instead we should say Jose and I
and this is often used in formal situations um another one that you'll hear a lot is How are you?
Fine, and yourself? but it should be and you? okay moving on to number four my cat lost it’s toy.
what's happening here well this is the contraction for it is or it has when has is a helping verb
but a lot of people associate the apostrophe with possessive they think that if they make something
possessive they need to add an apostrophe so the correct form here should be its its
is the possessive we need to take out that that apostrophe does not show possession it actually
shows the contraction it is or it has number five This issue effects me. so what's happening here
here we have the verb effects but the verb effects is actually spelled with an a not an e these are
examples of homophones homophones are words that sound exactly the same but they are different
and the problem with homophones is that a lot of native speakers don't see them very often but
we hear them all the time and because they sound exactly the same it is confusing so affects would
be the verb effects with an e is the noun but when we say them quickly we say affects effects they
sound the same a couple other examples are accept and except and they're there and their which also
sound exactly the same okay let's move on to the next five common mistakes the next one is I should
have went or I haven't did that. so this might not sound good to your ear and that's because you
know that you need to use the past participle here and the reason you need to use the past participle
is that we have the helping verb have for the past conditional and also for the present perfect
and we use the past participle which is that third form right like with go went gone so I
should have gone I haven't done that however this is common in some dialects and so you will hear
Americans say this but it's only Americans who speak certain dialects the next one I didn't used
to wake up early for this one what happens is that sometimes native speakers forget to remove the d
in the verb used to when they're using it in the past tense so you know that when you use a verb
in the past tense we have the helping verb did and it's negative so negative past tense we have
the helping verb did and then we use the base form of the verb why because the past tense is already
here in the helping verb but some native speakers will leave the d on for this one and I believe
that that's because when we say it we can't hear the d clearly used to use to but when people see
it written like I used to or I am used to doing something they see the d there and so then when
they use it in this case they forget to remove it number eight I read for 10 minutes everyday.
this everyday is written as one word when it's an adjective but when it's an adverb of frequency
it should be written as two words so here we should have every day written as separate words
I have a video about this topic that I will link above for you to learn more if you're interested
the next one I love my job, however I want to try something new. so the word however is very often
punctuated incorrectly now this is a word that is used a lot but many people don't know what
the correct punctuation is however is an adverbial conjunction also like the word also or in addition
or moreover and those words are punctuated like this if we have a clause with subject and verb
and then we have another clause with subject and verb we can use an adverbial conjunction
to connect those clauses and we do it like this either we put a period and then we would have a
capital H after the word however we put a comma or we can put a semicolon instead of a period
and the comma that comes after will also be there so however it's going to have a comma after and
to separate the clauses you can use a period or a semicolon and finally number 10 number
10 the mistake here is called a comma splice so let's take a look I will be available all day,
please come by my office so you can see here that we have a clause with a subject and verb
and then we have a clause with a this is actually an imperative but there's a subject and verb
and we are separating it with a comma we don't separate clauses with commas
so we have three choices here we can either use a semicolon to separate clauses
or if we want to use a comma that's okay but we must use a coordinating conjunction like and
or so or but and finally we can use a period to separate clauses
this type of mistake is called a comma splice it's a very common mistake that native speakers make
and if you take English classes in the United States you will actually notice that the teachers
will spend a lot of time on this because it is so common these are not the only common
mistakes that native speakers make but these are 10 of the most common ones I hope that you
found this video helpful if you have any questions please don't forget to ask in the comments below
and I will have all of these sentences written for you in the description box so that you can
learn more with them if you want to thank you so much take care and I'll see you soon