Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Welcome to Smashing English!
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the time and I don't want you to miss any, so with that said, let's get on with the video!
My name is Laura and I work as an English teacher and every day I teach people from all
over the world. so obviously every day I hear a lot of mistakes and by the way mistakes are good,
especially in an English class- if you are taking an English class with a teacher,
do not be afraid to make mistakes, mistakes are the best way to learn, don't hold back
and think- oh if I don't say as much, maybe I won't make a mistake, you've got to just speak,
speak, speak! Make all the mistakes- brilliant! But today I thought I would tell you about the 12
most common mistakes I hear from everybody, no matter where they're from, so have a listen and
see if you make any of these mistakes. Okay let's start off with mistake number one: "when I had 18,
I went to university," "He's been dancing since he had eight," "Now obviously I have 25." So,
if you can't already hear the mistake, the mistake is he is talking about his age as something he
has, so I have 25 or when I had 20, when I had 18. This is not something we do
in English and I hear it a lot, I think it's very common in European languages,
I only know French so sorry if I'm incorrect but I know for a fact that in French we say
j'ai onze ans, like I am 11. We say I have 11 years but that's not the case in English,
in English it is something we are, I am 25. I am 30. Therefore in the past tense we have to say
when I was 18. Okay let's move on to the next mistake" "If I will see the movie, I will tell
you about it," "Oh if she will talk, she will talk forever," "If they will come here, they will bring
food, hopefully." So the mistake here is in the conditional, so he is using the first conditional,
if you're not familiar with how conditionals work, I will put a video in the description down below
that explains all the conditionals but for the first conditional, I hear this all the time,
so the first conditional is when we talk about things that are likely to happen in the future,
first conditional, future, remember the F! So when you have these two clauses, the if
clause and the main clause, only one of them needs a will, there's only one will involved,
I know we're talking about the future but we don't need a will for both clauses, the if
is always paired with the present simple, if I see the movie, I will tell you. If I see her,
I will ask her the question. If I try harder, I will succeed or flip them round, I will succeed
if I try harder. I will ask her the question if I see her, just one will, like the Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air- there's only room for one Will. 'Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped,
turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became
a Prince of a town called Bel-Air.' Let's take a break. Now, I don't want you to get overwhelmed
with hearing these mistakes and thinking, 'oh my goodness,' I make these mistakes, what am
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at the end of the video! Okay let's carry on with some more common mistakes- "At the meeting,
we were five so it was a nice number." "I have a very big family, we are 10." "In the room, we were
24." Okay, can you spot the mistake there? So Bez was talking about the amount of people
in a group and he was saying we were five, this is something I hear all the time and it's
incorrect, we need to say there were five of us, that's how we say it, if you're talking
about the number of people in a group, if it's in the past tense: there were of us, present tense:
there are of us. It's a bit of a longer sentence, it's a bit more annoying to say,
but unfortunately that's just what we have to say. Tea break! Okay, time for another mistake, go!
"I went to a theme park yesterday, it was so funny!" "I love playing tennis, it's really
funny!" "We played board games last night, it was so funny!" Okay, another super common mistake I
hear all the time is the difference between fun and funny, so describing your day at the theme
park as funny makes me think something happened that made you laugh, there was something about
it that was really really funny, it made you laugh a lot. If it was just an enjoyable day
we would most commonly just say fun, it was a fun day, so make sure you reserve the word
funny for things that genuinely make you laugh and that's an important part of the story,
you know? You can't just say: we went to the theme park yesterday, it was really funny
without telling us why it was funny, because we're going to be thinking: Why? What happened? What
was funny? Okay this next mistake is a common mistake, it's very very famous for being very
very hard to remember, take it away! "I haven't been to much places in my life, to be honest."
"I ate so many soup yesterday." "There was so much people there." Of course, the difference between
much and many, everyone struggles with it, even my advanced learners sometimes get this wrong,
if you don't know the difference, really easy, much is for things that you can't count, so
things that you can't count like air or water or liquid, but many is for things that you can count,
so obviously when we have things like people we can count people, we can count them, so we have to
say many people. And this is my favourite way of remembering when to say much and when to say many,
so are you familiar with the rhyme that goes like this: Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a tiger by the
toe ,if he squeals let him go, eenie meenie miney moe. It's like a children's rhyme that we have,
if you've got two things to choose from you might go eeny meeny miny mo, and then whichever one it
lands on, you choose that one! So obviously, if you're doing eenie meenie miney mo with something,
you must be doing it with things that you can count, two options, all right? Now the word
'meanie' kind of sounds like 'many', if you can play eenie meenie miney mo with something,
then you need to use many, if you can't play eenie meenie miney mo with something,
you need to use much. Two people eenie meenie miney mo: many! Air: eenie... meenie... much!
I want another mistake, that's what I want! I want another mistake, give me one! "If you
come to Wales, I recommend to visit Wrexham." "I recommend to eat five fruits and vegetables every
day." "She recommends to exercise twice a day, twice!" Ah recommend, lovely, I hear this a lot.
so you can recommend anything you want, obviously, if you're just recommending a noun: fine, easy!
I recommend the pasta, beautiful. I recommend Greece as a holiday destination, but if you are
recommending a verb we need to put the verb into ING, I recommend visiting Wrexham, I recommend
exercising six times a week, much more common and much more native to put ING on the end of
your verb when you're using recommend. Okay let's have another mistake: "If you speak to an English,
they might speak really quickly." "A Chinese will speak a different language to a French."
"I've never met a Japanese before." So, for some countries, there are very easy
nouns we can use to talk about people from that country, for example: a German, we can just say,
I met a German yesterday, I know an American who has a house you can stay in if you go on holiday
to New York. I don't know many Canadians! However, there is a big majority of countries
where this rule doesn't work, so you can't just say a Chinese, that doesn't work, we can't say
a British, we can't say an English, we can't say a French, we can't say a Spanish. There's
a lot of countries where it doesn't work, so you can either go through all of the countries and
learn them by heart, or just to be safe make sure you always say a Chinese, French, Spanish...
what? A Chinese person, a French man, a Spanish child, make sure you put something at the end
just to be safe, make sure you specify who it i., I'm going to have a sip of tea, very important...
And now we'll hear another mistake! "She asked me if she looks nice and I don't know what do I
say!" "Hmm, that's a good question, I don't know what do I think." "She clearly doesn't know what
is she doing." So, I hear this one a lot, when people are unsure, they are saying a sentence
where they are talking about being unsure and they start it with 'I don't know or she doesn't
know or he didn't know' and then the second part of the sentence, they use question formatting,
so if we got rid of the I don't know and we just say 'what do I say?' That is absolutely perfect,
what do I say? Question formatting. However, as soon as you put I don't know in front of it,
it's no longer a question anymore, you're not asking anyone a question, you are saying for sure
I don't know, that is certain, that is sure, it's not a question. So instead, we would say: I don't
know what to say. She doesn't know what is she doing, okay, so again if you take away the 'she
doesn't know', we can definitely say 'what is she doing?' because that's a question, I'm asking you,
question formatting. However as soon as you put she doesn't know in front of it, it's no longer
a question, it's now a sure sentence, she doesn't know what she is doing, she doesn't know what she
is doing, so we need to swap the is and the she around to make it not question formatting anymore,
so if you're not asking a question, don't put the words into question formatting.
Okay next mistake, please! "And then we went more faster and more faster and more faster."
"And ! was more shorter than him!" Look this one, I'm sure you can hear the mistake in it already,
if we are saying faster, a comparative adjective with ER on the end, that already means
more fast, that's what it means, so you don't need to say more faster because then you're saying
more more fast. So if it's an adjective with ER on the end you don't need more. Okay we have
three mistakes left. "Well I have a six years old daughter and a five years-old son." "Oh, it was a
three hours meeting." "Oh it was a two hours long journey, two hours!" This is a really interesting
one, I hear this all the time, so obviously if we are saying my child is six years old, that is
correct, however if you are using the six years as an adjective for your child, if you are putting it
before the word child we take away the S, so we say a six-year-old child, a ten-year-old boy,
same thing with a two hours journey, we don't say hours, two hour journey or a five hour meeting
or a two day holiday, okay? So if the length of time goes before the noun, get rid of the S.
Okay I want another mistake! "I don't like rugby," "Me too." "I don't really eat carrots very often,"
"Me too." "She doesn't really read books often," "Me too, I prefer films." Okay so you heard me
saying a sentence that started with I don't, okay, now if we are saying a sentence with I don't
verb or she doesn't verb or they don't verb or it doesn't verb, the response if you agree
is me neither, because you're saying you don't do a verb so you need to say me neither instead of me
too, we only say me too if we are responding to a positive sentence saying I do do this verb! I do
it! I do it! Me too! So it would still be I hate olives, me too! We both do this thing! Woohoo!
Whereas I don't like olives, me neither. Okay let's move on to our last mistake:
"So currently, I live in England but three years later, I'll move to France."
"I'm hoping that two years later, I'll get a promotion." "And she thinks five years later,
we'll be married! Ah!" Okay so there you heard Bez talking about the future and what's going
to happen in the future and he was using the word later, so three years later I will move to France,
this is not the correct use of the word later, we use later when we are talking about the past,
weirdly, so we might say I went to work and then two hours later, I came home,
so we are talking about the past but we are talking about time passing in the past.
Now if we are talking about the future, we are in the present talking about the future,
you want to say this: I currently live in England but in three years, I will move to France,
so all you need is the word in and as soon as you say that, in two years, I know you are talking
about in two years in the future, you don't have to say in two years later or in two years
after this or in two years in the future, we know what you mean, so all you need is in 10 years. And
there you go! Obviously there are more mistakes that I hear and I might make another video at some
point with some of the other mistakes that I hear but those were the ones that always seem to come
up, the ones that seem to happen more than others so I thought I would let you know. Thank you so
much for watching, be sure to check out Lingoda, you don't want to miss out on that amazing deal,
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tata!