Hi.
I'm Rebecca from engVid.
In the next few minutes you'll find out if you make any of the 10 worst mistakes in English.
Now, even though it seems like I'm joking, it's actually quite serious.
These mistakes could make you fail an exam or a job interview, they could make you lose
a sale or a client, they could also ruin your presentation, or worse still, your reputation.
You really don't want to be making these mistakes.
And luckily, you found this lesson, so at the end of this lesson you will know exactly
what to do to fix these mistakes in case you make them.
And if you don't make them, then you can feel really good and confident about the English
that you do speak.
Okay?
So, let's get started.
The first one...
Now, I should say that the first five are all written mistakes, that is if you say these
things, nobody will be able to tell what you're saying, but if you write them down then they
will see your mistake.
In other words, they are spelling mistakes, but the spelling mistake is based on a grammatical
mistake that you have misunderstood something in English.
Okay?
But I'm here to explain it to you, so no worries.
Here we go.
Number one: "Your late", "Y-o-u-r" or "You're late".
Now you see, they sound the same, but this one is written "y-o-u-'-r-e".
Have you seen this mistake on the internet?
I see it all the time, but not by you I hope.
So, what's the right answer here?
The first one: "Your late", "Y-o-u-r" or the second one?
Okay?
So, the correct one is this.
This is the correct one, this is wrong.
Why?
Okay?
"You're late" like this is what?
"You are", it's a contraction or short form of "You are", and the other one: "Y-o-u-r"
is a possessive form of "You".
It means this is your book, this is your brother, etc.
Okay?
So: "You are late."
is what you wanted there.
Second one: "Who's that?", "W-h-o-'-s" or: "Whose that?", "W-h-o-s-e"?
Which is correct?
Well, this one is correct, and this is wrong
because: "Who's that?" is short for: "Who is", "Who is that?"
Again, it's a contraction or a short form. Right?
And this one: "Whose" is a possessive word to ask: "Who does this belong to?"
Okay?
That's not what you want to say here.
Number three: "It's time to go." or "Its time to go."
Again, remember they sound exactly the same, they are what are called homonyms, but don't
worry about that.
You need to know how to spell, so is it like this or like this?
Well, this is correct, this is not.
This is, again, a contraction for: "It is", right?
"It is time to go. It's time to go."
This: "Its" with no apostrophe is the possessive form of "It", it shows that something belongs
to it.
All right?
That's not what you want to use here.
Next: "There here", "Their here", or "They're here".
Again, they sound the same, but what's the correct spelling?
Which word do you really want?
So, we want this one.
"They are here." Okay?
It's a contraction.
This one: "There" is the opposite of "Here", and "T-h-e-i-r", "Their" is the possessive
form of "They", it means something belongs to them, and that's not what you want in this example.
The last one here is: "Did you lose this?" or "Did you loose this?"
Now, some people don't pronounce it correctly so they end up sounding the same, they actually
pronounce differently, and spell differently, and the meaning is completely different.
Okay?
So: "Did you lose this?" or "Did you loose this?"
Which is the right one?
This is correct, and this is wrong.
The first one: "lose" is a verb because that's...
It means...
Okay, like something is lost, you lost it.
You lose something.
And "loose" means not tight, like: "His pants were very loose", not tight.
So, these are the first five, these are mistakes that you can make in writing, and if you made
any of them don't worry.
As I said, afterwards I'll tell you where you can go to watch a video on whichever one
you got wrong because I've recorded lessons on each of these.
Okay?
Let's go to the second part.
Now, let's look at five mistakes that people sometimes make while speaking.
Okay?
Number six: "You speak English good."
or "You speak English well."
Which is correct?
Do you know?
Well, the answer is this, this is the correct one: "You speak English well", because "well"
is an adverb.
It describes how you speak: "You speak well."
And "good", in this case is wrong, because "good" is an adjective.
So, for example, you could say: "You speak good English" because then "good" describes English.
All right?
Next one, number seven: "He's doing his homework." or "He's making his homework".
"do" and "make", so many, many expressions with "do" and "make".
How do you decide?
Well, let's see if you know this one first, then I'll tell you how you decide.
"He's doing his homework.", "He's making his homework."
Which one is right?
This one is correct: "He's doing his homework."
And it is wrong to say: "He's making his homework."
just because it's wrong.
Now, the way to know whether to say "do" or "make", there is some explanation that tries
to help you understand, but I think it's very difficult for you to think through it every time.
I think in this case you do have to learn a lot of the expressions by heart, and one
way you can do that is to look at one of the resources that I've written on my engVid channel,
which actually has a long list of expressions with "do" and "make", but I'll tell you again
how to get to that.
Number eight: "I'll see you at 6:30." or "I'll see you on 6:30." or "I'll see you in 6:30."
Is it: "at 6:30", "on 6:30", "in 6:30", which is it?
Those little prepositions.
So important.
Which one is it?
"I'll see you at 6:30",
not "on", not "in", okay? "at" is used with very specific times,
like: 6:00, 6:30, midnight, and so on.
"on" is used with one day or one date, and "in" is used for anything more than one day
or one date.
Really very important because these little prepositions pop up everywhere when we're
speaking, right?
Okay.
Number nine: "He and I are getting married."
or "Him and I are getting married."
Which one is right?
I just want to tell you that if you make this mistake it's a really bad mistake.
So...
They're all bad, this is very bad.
So, which is correct?
This is correct.
This is wrong.
Because "He" is a subject pronoun, and "Him" is an object pronoun, and if you don't know
the difference between a subject pronoun and an object pronoun, then you should really
follow this by looking at the...
Watching the video which I have which explains this in more detail.
Each of the lessons that we have actually explains these points in much more detail
than I'm going into here.
Okay?
Number 10: "He has a cool car."
or "He's having a cool car."
Sounds like could be, right?
Is there a difference?
Yes, we should say:
"He has a cool car."
We cannot say in correct English: "He's having a cool car."
Because "have", "have" is a...
What is called in English a stative verb.
It describes a state.
And so we can't normally use "have" to talk about something that you own, and there's
a lot of details that you need to understand when you're using stative verbs, of which
"have" is one example.
Now, did you make any mistakes here?
Did you make any of these 10 mistakes?
If you did, no problem, don't worry.
There are only three ways to improve your English.
One is to learn what's right, the second way is to correct what's wrong,
and the third way is to keep going forward, step by step.
So here are the steps that you can take now to improve your English.
Okay?
Number one:
Go to www.engvid.com and here you'll find many, many lessons that will help you
improve your English.
Number two, you'll also find in the lesson description links to each of these mistakes
and the video or lesson that explains it in more detail so you can understand exactly
and never make that mistake again, and last, subscribe to my YouTube channel
because this way you'll continue to get lots of tips on how to improve your English once and for all.
Okay?
Good for you.
Thanks very much for watching, and all the best with your English.