Hi friends! In this lesson, we're going to take a look at five very common grammar mistakes that a lot of
students make when they do their writing and speaking questions on the Duolingo English test. And of course,
I'm going to show you how you can avoid making these mistakes. Just to let you know, these are not the five
official most common mistakes. But these are the five most common mistakes I see students make when they
write answers on my Facebook group or in the YouTube comments. So I really think that if you can avoid these
mistakes, it will help you to get a better score. Okay, we will get to these five common mistakes in just a
moment. But I want to say that if you're new to this channel, Hi, I'm teacher Luke from DETReady.com. Hea
over to our website. If you want to take some extr courses, learn more about the Duolingo English test o
practice with our practice platform. Our courses ar designed to help you get a better score in production
So the speaking or writing questions, and then ou practice platform here helps you with all of th
questions. When you sign up, you get unlimited practic to all of the different question types on the Duoling
English test, and you can see your answers immediately If you're interested in any of these, you'll find link
to them below in the description. Okay, then well let's get started with grammar mistake number one
which is using the plus a country
So this mistake is something I see a lot in both the speaking and writing questions and normally comes up
when you have been asked to talk about or write about a trip or your hometown or your home country. And even
though this is a common mistake, it's very easy to fix. We'll talk about how to fix it in one second. But I
want you to take a look at five sentences, I have made few here. And I want you to try to find the mistakes.
I'll give you 20 seconds to do this.
So I'm sure you were able to correct these sentences quite easily. Because this grammar is not that
difficult. A lot of students they actually know the grammar rule, but when they're speaking or writing,
they make this little mistake. Basically the rule is that for most countries, or most cities, we don't
include the word there before it. That's the case for most different countries and cities. But sometimes we
do include the word there, we use it there with countries or places when the name refers to a group of
islands or states. And quite often it will consist of a word like united. So for example, if we look at the
United Kingdom, where I come from, the United Kingdom is actually made up of four different countries. So
that name, the United Kingdom refers to those four countries, other countries like the Philippines are
made up of different islands. We also do this when we talk about larger places like the Middle East, which is
made up of a dozen or so different countries. So just a quick reminder, mostly we do not use the word "the"
in front of a country. But for some we do. Let me show ou a list of some of these he
So these are some of the countries with the in their name, we have the United Kingdom, the United States,
the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and the Maldives. Okay, now let's take a
look at a very common mistake to do when describing a photo.
Being able to describe a photograph very well is very important if you want to get a good score on the
Duolingo English test, because it actually comes up four times, you have to describe a photo in writing
three times and through speaking once. And there's a very common mistake that I see a lot and it usually
takes place in the first sentence when people are talking about what the photo shows. So have a look at
this sentence here and see if you can find the mistake.
In this photo, there are a father and a little girl walking on the beach.
Right The mistake is actually to do with this subject verb agreement.
In this case,
in this example, we should not use the plural verb R. Instead we should use is
so this one is a very common mistake and it's actually quite complicated. So if you take a look at this
sentence, there are actually two subjects a father and a little girl so because there are two subjects it
makes sense to use the plural verb which is our the plural form of the be verb is of course, our but
actually that's wrong in this sentence. It should be is so why is that? Well, if you take a look at this
sentence right here, the subjects are our father.
And a little girl. And what's the first subject? Well, it is our father. Our father is obviously a single
subject. And because that comes first in this sentence, the verb that's before, it needs to be singular as
well. So even though there are two subjects, if the first subject takes the singular form, then the verb
before it should also take the singular form, there is a father and a little girl. But that's not it. Let's
take a look at this sentence here.
So what if we change the order of the sentence? And we said, In this photo, a father and a little girl are
walking on the beach? Is that correct? Yes, in this case, that's correct. It's because the be verb comes
after the two subjects. And in this case, we should use the plural verb because there are two subjects, so it
follows a more natural order here.
So that's the mistake I see a lot when students are describing a photo both in speaking and writing. So try
your best to avoid this simple mistake. In my writing courses, I show you some very useful structures you can
use for describing a photo. And in my other course, for writing a paragraph, I show you how to avoid simple
mistakes like these ones, and they show you other things like how to use adjectives correctly, how to use
prepositions of place, all of which are very useful for describing a photo. So if you want to learn how to
answer this type of question really well, you can find links to it below in the description.
When students do their writing, especially the 50 words or more writing task, they typically write very long,
complicated sentences, because they think that will help them get a better score. And while that's true,
it's only true if you do it correctly. A lot of times students actually combined two sentences together, or
just by using a comma. And that's not how we combine sentences. So let me show you what I mean. Here's an
example answer that a student wrote, and I want you to see how they combined two full sentences together,
notice where the comma is.
Okay, so here's the mistake. Can you find what the problem is here?
Right, this student actually combined two pretty good sentences together by just using a comma. And actually,
this is wrong, you can't do this. So like I mentioned, it seems to me that a lot of students try to write
longer sentences than necessary in order to try to get a better score on grammar, just like this example here.
But unfortunately, by doing this, you're actually losing points, because you actually are making a
mistake. So let's see how we can fix it. There are several different ways.
So the simplest way is to take that long sentence using a comma and make it into two sentences using a period.
Now we have two perfectly correct sentences, that's totally fine. Remember, being grammatically correct is
important. Another way is to use a semicolon. This is a bit more challenging, because semi colons are actually
very confusing. But basically, we can use a semi colon as a sort of super comma or in replace of a period. So
we use it when we don't want to start a new sentence, but we understand that we can't use a comma. So
instead, we can use a semi colon. Personally, I would avoid trying to use a semi colon like this because it
is quite tricky, and a lot of people make mistakes with it. There are easier ways, which I'll show you now.
So what you could do is link the two sentences together using a compound sentence. You can do this by using one
of the fanboys. fanboys stands for for and nor, but, or yet, and so, and these are good ways to link ideas
together. So in this example, we could use a comma plus so Oh, and and then your next idea, and this would be a
perfectly good sentence. And fanboys are also known as coordinating conjunctions, which basically means that
they use to link two ideas together.
Understanding and knowing how to use these fanboys well is a very easy way to improve your writing. They enable
you to link ideas together very easily. And if you want to learn more, I did make a video covering this briefly
here. And of course, in my writing courses that I mentioned earlier, I go over fanboys in a lot of
detail. Okay, now I have a quick test for you. I'm going to show you an example sentence a student wrote,
which combines lots of ideas together without using any punctuation and I want you to try to fix this sentence.
I'll give you 20 seconds to do so. But if you need more time, just pause the video.
Okay, here's the sentence and you have 20 seconds to fix it.
Okay, let me show you a sample answer. My sample answer goes like this. Computers are important, but they can
be dangerous, so we must be careful. This is a simple way to combine ideas together into one sentence.
Okay, Mistake number four is all to do with uncountable nouns.
So unfortunately, a lot of students even advanced students make mistakes with uncountable nouns,
especially the abstract ones, they can be really confusing, but I'm going to help you here to notice
these common mistakes. So here I prepared three sentences each contain one mistake, I'll give you a few
seconds to look at them and try to find out the mistake to do with the uncountable noun.
The three nouns in those sentences are all uncountable, advice, research and feedback. And since they're
uncountable, we can't use an S or an S at the end of them. And we also can't use an article or on before
them. So if you want to put a words before the noun, you should use words like some or a piece of that way,
you can talk about the amount. For example, with the noun feedback, you could say, I got some feedback from
my friend, or I got a great piece of feedback from my friend. That's the correct way to talk about the
quantity of this noun. And I prepared another quick quiz for you. So here are five sentences, I want you to
look through them and correct them. I'll give you 20 seconds to do this as well. If you need more time, just
pause the video.
And here are the answers.
Of course, in English, just like every language, there's always going to be more than one correct
answer. But here were some correct ways to fix those errors. Next up, we have not used in linking phrases in
writing and speaking. In order to make your answers coherent and cohesive, then you need to use LinkedIn
phrases, both in speaking and writing. Linking phrases make your answers very easy to understand. They
basically glue ideas together, and they act like a signal so the listener or reader can easily follow your
ideas they're really important to use. However, I've seen many answers where students don't use linking
phrases. Instead, they just write lots of individual sentences. And if you do that, then your sentences look
more like lists rather than full paragraphs. And you definitely want to avoid that. If you want to learn
more about linking phrases in lots of detail. I made a whole video up here or here, I guess. But for now, I'm
going to show you an answer. And the answer doesn't include any linking phrases. I'll give you 20 seconds.
As always, I want you to think what would be a good linking phrase for each section. Basically, your job is
to fill in the blanks with linking phrases. Okay, let's get to it. And like I said, you have 20 seconds.
Okay, 20 seconds is up, were you able to fill in those blanks with appropriate Lincoln phrases? Well, let's
take a look at some answers. And just like I said before, there's always going to be more than one
correct answer. But here are just some examples that I've come up with. So let's take a look.
Okay, so the first link in phrase I used was to begin with, or Firstly, we use this linking phrase, because
it indicates that you're going to talk about your first opinion to begin with would be a good one to use in
speaking. And you can use things like Firstly, or first or first and foremost in writing. The next link in
phrase was, for example, or let me share an example. Of course we use this linking phrase when we are going to
give an example. It's important that you indicate through a linking phrase that you are going to mention
an example. This makes it easier for the listener or reader to understand your ideas and understand your
answer better. And in the third blank I wrote what's more Additionally, or Moreover, these can be used
When you're going to talk about your second, third or even fourth idea, again, they indicate and they show
the reader or listener that you moving on to a new idea. What's more is good for speaking. Additionally, a
Moreover, are probably more common in writing. Okay, and that's it. Those were five very common mistakes
that I see in both the speaking and writing questions on the Duolingo English test. If you thought this video
was helpful, I recommend you watch this one here Next, or this one here. they'll both be very helpful to help
you pass this Duolingo English test. Okay, thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you next week.
Bye.