Hey have you ever said something like my sister has 21 years but immediately thereafter
you remember that in English we say someone's age with the verb to be so you self-correct and
you say it again this time my sister is 21 years good excellent let's move on with the conversation
but wait you have a feeling that there's still something wrong with how you said it
you keep thinking about it now you've disengaged from the conversation
you're so focused on what you said that you even stopped listening to the other person
oh right i remember i'm not supposed to just say years after the age it is years old
but now it's no good the other person has just asked you sorry are you listening inside you are
kicking yourself why do i keep making the same mistake over and over even though i
know it's incorrect don't beat yourself up this happens to all of us language learners
it's a problem that is really hard to shake off. Linguists call this fossilization
puzzlization refers to the process in which incorrect language becomes a bad habit and
cannot easily be corrected it happens to me all the time maybe like in your language
in Spanish nouns have genders but this does not exist in English so it can be quite tricky for me
like how I instinctively want to say la problema because problema ends with an a but in fact
it is masculine and should be el problema I know for me these kinds of little mistakes that I
know i'm making deteriorate my confidence i'm sure that you feel the same when it happens to you in
English especially if you're already in an advanced level it is so frustrating right most
times these mistakes don't hurt communication if you're speaking with a native they might not
even notice them and they certainly won't care about them but you know that they are there that
said i'm here to tell you that you can definitely recognize these mistakes you can learn from them
and finally overcome them in this lesson i'll teach you why you keep making the same mistakes
over and over again and how to erase them from your speaking so that you can feel confident
before I teach you these strategies though if you like what we're doing here at RealLife and you
want to take your fluency beyond the classroom and into the real world which is to understand
fast speaking natives to speak confidently with anyone and to connect to the world
then i invite you to join the real life movement by clicking on the subscribe button and down
below so that you don't miss out just like your fellow learner Jamg who says that our lessons are
helping them to overcome their fear and speak confidently alright so if you watch until the
end you will learn what fossilized language is why you keep making the same mistakes over and
over again how you can finally fix your mistakes some common mistakes you are probably making
so grab a pen and paper or note-taking app and let's get to it as i said before fossilization
refers to the process in which incorrect language becomes a bad habit and cannot easily be corrected
what are some common mistakes that tend to become fossilized in learners for example speakers of
latin languages like spanish and portuguese often struggle with the simple difference between said
and tell they'll say she said me something when it should be she told me something this is a
vocabulary and grammar fossilized mistake because if you said it should be she said something
to me pronunciation also features many fossilized mistakes the voiceless th sound
tends to be a problem for most learners so many will say think as zinc or sink
let's do a little test can you spot the mistake in each of these sentences it's raining
he gave me an advice explain me i have a doubt the people is crazy i hurt my feet stick around
till the end of the video where i'm going to explain what's wrong with each of these sentences
so these common mistakes are usually because of what we call interference this happens when you
use structures forms words and also sound ones from your native language and apply them to
english resulting in words phrases sentences and sounds that are incorrect or just sound unnatural
an extreme case of interference is what we call spanglish or portugal for example this
is when someone who has spanish as their first language overuses elements of that language and
transfers them to English or to Portuguese so they'll basically speak in Spanish with a few
english words here and there now transferring elements from your native language to english
isn't always bad there's a thing called positive transfer this is when english and your native
language have some elements in common this is great because it means that you don't need to
make an extra effort to learn something in English as it already exists in your native language if
you speak german or french as your native language you will benefit from a lot of positive transfer
as english historically derived largely from the same roots as these languages for example
in German a non-romance language herz is heart and licht is light so as you can see
these words are very similar for a german speaking english learner it is not so difficult to learn
these words he's already halfway there on the other hand negative transfer also known as the
interference that i mentioned before is when this transfer results in incorrect or unnatural english
false friends or false cognates as you may have heard it is one type of interference so an example
of a false friend between spanish and english is carpetta and carpet which as you can see are two
very different things carpet translate to folder or how a friend of mine got in trouble in brazil
because he told the girl that she looked quite exquisite this is quite the compliment in english
but she misunderstood it because exquisita in portuguese means weird as you can see interference
is one of the main reasons we fossilize mistakes have you made any of the mistakes like the ones
that i've mentioned so far i'd love to hear about them so tell me down in the comments below and
also see what other learners have said so another mistake fossilization is something that is both
good and bad some communication strategies that you might be using what exactly is this
well it varies from person to person a common one that you'd use in real life situations
is paraphrasing when you don't know a word or you simply can't recall it you can explain it
now paraphrasing is actually a good thing it's a skill that you can develop to help you carry on in
conversation in english so you don't freeze by the way if you ever freeze when you get
in a conversation then i highly recommend that you don't miss this recent lesson that we made
i'll link it at the top and down the description below so that you can watch that next however if
you get too reliant on paraphrasing it can also be a bad thing as it might prevent you from learning
the word phrase or structure that you could be using so at first you could say you know the thing
that you use to drive the car but eventually you should learn the word that you want to say is the
steering wheel another common strategy is what we call avoidance which is obviously to avoid saying
the word phrase or structure altogether so as to not make a mistake for example one avoidance that
i was making recently was the word for storage in catalan i found this word so difficult to say
that i would usually just resort to paraphrasing you know the place where you keep things instead
of saying the word but eventually i realized it would be good to actually develop my pronunciation
if i mastered this word so i practiced over and over and now i can say it no problem
oftentimes avoidance is caused by not having enough vocabulary you are missing a word or
saying the wrong one that you need in order to continue with the flow of the conversation
so if you want to greatly increase your vocabulary then i highly recommend that you learn more about
our real life native immersion course now in this course you will learn and never forget the words
that we natives really use with real life conversations plus you'll have so much fun
the best part you can try it for free right now with our power learning mini course
learn more and sign up by clicking up here or down in the description box below
after taking some time to reflect about possible solutions to this problem
our team came up with the following framework recognize reflect unlearn relearn
the first challenge is actually recognizing what the problem is becoming aware of the
mistake so imagine that you went about your life always saying i have 29 years until someone was
kind enough to point that error out to you you'd think have i been saying this wrong all this time
now of course the problem isn't making mistakes mistakes are your best ally in learning english
as long as you use them to take action and to fix them so now this i am x years old is a basic
sentence that you have probably mastered already however there might be other mistakes whether
having to do with vocabulary grammar pronunciation or even pragmatics how you actually use language
and how you interact with another culture that you might be unaware of when that's the case
the obvious question is how can i know what the mistake is if i don't even know that i'm making it
frankly the absolute best way to overcome this is by getting a good teacher or possibly a mentor
someone who can guide you and give you advice now you pay a teacher to identify these mistakes
and help you to overcome them i learned catalan all on my own by watching tv series listening to
music and podcasts and speaking with friends i was able to get really fluent by doing this however
the problem is that native friends usually will not correct you as long as they can understand
you so i decided to sign up for the c1 exam and get an experienced private teacher this was
pivotal because she was able to identify all sorts of mistakes that i had no idea that i was making
for example if you want to say there is in catalan it is if there were plural
i used to conjugate the verb for the plural eon however my teacher pointed out to me that there
are doesn't really exist in catalan it should always be in the singular so this is why a teacher
is so helpful i've been making this mistake for years without any of my friends correcting me
now if you can't afford a teacher right now that's okay i recommend you watch a lot of tv in english
you read as much as possible and obviously if it is possible engage in conversations in english
once you're exposed to the language in that way pay attention compare the samples of the language
that you hear or read with your own and come to your own conclusions it will require hard work
and a lot of self-awareness consider this as a takeaway from this lesson
recognizing the problem puts you halfway there to the solution in other words knowing what the
problem is is fifty percent of the solution the next say ten percent comes with reflection so
once you recognize the problem take some time to reflect on it think what about this mistake makes
it especially hard for me to overcome even when it might seem so simple and easy on the surface
it might be a negative transfer from your first language it might be an over generalization of a
rule this is actually precisely what i was talking about with a brazilian friend of mine the other
day so he always pronounced said as said which makes sense because in the present tense it's say
so it is only logical that for the past form you just need to add a d sound and say say it
that's a case of over-generalizing that rule or failing to know the exception to said rule i
recommended that he listen with a keen ear when he's listening to a podcast or watching a tv
series and not depends so much on his eyes let's now move on to what i mean by unlearn and relearn
it just so happens that with fossilized mistakes chances are that you've been using an incorrect
structure word or mispronunciation for a long time so it really takes a lot of energy to learn to say
something in the correct way automatically so again use the power of reflection as the pathway
out of the problem and to a new level of language proficiency imagine you're learning the correct
structure for the first time maybe even write down on a piece of paper that incorrect word phrase or
whatever then make that piece of paper into a ball and throw it away another important thing
is to also not always try to look for parallels of english in your first language because that might
trick you into bringing in structures and words from your native language into english if you're
able to learn to communicate in english without translating from your native language you'll be
achieving a breakthrough moment which is what everybody calls thinking in english
so now let's summarize the key main ideas that will help you in fossilization reduction so get
as much exposure to english as possible through watching reading and or conversing pay attention
to the samples of language that you get compare them with your own and recognize the mistakes
then reflect about why they're difficult for you finally forget about translating or looking for
parallels in your native language do what it takes to unlearn and then to relearn the correct way of
saying or pronouncing something fossilization is an inevitable part of second language acquisition
so you're always going to be battling against it it's okay to make mistakes when you do laughing
them off is the best thing that you can do but then again use them to your advantage
by making them your allies in your english learning journey which means learn from them
so now let's bring back those typical mistakes that maybe you're still doing
or you might have overcome by now either way taking a look at them will probably put you on
the right track to fix other mistakes as well this is a very common one i've also heard friends say
is good or is normal the thing is we pretty much always have to use the subject in english in some
languages the subject can be implied but not in english the funny thing with it when we say it
is raining is that it doesn't refer to anything in particular when we say it is rainy though we could
say that it refers to the day how do you say this in your native language and can you say it like
two advices for example if you can it means that it is the countable noun in your native language
however it is uncountable in english so the correct way to say it is a piece of advice
similarly we say a piece or slice of bread or a piece of software that's right another common
mistake that i've heard is i've installed the software but you should say a piece of software
a sentence like he explained the solution is an extremely common mistake the thing to remember
here is that explain is always followed by two so i'm explaining to you the right way to use
this word in a sentence believe me this is a big one the dictionary defined doubt as a feeling of
being not sure whether something is true or right and you could use it like i have some doubts
about whether the plan is going to work however i've seen learners confuse doubt for question
so instead of saying something like i have a doubt how can i cook this say i have a question how
can i cook this there are two typical errors here first when we refer to people in general we don't
use the article the second people is plural despite the fact that it doesn't have an s
so one person two people many people the word persons does exist but it's only used in very
specific contexts same thing with saying peoples the other thing about the article is that you can
use it when you talk about a very specific group of people you could say the people of this town
are very nice the difficulty here is also the plural just remember that feet means you're two
feet but if you want to talk about one it's foot same with the difference between teeth and tooth
whoever invented this language probably thought that it'd be pretty funny to make it a bit
confusing so what are the common mistakes that you always make tell me down in the comments below
and that's it for today's lesson but if you haven't yet remember to subscribe so that every
week we can continue helping you to overcome your biggest mistakes and now it's time to go beyond
the classroom and live your english ah yeah this means that learning new words to describe
your english is a good idea don't you think so rather than just using the usual words like good
bad beginner intermediate and advanced today we're going to learn some more colorful language
and vocabulary that's going to help you to describe your english and the english of