20 Common English Speaking Mistakes - Do YOU make these? (with QUIZ)

hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy today we are going to be talking about some common english mistakes normally made in spoken english but also sometimes in written english naturally these tend to be made by people who are learning english but there are quite a few mistakes in here that native speakers also make so you're not alone this is a very difficult language in this video i'm going to take the incorrect sentences and provide you with the corrections so you can really get them into your head there is also a free pdf that goes with today's lesson it's got everything that we're going to talk about today plus a quiz at the end so you can practice what you've learned and make sure you don't repeat those mistakes if you'd like to download that just click on the link in the description box you enter your name and your email address you sign up to my mailing list the pdf will arrive directly in your inbox and then every week after that you will automatically receive my lesson pdfs along with all of my news course updates and offers before we get started i just have a quick message from the sponsor of today's video it is lingoda europe's number one trusted language school have you heard about the lingoda language sprint it is an intensive language challenge where you take either 15 or 30 language lessons a month for three months as a huge motivational push you can get 100 cashback if you attend all of your lessons or 50 cashback if you take the lighter sprint option you can take the sprint in english business english french german or spanish from beginner to advanced level lingoda is amazing because they have incredible qualified teachers and their group sizes are so small you can attend classes 24 7 from anywhere in the world their classes are of such high quality with lots of speaking practice and interaction i recently asked a load of my followers who has done a language sprint can you tell me about your experience and so many came back to me and so many of them had received their refunds it was crazy lots of them said that it was a real challenge but that cashback motivation really pushed them to achieve they also spoke incredibly highly of the teachers they got to meet lots of different teachers participate in lots of groups and learn really specific vocabulary and all the different lessons that you can choose from so are you ready to start your sprint join now just click on the link in the description box and use my code right here to get a 20 euro discount on your deposit don't forget to check the faq section before joining to make sure that it's right for you i am very excited for you best of luck and i can't wait to hear your feedback when you finish right let's get started with the speaking mistakes okay the first mistake is the misuse of less and fewer and this is a mistake that i myself make i hear will make it a lot i hear my mum make it i don't know if it's regional i think it's just a mistake that native speakers make a lot of the time if you manage to use less and fewer correctly then you can confidently say that you speak better than a lot of native speakers including me let's take a look at this sentence it's incorrect i warn you don't write it down there are less people than yesterday there are less people than yesterday this should be corrected to there are fewer people than yesterday why is this well we use less with uncountable nouns and fewer with countable nouns and people it's a countable noun if you find it confusing you can think of it this way less is used with singular or uncountable nouns and fewer is used with plural or countable nouns which one of these is correct the baby weighed fewer than two pounds at birth or the baby weighed less than two pounds at birth i'll give you a couple of seconds less or fewer it should be fewer pounds plural countable nouns right let's move on to three and four our next two mistakes we are going to be looking at me and i once again this is a mistake that i have made many times in the past and every now and again i do make this mistake and my dad always corrects me the issue is that many native speakers are taught to be wary of me not me in particular the word me we're always told it shouldn't be him and me it should be him and i but this isn't always correct it depends on the placement have a look at this sentence they gave it to him and i they gave it to him and i this is incorrect it should be they gave it to him and me now there's quite a simple trick for checking if it should be him and i or him and me remove the him and and see if it fits they gave it to i doesn't fit they gave it to me does fit they gave it to him and me these next three we're going to be focusing on subject verb agreement this is one of the first things you learn in english but it's hard it can get quite complicated and we often make mistakes i often hear sentences like this one of you are gonna get hurt one of you are going to get hurt and to my ear it doesn't actually sound too bad but it is technically grammatically incorrect it should be one of you is going to get hurt one of you is going to get hurt because the is is agreeing with one of you one of this group of you one is have a look at this next one which one do you think is correct neither car are very fast neither car is very fast are or is i'll give you a couple of seconds it should be is neither means not this one nor this one neither is singular last one see if you can get it each of the plates are broken or each of the plates is broken give you a couple of seconds it should be is again each one each individual singular is broken i personally find those quite tricky it might seem absolutely obvious to you but to me i really do find that quite hard i find strange things quite hard like the difference between take and bring and left and right would you believe it it's funny how everyone's brains work let's take a look at the articles ah and anne this is a very common mistake that i hear normally made by learners of english i might hear them say something like it's a old dress it's a old dress where it should be it's an old dress we use an because the word that comes after the article begins with a vowel sound an old an old it's actually harder to say ah old owld ah old you need to do a little tiny glottal stop another one it's an amazing deal it's an amazing deal it should be it's an amazing deal it's an amazing deal i used to live with an italian girl who's a very good friend and she often made the mistake of actually doing this the other way around because with words that began with an h sound her like hat she wouldn't pronounce that consonant sound she would start it with the a vowel sound instead she would say act instead of hat so she said i have bought an at i have bought an at and i thought that was a very very interesting thing because she was correctly making the calculations of whether she should say ah or an it just was that she was pronouncing the following word incorrectly there are some dialects and accents like the cockney accent where they often drop the h's i wonder if they would say i bought an at instead of i bought i'm not sure i have to ask someone because that seems really interesting next we're going to look at the difference between beside and besides these are commonly confused words take a look at this sentence she sat besides the river she sat besides the river this is wrong it should be she sat beside the river beside means next to besides means in addition to can you tell me which of these next two sentences is correct i could never be a dancer beside i'm too old now or i could never be a dancer besides i'm too old now which one do you think is right i'll give you a couple of seconds it is besides in addition in addition to that i'm too old now next let's look at very common mistake the mistake of repeating the subject i hear this all the time take a look at this sentence my friend she's coming with me my friend she's coming with me it should be my friend is coming with me you don't need to repeat the subject it's either my friend is coming with me or she is coming with me by saying my friend she's coming with me you are saying the same thing twice another example my handwriting it's improving my handwriting it's improving this should be my handwriting's improving or my handwriting is improving no need to repeat yourself we got you next let's take a look at the incorrect use of nobody instead of anybody now i'm not going to say that this is always incorrect because it forms part of dialects it's quite cool slang as well but if you're looking to write correct english in an exam or something like that it's important to know this take a look at this sentence i don't need nobody's money i don't need nobody's money now grammatically this sentence is wrong although it sounds right you'll hear it in music all the time it's like extra emphasis but it's actually a double negative it should be i don't need anybody's money by saying nobody you're doubling up on that negative another example i didn't meet nobody at the party i didn't meet nobody at the party technically it should be i didn't meet anybody at the party moving on let's have a look at would have should have and could have i actually made a video all about would have should have and could have i will link it down below because it's very useful i know a lot of students struggle with it but there is a common mistake used by native speakers again because we have the reduction of of would have should have could have this has been misinterpreted over the years and people are saying would of should of and could of but this is technically incorrect an example is you could have said you could have said it's very hard to hear that slight difference it should be could have said or she shouldn't have done that she shouldn't have done that it's much clearer to see in written english or i would have helped you should be i would have helped you it's a very subtle difference in spoken english but it's a very clear difference in written english finally we have our last two mistakes this is one i read on a daily basis in my comments section my lovely students ask me if i've visited their country and they asked me have you ever been in india have you ever been in london have you ever been in italy for example it's the difference between been in and been to to have been in means it's a lasting action which is still true i've been in here filming for three hours for example and i'm still here when you visit or travel to somewhere you can say that you've been to that location we'll use it to talk about our traveling experiences i've been in london before should be i've been to london before have you been in india have you been to india right that is it for today's lesson i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you learned something now it is time for you to complete the quiz on that pdf if you'd like to download it all you've got to do is click on the link in the description box you enter your name and your email address you sign up to my mailing list and the pdf will arrive directly in your inbox and then every week after that you will automatically receive my lesson pdfs and all of my news course updates and offers don't forget to check out lingoda with their language sprint just click on the link in the description box and use my code for 20 euros off your deposit don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media i've got my instagram lucy and my website englishwithlucy.co.uk where i've got an awesome pronunciation tool where you can click on phonemes and hear how i pronounce those phonemes and words containing those phonemes it's very fun e word no i've also got my personal channel where i document and vlog my life here in the english countryside and all of the vlogs are fully subtitled so that you can use them for listening practice and to improve your vocabulary i will see you soon for another lesson [Music] [Music] you

Channel: English with Lucy

Views: 651,396

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Id: Ab4WIVqPpjM

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021