How to Find & Correct Your Grammar Mistakes

now we all make mistakes whenever we're learning other languages and to be perfectly honest I think many of us make mistakes even in our native languages as well but when you are learning a language and many of you out there you are here because you are learning English I think it's important to what once you're able to identify your mistakes try to actively fix them and correct them so that you are no longer making this mistake in the future and that's what today's lesson is all about it is about finding and identifying your mistakes so what before we get to this just to reinforce that this is a great practice lesson because what we're going to do is I am going to walk you through the process about how to identify your mistakes and then just work on practicing and practicing and practicing so that you can avoid those mistakes in the future and when you're able to do that it's just going to help you improve your overall English fluency so this is very important but it's also something that I think is overlooked and what I mean by that is I think many of us want to correct our mistakes but we're not really sure how to do it and even if we know how to do it I think sometimes it's difficult to actually set time apart in order to do this identify your mistakes and then practice correcting them I think most of the time for many people get get caught up in learning a language that's all about let's learn something new let's new new new new new new vocabulary new grammar and you know when it comes to correcting your mistakes you're actually talking we're talking about correcting things that you have already learned that you already know so I want you to keep that in mind because this is a it is a process like I said and I'm going to walk you through the process the same way I did with my students in the past when we're in the classroom because right now we in this is our online classroom so if you are in the chat again I want you to participate try to practice your skills answer the questions and even if you're watching this later I would encourage you to engage and answer these questions because that's what interactive English is all about so let's do a little warm-up all right you've you've heard my long introduction to this let's go ahead and start with a warm-up of you know just see if you can identify the mistake so I've taken some tweets alright and on Twitter you will find a plethora of grammar mistakes that people will make so this one is from Donald Trump of course can you spot the mistake I want you to write it in a chat write it and write it in the comment section if you're watching this later and then I will show you the answer so he said Wow every poll said I won the debate last night great honor all right what do you think what is the mistake now I hope that you can you know just read this quickly and again something really stands out and right away it should just be that spelling mistake okay honor if something is an honor it means that well you are proud of something that happened it is spelled H o n our great honor all right the next one are you ready so this is from somebody named Jennifer I have no idea who this is but she said hate when people try to sugarcoat it okay again there is a I think again a glaring mistake that if you read this and you would see it oh okay this is clearly the mistake what do you think is the mistake hate when people try to sugarcoat it all right you may be able to hear the the correction by just listening to what I said but in this case in this tweet she's just using the wrong word in order to convey the meaning that she wants to all right so I hope you said yes hate when people try to sugar coat it all right her coat and if you don't know what it means to sugarcoat this is a good way to build your vocabulary it's when you try to make something usually sound better than it really is so really think about what it means that you are if you are coding something with sugar you're putting sugar on something usually because people might think well this tastes better all right people can be you can get addicted to sugar it tastes better so when you say this and you're talking about what something somebody is saying when they're talking and if they sugarcoat something if they sugarcoat an explanation then it means that they're trying to make it sound better than it really is to sugarcoat something often if you don't want to hear bad news somebody may sugarcoat it for you and they make it sound like well it's not so bad after all all right so that's what it means to sugarcoat something it means when you are talking it's talking about what people are saying all right it's about spoken English the next one and this one has several different mistakes all right so says I want to visit the Eiffel Tower in France one day that's what it says I read it like that but it should be you know I want to visit the Eiffel Tower in France one day but there are you know several big mistakes just right off the bat if you're looking at this I hope that you can read this quickly and know that yes okay France it's the name of a country it is a proper noun it should be capitalized Eiffel is misspelled so you could say I want to visit the Eiffel Tower in France one day so Eiffel Tower again that is a proper noun it should be capitalized and again when you're talking about writing I know he wrote wanna as the reduction like most people would speak it waa and na on Twitter and if you're just writing an SMS text message okay whatever I I would not encourage you to write actual reductions like that always spell them out especially if it's more formal writing for school or work just keep that in mind so the reason why again we're doing this just a quick little warm-up to see if you can spot the mistake now one thing I want to mention is we're talking about many of the mistakes that involve grammar I know that many of you are thinking well I really want to improve my spoken English and identify my mistakes in spoken English and that can be a little challenging but what I would recommend I want to tell you my recommendation because both writing and speaking are productive language skills you are producing the language in order for well in writing for somebody else to read and speaking for somebody to listen to you so in that in that sense if if the things that you can write many of the times those are also things that you can say that's not always true but there are similarities in that regard so what I would say even if you want to correct your spoke in English I think the best way to practice that all right is with writing all right so because the the reason I say that is for this so steps to identifying your mistakes the first one like I said is just to write more so whether you want to identify your mistakes in writing or even speaking I think writing is the way to go and the reason I say that is because it is reflective and what I mean by that is when you write okay you are writing something down on paper you can look at it and then actually take some time to think about it think about okay is this what I want to say is what I'm saying correct am I making any mistakes and oftentimes if you find some mistakes in writing if you are using the wrong word or maybe it could be something a mistake with a preposition often you may be making the same mistake when you're speaking so if you are able to correct these mistakes in writing I think that will help reinforce correct speaking whenever you want to have a conversation so the first thing I would say especially if you are trying to do this on your own is to start writing take a little time and write about a topic and this would be an activity that you are really trying to identify your mistakes so the first thing you need to do is write something it can you can be writing in a journal you could write in a diary you could just write something it could be an email that you have written or even you know the comment a comment that you would write to me on this YouTube channel that is practicing your writing and the next thing you need to do is always reread and this is something again I think is overlooked people tend to write something and then they don't reread it and actually try to look for mistakes and correct their mistakes I always try to make this a personal habit of mine whatever it is that that I'm writing if it's an email even if I'm responding to one of your comments I always tried to reread it make sure that there are no mistakes and then I will post it and then the last suggestion that I have for you because I said this is a process that you are going to write something you're going to reread it and you're going to look for one mistake at a time now when most people reread if I write something I'm going to reread it I usually just look at the whole thing altogether and see if I any mistakes pop to my mind now if you are actually trying to identify one of your mistakes that you are making because you're an English Learner I think a great way to do that is to go one step at a time and look for one mistake at a time and that's what we're going to practice right now we're gonna practice I'm gonna give you a writing I want you to look at it and we're gonna go through it and correct one mistake at a time so that you know exactly what I'm talking about alright so the first thing I want you to do let's just I want you to well hold on wait there's one more nope there's the paragraph okay what I want you to do is I want you to read this paragraph all I want you to do is read it okay and just see if you understand it it's not very difficult I'm only gonna give you about maybe 15 seconds to read the article all right are you ready so all I want you to do is read it right now here we go I'll give you 15 seconds ready begin okay okay so I hope by now you have read this paragraph alright now I'm gonna go back over here so you read the paragraph great you understand it perfect what I want you to do right now you're in the chat how many how many mistakes do you did you see how many mistakes did you see in that paragraph I want you to let me know write that in the chat write the number and again even if you're not sure exactly how many mistakes there were take a guess how many do you think that you read because I'm sure that when you read that you came across some definite mistakes how many do you think they've you found write that in the chat I see some different ones lolly says five Mary seven English vibes four okay so four five okay we're around there four or five now Samuel found eight okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back through that same paragraph together we're going to correct it and we're gonna do one thing at a time so I told you this is what I would do in a classroom with a group of students and this is what we would do I'd say okay this is what we're gonna look for the first thing we're gonna look for is just punctuation all right I don't want you looking for any other mistake even if you find it that's fine you can see the mistake I don't want you to think about that one just yet all I want you to look for is just punctuation the next one that we're gonna look for is just spelling and capitalization and then we're gonna go through it again and look for subject verb agreement and verb tense and then we're going to look for articles and then prepositions the last one now you can make a long list of of different things this is just a list that I put together for practicing this reading right now so now that you have this list alright you know that we are going to we're basically going to reread that paragraph five times looking for each one of those and trying to correct it and again the more you reread something the more likely you are to find some mistakes so if you're just joining us I know some people come in here and they're we are working on correcting your mistakes so this is what we're gonna do we're going to go through it one at a time and look for these different things now notice that these two first things right here number one in number two punctuation spelling and capitalization that is strictly about writing because when you're doing that you're talking about you know your writing skills because when you're speaking that it doesn't apply because people may say some word wrong for example I showed you that Trump tweet that is you know he just misspelled it you would probably say it correctly even though you're misspelling it so 1 & 2 are strictly for writing 3 4 & 5 that would also apply to speaking as well that is good for both writing and speaking finding those so let's go through this here we go the first one that I want to do is this alright so now let's read it all I want you to do is look for punctuation and if you don't know what I mean when I say punctuation I'm talking about periods full stops question marks you know commas should there be a comma anywhere apostrophes just the the punctuation that you would need to use for correct writing okay so look for the writing what do you guys see how many mistakes that you can find if you find a mistake I want you write it in the chat and this one this one is a little I think this one's a little more challenging all right punctuation all right look for those periods those apostrophes those commas do you see any problems all right now let me show you so there are two punctuation mistakes and maybe these are a little more difficult and I've underlined both of them so the first one is talking about a bird's eye view this is an idiom which means that you have an overview of some area kind of like the view that a bird would have and you'd say wow it was a bird's eye view so birds is possessive all right which means you need an apostrophe there birds bee IRD apostrophe s the next one right here is just this whole sentence after eating a quick snack I begun walking down back down this is an example where after eating a quick snack this is a dependent clause it is an adverb phrase so when you have a dependent clause that comes before an independent clause I begun walking back down you need a comma to separate the two so after eating a quick snack comma I begun walking back down so those are two mistakes just for for punctuation two right there all right now what we're gonna do let's read it again now this time I want you I've left those I've left those Corrections in there so all of the corrections are left in red I want you to look just for spelling and capitalization do you see any spelling mistakes or are there any capitalization mistakes as well are there any proper nouns that should have a capital letter or perhaps maybe there's a capital letter that that is not Kappa that that should not be capitalized all right so do you see any spelling or capitalization mistakes those that's what I want you to look for right now all right and and then again just look through it quickly see if you find anything and then I'm going to identify it for you all right yes Yousef persik English fives excellent okay so go say yes so those those are the three the people I just mentioned they found those mistakes all right the first one yesterday I went for our hike bin Diamondback mountain all right it is the name of a place this is a proper noun you should have a capital M Diamondback mountain cloudy it was a cloudy day CLO you dy before I had it spelled with the W cloudy and the last one afternoon I don't know if you noticed but I snuck a u in there before but it should be a te RN oon afternoon so those that is to to spelling mistakes and one capitalization mistake right there because Diamondback mountain is a proper noun so those are three more mistakes so right now we're at five five total now I want you to go through and look for subject verb or verb tense so when I say subject verb I mean does the subject does it agree with the verb a plural subject should have a plural verb a singular subject should have a singular verb and verb tense what I mean by that is well verb tense tells us when something happens is it the past is it the present or is it the future so make sure that the verb tense is correct should we have the past tense should we have the present tense so can you find any mistakes with subject verb agreement or verb tense what do you think all right yes excellent sleepwalker very nice so I think when you're looking through this you probably notice there are there are a few different mistakes so let's go through this so the very first word is yesterday so yesterday is a time word that tells us okay this everything happened in the past all right so all of these verbs that this should be talking about the past so instead of I walk for hours I walked for hours it should be in the past that one sentence where we have the comma after eating a quick snack I began walking instead of begun begun is the past participle I began walking back down and then that last sentence that is subject verb agreement I would not say it were that is a mistake it was it was a nice way to spend the afternoon three more mistakes okay so now that we've looked for subject verb and verb tense now I want you to look at the articles articles I'm talking about a and and the you can also have the omission of an article and when I say omission maybe it means that you do not need to use an article so those are possible mistakes there a and the or no article alright do you see any mistakes when it comes to articles can you find any there definitely are some because if there weren't I would not show it to you so now we're going back through it and looking just for mistakes with articles yes I think many of you see the when talking about top perfect so there there are actually two mistakes all right it's right here yesterday I went for a hike at in I winter a hike in Diamondback mountain now when it comes to articles there are rules that you can follow for example if you're talking about the name of a bridge you're going to use the the Golden Gate Bridge the Brooklyn Bridge when we're talking about mountains no article alright so before the name of a mountain Mountain you that is when there is no article so you do not need to say the so if you're talking about oh you know I really want to climb Mount Everest I'm not using an article before Mount Everest uh I what's another thing of a famous mountain going just four highest mountains ah one day I want to hike up Mount Kilimanjaro again we're talking about the name of a mountain there is no article and then I think some many of you spotted that other one I walked for hours before reaching the top we're talking about a specific location specific point before reaching the top two more mistakes all right the last one that we're going to I want you to look for prepositions do you see any prepositions that are incorrect what do you think write those in the chat and let me know if you find those mistakes this is all about trying to identify five different mistakes what do you think write those in the chat so if you haven't found any I'll show you there are two mistakes when it comes to this right here and we have this okay so yesterday I went for a hike you wouldn't go for a hike in a mountain you would hike up a mountain or you could hike down it but because later on I talked about going back down which means at the beginning of our story that I should say I went for a hike up Diamondback mountain and then the next mistake was a it was a cloudy day so I didn't get much of a bird's-eye view much of a bird's-eye view this is a great phrase if somebody says well I didn't get much of something I didn't get much of a view I didn't get much of an explanation from somebody about something so you didn't get much of something so those are two mistakes with prepositions and now we have our corrected paragraph which if you add them up in total there are 12 mistakes so what we did is we just corrected this paragraph we talked about all 12 mistakes and we went by through this one at a time one at a time this is how I would recommend that you try to identify any mistakes that you're making and the reason why I think you can do this as writing again I said it's reflective that you're able to look at it and try to think about okay is this right or is this wrong and if you if you're not sure about it that is when you can use the Internet and try to look up and find the right answer and then go back and correct it now what I would typically do with students when I would go through I would make these curl I would try to help them identify where the mistakes were made and then they would have to write down what kind of mistake it was is it a spelling mistake is it a punctuation mistake an article mistake and then I would have them count up how many must they made with prepositions how many mistakes did they make with subject-verb and over the course of time when you start counting how many mistakes you made then that allows you to see where your biggest problem is because if you are writing and you are actually keeping track of how many mistakes you're making and what type of mistakes you're making you may see that oh my goodness I am making so many mistakes when it comes to articles and that way now you know what you need to focus on what you need to study in order to improve your skills so this is what I would recommend to try to identify your mistakes use writing reread and try to look for one mistake at a time now if you're just looking and thinking well I just want to really try to practice and like how can I improve my grammar I think reading is a great way to do that because when you're reading it's something you're doing just for your own enjoyment but you are actually seeing how the correct grammar is used even if you're not studying it you are seeing how the correct articles are being used correctly you're seeing how words are being spelled correctly and even if you're not thinking about it at the time that information is still going up here so reading is a great way to improve your grammar skills if you guys before I have a few more Corrections that I want to go through with go through with you but if you guys enjoy what we do again you can check us out on patreon we are active there it's just another way to connect with us we have some cool rewards you can check that out I'll throw a link in the chat there's also a link down below right there and check us out on patreon and just connect with us if you guys want to support what we do here at interactive English so now I want I have one more last section of Corrections that I want to make and these are Corrections that this is writing that I've gotten from all of you so what I've done is I've gone through some comments where people have asked me and they said hey is this correct can you correct this for me and I've identified some of those and now I want to correct them with you so these are a little more challenging so can you find the mistake the first one I'll read it it says if you don't respect grammar rules you'll miserably fail what do you think is the mistake what what can you identify that mistake I'll give you a few moments and then I'll tell you what the mistake is because again there are all sorts of mistakes that people can make when it comes to correcting your writing and improving your English skills so what do you think if you don't respect grammar rules you'll miserably fail alright what I would say there are different ways that you could go about and try to correct this sentence but what I would say is that the the words the word order is incorrect because miserably is an adverb and adverbs can be confusing because you can use them all throughout the sentence but when you're talking about this expression like you want to say that you would say you'll fail miserably this is commonly how this phrase would be used and this I would also say is a collocation because these are two common words that are found together if you don't respect grammar rules you'll fail miserably excellent I think some of you many of you got that one perfect the next one so somebody asked me they say good morning sir can you correct me thank you this is the sentence I captured on the video how they were fighting how would you correct this sentence if you're justyou're you're reading it now what would you say what is the mistake how would you correct this sentence again in this this is a little this can be a little confusing I'm sure because when it comes to correcting mistakes there is a lot of different grammar that we could be talking about so what do you think I captured on video how they were fighting if somebody told me this I understand what what they mean that sentence but it's still little awkward now the reason that I would say it's a little awkward is because when you think of a normal simple sentence the sentence is going to have a subject a verb and oftentimes it's going to have an object as well subject verb object so the way the sentence I think to make it less awkward would be I captured how they were fighting on video because how they were fighting that is a noun phrase that is the object of the sentence I captured what I captured how they were fighting on video that is going to be my prepositional phrase and that will go at the end of the sentence again there are different ways that you can correct this I know some of you are writing that in the chat this is just what I would do if you want to keep the original words and the meaning you'd say I captured how they were fighting on video next all right I think many of you should probably be able to get this one I am very happy with this classes because it gives me knowledge what do you think is the mistake I am very happy with this classes because it gives me knowledge again if somebody I understand what they want to say if somebody said this to me and spoke in English I understand still I would know I would be able to know reading it there's a mistake even if I were listening to it I wouldn't I would hear this mistake and know that something is wrong so the mistake yes is this classes alright when you're talking about this and these all right there you could use it in one of two ways you could say I am very happy with this class because it gives me knowledge remember you we use this with singular nouns or I'm very happy with these classes because well in this case then you would need to say because they give me knowledge so to use the sentence I'd say this class would be the best way to complete this sentence but you could say these you can use that with plural nouns I am very happy with these classes because they give me knowledge we would need to use they in the next part of the sentence so that it corresponds with classes all right then we have alright this message right here I had hi teacher you were great hi Wesley you're a great teacher I have a question he's elder to me he's elder than me what would you say how would you correct this sentence or why do you think you know it's a bit strange again this is incorrect it's a word though there is a word that is incorrect so what do you think I'm sure if you're reading this like I read it I know what the person wants to say I know what they're trying to say but can you identify the mistake what do you think so yes I think many of you think like that you know older should be the word now the difference between older and elder older is an adjective elder is a noun so we're gonna have some options you could say he's my elder in that case elder we're using it as a noun which is you're telling somebody well this person is older than me which is the other way of saying it he's older than me so if we want to use the word elder you'd say he is my elder he's my elder she's my elder or he's older than me she's older than me that is the correct way to use it the last one all right my father spends a lot of time in the church is that correct I hope you can answer me soon well it may be correct it depends however I think there is a better way of saying this sentence that is a little more natural and this would be just a matter of fluency because technically speaking you could say that sentence it is grammatically correct but I think the message what they really wanted to say I think there's something we could change to make it better and that is the preposition in so you when when you use in to describe a place then it becomes a little more specific that this person is inside this building so if some this person says my father spends a lot of time in the church I think of okay they are inside the church now what I think that they wanted to say that they could make it a little more just for just for you their overall fluency to make it a little more natural a little more fluent my father spends a lot of time at the church now when we're talking about at we're talking about a general location it could be inside it could be outside it's just saying that this is where this person spends time which is what I think they really wanted to say I think my father spends a lot of time at the church and I would say that church if it is specific in which I know what church you're talking about if I don't know what church it is then I think it would be better to say you know if you're just saying a general statement you're trying to give some information about your father you just say my father spends a lot of time at church so at church would just be something that he does that is something he enjoys doing if I say at the church then it makes me think that the other person knows the church that I'm talking about so again when you use the then it becomes a little more specific so again that is another that is another grammar nuance about whether you should use the or no article all right so I hope that this is something I know that I think in 2020 I I think I mentioned in a previous lesson to try to identify one of your mistakes that is a good goal for 2020 and if you're wondering okay well how can I do this writing is a great way to attempt to identify a mistake that you're making write something down reread it and if you think that something is not correct or you're not confident about some then that's when you're able to look it up and see if you can find the right answer and then correct that mistakes or you'll probably if you reread something that you wrote you're probably just going to find a mistake I know I find mistakes in my writing all the time and that's what I'd like all of you to do right now is that in the comments I want you to write to me and tell me a mistake that you have been able to identify in the past that you were able to learn that okay this is something that I was doing wrong and this is what I learned is the correct way to write something or is the correct way to say something please share that with me in the comments I think it will also be very useful for other people to read when when other people are able to learn about mistakes that others have made perhaps they're making the same mistake so this is very useful information and I hope you share that with me write that in the the comments what is a mistake that you were able to identify in your past and how did you correct it so thank you guys so much for joining me I know I didn't give many shoutouts today so I'm gonna give them right now thank you ghost Seraphina Sophie Syed sleepwalker Mahmood Michelle English vibes lolly Angela Mary Wickham thank you guys for joining me today Muhammad I really appreciate it if you enjoyed this lesson please like and share it write to me in the comments let me know of a mistake that you were able to correct in in the past in your that which has helped you become a little more fluent in English you can always join our social media classes we are active on Facebook Instagram Twitter and right here at YouTube so just a few more shout outs Thank You Leila Putri Daniel Eloisa you Lisa Alexander Farhat Goldie and Valdo Yousef thank you thank you thank you I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your weekend merry Brit I think I I think I got most of you I hope Kareem just throwing them out there now I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend thank you and I will see you guys next week with another live lessons

Channel: Interactive English

Views: 21,580

Rating: 4.9411311 out of 5

Keywords: interactive english, learn english, english mistakes, how to correct english mistakes, correct english grammar mistakes, correct english grammar, fix english grammar, how to find grammar mistakes in english, how to find english mistakes, how to find writing mistakes, find english writing mistakes, fix grammar mistakes, self correction english, how to correct your mistakes, how to correct my english mistakes

Id: oqcSzzyG0Wo

Length: 38min 22sec (2302 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020