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.
