5 Common English Learner Mistakes

http://www.engvid.com/ What are the most common grammatical mistakes that new English learners make? It depends on the country, but regardless of where you're from, you have probably heard others make these mistakes or you have made them yourself. In this lesson, I look at what's wrong with saying "it's depend," "it depends of," "I took a sandwich for breakfast," "She's learning for go to university," "I am interesting in that," and "Is good! Is easy! Is not a problem!" Check out the lesson, and improve your language accuracy! Take the quiz here: http://www.engvid.com/5-common-mistakes/

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on "5 Common New English Learner Mistakes". So in this lesson, I'll be looking at mistakes that I have heard in my time as a teacher from students from various parts of the world. So these are mistakes that are made by Spanish speakers, Portuguese speakers, German speakers, Korean speakers, and they might apply to you as well. These are mistakes that kind of cross over and that are very common.

So let's start with the first one. Let's look at No. 1. Okay, so this is, actually, a double mistake that I commonly hear when you're discussing a subject and you want someone to give you an opinion on something. So for example, "Do you prefer Coke or Pepsi?" Or "Do you prefer this or that?" And some people will say, "Well, it's depend." Or "Hmm, it depends of (...)" So "It depends of the season." "It depends of the person." "It depends of the society or the country" or something like this. So what is wrong with this? Well, we don't say, "it's depend". We say "it depends", "it depends". Okay? So we don't say, "it's depend". The correct form is: "it depends". And for this, this is okay: "it depends", right? The only problem is the preposition that you're using. We don't say "of" in English; we say "it depends on", okay? So "it depends on the person." "It depends on the country." "It depends on the time of day." Whatever topic you're discussing.

Okay, guys, let's move on to No. 2. So for the second one, this is, actually, a verb choice error, and maybe languages, when you talk about eating, you use the verb "take". So you can "take a Coke", or "take your coffee in the morning", or you "take breakfast", "take dinner". In English, it's a little different. So here, we have two sentences. The first one says: "I took a coffee this morning." Now, when you look at it, maybe you went to a coffee shop, and you say, "Yeah, I will take a coffee." Okay. Not too much wrong with that. That's okay. However, when you're talking about the act of drinking the coffee, we use the verb "have" in English. Okay? So you didn't "take" a coffee; you say "I had" in the past, right? "I had a coffee this morning." Same thing for the second one. So this one says: "I take dinner around six." Well, in English, we don't really say, "I take dinner around six." We say, "I have dinner", okay? So when you're talking about food, you "have breakfast", "have lunch", "have dinner", "have coffee". You "have pizza". You "have a sandwich". Anything to do with food, use the verb "have".

Now, let's move on to No.3. Okay, so this one is, actually, a preposition error, and it's when people use "for" when they mean to use an infinitive. So for example, "I use it for go to work." Imagine you have a car, and people and you, "What do you use your car for?" You know, do you drive around a lot, or you say, "No, no. I only use it to go to work", right? So we don't say "for go", we use "to go". Now, why do we do this? Well, when you have a verb and you follow that verb with either a pronoun or an object of some kind, the verb afterwards has to be an infinitive, okay? So also, if you look down here, "I need glasses for read." Well, we know it's "to read". And: "She ran for catch the bus." "She ran to catch the bus." Again, there are some verbs, as you know, which are only followed by gerunds, some verbs which are only followed by infinitives. So here, if you want to have a verb and you want to use another verb, another action after that verb -- so "she ran to catch the bus" -- it has to be a gerund or infinitive. An "infinitive" is "to" plus the base verb, okay? So don't say, "I use it for do", "for do something." "I use it to do something." "I need glasses to read", not "for read". Okay? So if you ever have, you know, the desire to have a verb plus another action, either use a gerund or in this case, it's not "for do something", it's "to do" something.

All right, guys. Let's look at No. 4. So this one is, actually, an adjective choice error, and it's the difference between -ing and -ed adjectives. So when you feel something internally, inside -- it's a personal feeling -- you should be using an -ed adjective, not an -ing adjective. So all three examples on the board here are, actually, incorrect. So the first one says, "I am exciting about that."