Stop making these mistakes in English.
Today, I'm going to show you five of the most common mistakes that English learners make, and together we will fix them.
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35 Common Mistakes English Learners Make and how to fix them.
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Let's begin.
First, can you spot two mistakes in this sentence?
It depend of the weather.
It depend of the weather.
Two mistakes to identify here.
Well, firstly, it should be it depends with an S on the end.
Depends.
Remember, with he, she, and it, we usually add S to the verb.
The second mistake, the preposition of is also incorrect.
Which preposition should it be?
It should be on.
It depends on.
Now I strongly recommend learning this phrase together as a chunk.
Learn all three words together.
It depends on.
It depends on the weather.
Make sure you use the voiced z sound, zon.
It depends on.
This phrase can be followed by a noun like weather, or a clause starting with a word like how, who, or where.
For example, it depends on who is coming.
In informal English, it's common to drop on before WH words.
For example, it depends where you're going.
In formal English, you should always use on or upon.
That's another option, though it's less common and more formal.
It depends upon how much funding the project receives.
In answers to questions we can simply say it depends, or even just depends in casual conversation, missing the subject altogether.
Are you coming tonight?
It depends.
I'll see how I feel.
Or, hmm, depends.
I'm pretty tired.
Okay, next, mistake number two.
Let's look at fun versus funny.
My students tend to use funny when they actually mean fun.
Which of these sentences is more likely?
My holiday in Greece was really funny, and I didn't want it to end.
Or, we watched a comedy show yesterday.
It was really funny.
The second one is more likely.
Funny means making you laugh, like a comedy show.
The first is possible.
You could have a really funny holiday.
Maybe you laughed the whole way through.
But the second is more likely.
Another example, Stephen's so funny.
He's always making us laugh.
Now, in informal English, Fun is used as an adjective to describe something that you enjoy.
So you could say, my holiday in Greece was really fun.
Fun is more often used as an uncountable noun, meaning that something or someone is entertaining or enjoyable.
You might say, my holiday in Greece was so much fun. or we had great fun together at the fair.
You'll often hear, have fun, but we never say, have funny, okay?
Have fun means enjoy yourself.
Are you ready for common mistake number three?
It's a question I often hear my students ask.
Are you fine?
Is it incorrect?
Well, grammatically it's okay, but it's not something British English speakers tend to say when asking how someone is or how they feel.
In other varieties of English, it might be more common, so listen out for it.
But in British English, what do we say instead?
We usually just say, how are you?
How are you doing?
Or how is it going?
People often say, are you fine?
Because the common answer to how are you is I'm fine, thanks.
But we only tend to use fine in positive answers rather than questions.
Here's a correct example.
How's your wrist?
I heard you sprained it.
It's fine now, thanks.
Another similar common mistake is, I hope you're fine.
So I see that a lot in emails.
People usually want to say, I hope you're well.
As in, hi Lucy, I hope you're well.
I'm writing to say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's also correct to say, are you okay?
If you're asking if someone is feeling okay or you're worried that they don't feel okay.
Are you fine is just not something we tend to say.
Number four, can you correct this super common mistake?
You have to listen your teacher.
Listen to, you have to listen to your teacher.
We listen to somebody or something.
We can't just listen somebody.
An example I love listening to podcasts while I'm exercising, or sorry, I wasn't listening to you, not listening music or listen you.
I can't tell someone to listen me, listen to me.
Now, I understand where the confusion comes from.
We do hear something or hear someone.
We don't use to there.
For example, I can't hear you or can you hear the bird song?
We hear something or someone, but we listen to something or someone.
Now, our final mistake is to do with confusing the verbs to lose, to miss, and to waste.
First, a note on pronunciation.
It's lose with a long OO sound and a voiced Z at the end, not loose.
Loose meaning not tight is spelt with two O's.
Lose with the Z at the end is spelt with one O.
Okay, now I want you to use each of these verbs, lose, miss, and waste, to complete the gaps.
Once each, okay?
One, I can't believe we our flight yesterday.
Two, we were late because we a lot of time scraping ice off the car.
And three, Every day, she... So much time scrolling on social media.
I can relate to that.
The first one should be missed.
The second, lost.
And the third should be wastes.
Let's look at lose and miss as a pair first.
So many of my students tell me that they lost their flight, when they mean the flight took off or left without them.
To say you lose your flight is a mistake.
We use miss when we arrive too late for something or we are too late for something.
We miss trains, planes, and buses.
We miss the start of films and we miss deadlines and all kinds of other things.
Some examples, we missed the beginning of the film because we missed the bus.
Now, lose just isn't used with this meaning, but lose time and waste time can both be correct.
And if you look in learner's dictionaries, you will often see waste defined as lose and vice versa.
There is a lot of crossover, but sometimes one is more appropriate than the other.
I'm going to do this part as a voiceover so you can see these verbs side by side.
Here is something I hear a lot.
She loses a lot of time on social media.
What they really mean is she wastes time.
If you waste time, you use your time badly.
There's a sense that you are in control of how you spend your time and you choose to do something unproductive.
Another example, don't waste time arguing with him.
He's already made up his mind.
Don't spend your time doing something unproductive.
We'll look at our example sentence with lose again.
We were late because we lost a lot of time scraping ice off the car.
Were they using their time badly when they were scraping ice off their car?
No, it was a productive thing to do.
You can't see if your car is covered in ice.
If you lose time, time is taken away from you, perhaps because of delays, problems, or accidents.
The situation is often out of your control.
Here's another example.
We lost time when the computer system crashed and had to be restarted.
Let's see a couple of pairs of sentences to cement the difference.
They lost time during the meeting because the video link kept cutting out.
This was out of their control.
They wasted time discussing things that weren't on the agenda.
This was within someone's control.
And another, we lost half an hour during the flight due to turbulence.
No one's fault.
The passengers wasted 10 minutes complaining instead of trying to rebook their missed flight.
That was the passenger's decision.
Okay, let's switch back to the video again.
So those were the five common mistakes.
Let's see how much you remember with a quiz.
Some of these sentences contain a mistake, If they do, correct it.
Number one, I arrived late and lost my train.
This is incorrect.
It should be, I missed my train.
If we arrive too late, we missed something.
Two, it's so fun to try new recipes together every weekend.
No mistake, it's so fun is fine, but not it's so funny unless it's really hilarious.
It doesn't really work with the context here.
Remember, we often use fun as a noun.
So how might you change the sentence to do that?
You could say, it's so much fun or it's great fun.
Number three, what time will you arrive?
It depend of the traffic.
So, two mistakes here.
It should be, it depends on.
That's the right verb agreement and the correct preposition.
Four.
I'm listening Taylor Swift's new album.
Incorrect.
Listening to her new album.
We always listen to something or someone.
And five.
We lost 20 minutes changing a tire when we got a flat.
This one's fine.
You lose time when doing something useful, like changing a tire, something that was out of your control.
You had to change that tire.
That definitely wouldn't be a waste of time unless there's nothing wrong with the original tire.
So how did you do in that quiz?
Let me know your score out of five in the comments.
And let me know what other mistakes would you like to stop making in English?
You might see your ideas appear in a future video like this one.
And don't forget to download the PDF mistakes guide.
You can scan the QR code there or click the link in the description.
There are lots of activities there.
I will see you in the next video.
Bye.
