200 Common Errors in English

Choose the correct word in each sentence:

Today’s lesson focuses on several common errors with phrases like one of, most of, some of, and both of + nouns. Here's the first mistake that English learners tend to make: Don't say, "One of my friend is moving to Seattle." The correct sentence is "One of my FRIENDS is moving to Seattle."

Mark each sentence as correct or incorrect (and fix any mistakes)

In today’s lesson, you’ll learn three common mistakes with the word "it." It’s a tiny word, but it often causes problems for English learners. Sometimes they forget to include "it" when it's necessary... and at other times, they include "it" when it shouldn't be in the sentence! Let’s jump in. Don't say: "I just bought a new computer. Was on sale." The second sentence should be "IT was on sale."

Mark each sentence as correct or incorrect, and fix any mistakes.

Today’s lesson focuses on mistakes involving possessives - when talking about things that belong to a person - as well as a mistake with pronouns - words like me, him, and her. Don't say, "I went to the house of my friend." In English, we usually use 's to form the possessive, so the correct sentence is "I went to my friend's house."

Mark each sentence correct or incorrect, and fix any mistakes.

In the next series of lessons, we’ll look at some common errors with verbs and objects. The goal of these lessons is not to teach you everything about verbs, but just to identify and avoid the most common errors.

Let’s begin with a few simple but common ones involving singular and plural verbs. Don't say: "There are a table, a desk, and two chairs in the room." The correct sentence is, "There IS a table, a desk, and two chairs in the room." Why is this correct? I'll explain in this video!

Today we’ll focus on mistakes with adjectives and adverbs. The first one involves the word “enough”: Don't say, "This box isn't enough big for all the books." Say, "This box isn't big enough for all the books." I'll teach you when to put "enough" BEFORE the word, and when to put it AFTER the word.

One of the most common verbs in English is “have,” and today we’ll learn about some mistakes that learners make with this word. Here's the first one: don't say, "I haven't a car." The correct sentence is, "I don't have a car." I'll tell you when to use "haven't" and when to use "don't have" - there's a simple rule.

In today’s lesson we’re going to learn about a common error with irregular verbs.

Don’t say:

• Yesterday I weared my new jacket.

• I bought a bike that costed $100.

Say:

• Yesterday I wore my new jacket.

• I bought a bike that cost $100.

Yesterday we learned about irregular verbs, and today’s lesson will focus on irregular nouns - specifically, nouns that have irregular plural forms, such as children, people, sheep, phenomena, and more.

In today’s lesson, we’ll learn about some common errors involving the simple past tense and auxiliary verbs or helping verbs like do/does/did.

Don’t say:

• I didn’t watched TV last night.

• Yesterday I didn’t ate lunch.

Say:

• I didn’t watch TV last night.

• Yesterday I didn’t eat lunch.

Hi students! In this lesson we’re going to look at some combinations of letters that often lead to pronunciation mistakes.

A lot of students ask me about rules, like how do we know when the letter e sounds like ee vs. eh, or when the letter g sounds like juh (general) vs. guh (get). Although there are some trends in English spelling / pronunciation, there are so many complications and exceptions that I’d encourage you NOT to focus on remembering rules.

Instead, when you learn new words, always look them up in an audio dictionary - listen to the pronunciation and repeat it. Don’t try to figure it out by analyzing the spelling.

I know it’s frustrating! In your language, maybe there are clear rules, or maybe each letter is only pronounced one way, the same way every time. English is very irregular, so it’s best to just learn the correct pronunciation of each word and not try to interpret them based on a logical system.

Do you know when to use direct and indirect objects, and where to place them in sentences? Today you’ll learn about three common errors involving the objects of verbs. Don't say, "I bought yesterday a new T-shirt" - this doesn't sound natural. The best way is "I bought a new T-shirt yesterday."

If you’ve taken other courses at Espresso English, you might know that some of them include writing tasks, where you can send in your writing for correction from a teacher on our team.

This is a great way to get direct feedback on any individual problems in your own English - but we’ve also noticed some common errors that tend to be made frequently by multiple students. In today’s lesson, I’ll go over some of the mistakes collected from student writing tasks.

Today’s errors are extremely common, and they involve the words explain, recommend, suggest, say, and tell. Many students ask, "Can you explain me the problem?" - but this is incorrect. The correct way is, "Can you explain the problem to me?"

In today’s lesson, we’ll focus on mistakes with some of the most common verbs in English. Because we use these verbs frequently, it’s important to get in the habit of using them correctly. Here's the first one: Don't say, "I asked to the teacher a question." The correct sentence is, "I asked the teacher a question."

Today we’ll look at some common errors with verb tenses. There are many, many possible errors in this area, but I’ll teach you about the ones I see and hear most frequently - especially involving the present perfect, present continuous, simple past, and conditional sentences.

In today’s lesson we’ll learn seven more pronunciation mistakes that are quite common. One of the most effective ways to learn the correct pronunciation is to compare each word with words that have the same sound - so here’s the method we’ll follow with each pair of problematic words.

First, I’ll ask you to repeat just the sounds, so you can make the difference between them clearly. Then, I’ll ask you to say a series of words that will help you through repetition of the correct sound. Next, you can say the two words again, and they should sound distinct.

In today’s lesson we’ll focus on mistakes with indefinite articles - the words “a” and “an.” These are tiny words, but if you forget to use them when they are necessary, then it becomes clear that you’re not a native English speaker. For example, don't say, "I played soccer when I was child." The correct sentence is, "I played soccer when I was a child."

Today we’ll continue our study of articles in English by looking at common errors with the definite article, the word "the." Here's our first mistake: don't say, "She is best student in the class." We need to say, "She is THE best student in the class."

In today’s lesson, you’ll learn about common mistakes with in and on. These two prepositions are hard to distinguish. Maybe there’s only one word for both in your own native language. A lot of students make errors like saying, "We got married in October 5th." The right way to say it is, "We got married on October 5th."

Hello students and welcome to our section on vocabulary! In these lessons, you'll learn about errors that involve using the wrong word.

Vocabulary mistakes are very common because the English language has a lot of words that have similar meanings (like see, look, and watch) or they look almost the same (like raise and rise), but they are actually used in different ways.

If you use the wrong word, often people will still understand you because they can see what you meant to say from the context - but your sentence will sound strange, and it's not what a native English speaker would say, because it's the wrong word in that situation.

Let's get started fixing these mistakes! At the end of each lesson, there's a quiz to help you review the words you've learned and choose the right one.

Our first lesson focuses on words that are extremely common, and that have a very similar meaning - but there are some small differences in how we use them.

We’ll continue our study of mistakes with prepositions, and today’s lesson focuses on the word “of.” Let’s get started: Never say, "Our weekend plans depend of the weather." It's always "depend ON," and never "depend OF."

Let’s learn about some common errors with “to.” Like many mistakes with prepositions, these usually don’t cause major communication problems, but they do cause your English to sound non-native - so if we can fix these mistakes easily, let’s do it!

Our last lesson in the prepositions section will cover a collection of common mistakes with other prepositions. Don't say, "We need to discuss about this problem." The word "discuss" is never followed by "about." Instead, we could say, "We need to discuss this problem" or "We need to talk about this problem."

Choose the best word to complete each sentence.

In this lesson, we’ll focus on words with tricky or unusual spelling. When you see one of these words, you might think the pronunciation is similar to another word you know - but it’s actually different.

Today you’ll learn about some more words that English students often make mistakes with, usually because their meanings are quite similar. Let’s start with rob, steal, robber, and thief. I'll teach you the differences with plenty of examples.

Today’s lesson focuses on vocabulary mistakes with homophones - these are words that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings and uses. Because these words sound the same, the errors happen when you are writing. For example, affect and effect.

This is our final lesson on pronunciation errors, and today we’re going to cover mistakes involving syllables - especially -ED, -ING, and -Y endings, as well as words in which native English speakers "drop" a syllable.

Today and tomorrow, we’re going to learn about some mistakes that English learners often make with words that are similar enough to be confusing - especially advice / advise, and loose / lose.

Today we’ll be looking at four more vocabulary errors that even native English speakers make. I’ll explain each one with examples. We'll start with "ensure" and "assure."

Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

This is our final lesson about vocabulary mistakes, and today I’ll teach you about some errors that I and my teaching team have found very frequently when correcting students’ homework.

The first mistake is using actually when you should say currently - for example, if someone asks a student, “Where do you work now?” and they say, “I actually work at a university.” This is incorrect.

Hello and welcome to our section on spelling! English spelling can be very irregular - in fact, native English speaking children actually study spelling specifically in school for several years. There are even spelling competitions where students try to spell difficult words correctly, and anyone who makes a mistake is eliminated!

What about for adults - why is spelling important for us? It’s because spelling mistakes can make your writing look unprofessional, or it can appear that you’re not paying attention to the details. This is true for both native speakers and English learners - a lot of native English speakers make spelling mistakes, too, and we need to improve.

The errors in this section are a combination of mistakes made by English learners AND mistakes frequently made by native English speakers.

You might be wondering, “Why study spelling when we have spell checkers on our computer?” Well, first of all, spell checkers aren’t everywhere - maybe you write an email quickly and you don’t notice a spelling mistake, or maybe you write something by hand - there’s no way for a computer to check that! So it’s important to know and avoid the common mistakes so that you don’t need to depend on a computer to correct your spelling.

Plus, there are some spelling mistakes that spell check won’t catch - if you’ve made a spelling mistake, but the misspelled word is also a different English word, the program won’t notice this error! So our first lesson is all about mistakes that a computer program won’t catch.

In today’s spelling lesson, we’re going to learn some of the most common words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things. These are very frequently confused by native English speakers, too. But they are also extremely common words, so it’s important to know them well and use them correctly!

This will be a two-part lesson. Today we’ll cover:

• there / they’re / their

• your / you’re

• its / it’s

• to / two / too

In this lesson, we’ll learn how to avoid errors with our and are, we’re and were, than and then, who’s and whose, and right and write - with plenty of example sentences so you can see how to use them correctly.

In this final section of the course, I’d like to tell you about some learning and mindset mistakes that I’ve observed among the hundreds of students whom I’ve worked with. This part is going to be a little different because it’s not about fixing specific words or phrases; instead, it’s about correcting common problems that language learners tend to have.

In some ways, this is the most important section of the course because these habits or thoughts or attitudes are at the foundation of everything you do when you’re working on learning English. So I’d encourage you to reflect and ask yourself if you’ve been making any of these mistakes.

Today’s lesson is all about spelling mistakes involving adding an extra letter to a word, or accidentally removing a letter from a word. There are so many words in English where these errors can happen, but again I’m going to focus on the most common ones.

In our final lesson in this section about spelling, we’ll learn about mistakes that involve changing a letter. As with most spelling errors, this is often due to pronunciation - people naturally try to spell the word like they would pronounce it, but as we know, English spelling and pronunciation do not always match!

Welcome to the pronunciation section! It’s important to develop nice, clear pronunciation because there are a lot of English words that are different by only one sound. If you have a hard time with pronunciation or if you feel like your speaking isn’t clear, don’t worry - this is definitely something you can improve with practice.

In this part of the course, we’ll learn about sounds that are commonly confused by English learners, and sounds that students pronounce the same when they should be different. The errors in this section are mistakes that I’ve observed over many years of teaching, from my work with private students, classes, and speaking tasks here at Espresso English.

Instead of quizzes, I’d like you to practice with me by listening and repeating the words out loud. The only way to get better at pronunciation is by actually saying the words, not just listening to me say them. OK?

In this first lesson, we’ll focus on sounds that are very similar, only slightly different. You might think they sound essentially the same! But I’m going to exaggerate the difference and then we’ll practice some words with each one.

Today’s lesson is going to focus on the two sounds that I think give English learners the most trouble - TH and R.

Today I’ll teach you about four more mistakes that English learners tend to make when trying to improve their English. These are things that you might think are good or useful, but they actually cause problems or prevent you from making progress.

In our final two lessons, we’ll be talking about mindset problems - that means problems in the way you’re thinking or viewing a situation.

Why is mindset important? Research by psychologists has shown that what you believe really affects whether or not you reach your goals.

You can think of mindset like the roots of a tree or the foundation of a house. If you work hard to grow a tree or build a house, but the roots/foundation is weak, the tree/house will probably fall down. But if you start with a strong foundation - if you have the right mindset - and then you build on top of that by investing the time to study and practice, then you’ll succeed in building a solid house and developing strong English skills.

Hello students and welcome to the last lesson in our course about common errors! Today I’ll be telling you about four more mindset problems - things in your thinking or attitude that might be preventing you from improving your English and reaching your goal of speaking confidently and fluently.

As you watch this lesson, really think about whether you tend to make any of these mistakes - and then follow my suggestions for fixing them.