5 Common Mistakes English Learners Make and How To Fix Them

Hi, welcome to this English lesson.

As you can see, I am on the ground.

I have my phone here.

I'm gonna put my phone on the ground.

This English lesson is going to be about some mistakes

that English learners sometimes make.

One of the mistakes I've noticed

is sometimes people get confused with ground versus floor.

So I am laying here on the ground.

I have placed my phone on the ground.

And this is a little different than this is the floor.

It's a little bit dirty.

I should have vacuumed before I made this video.

I'm laying on the floor.

I can put my phone on the floor.

The floor is what you walk on

or what you sit on inside your house or your apartment.

So this is the floor, I'm laying on the floor,

my phone is on the floor.

So the difference you'll notice

is that the ground is outside.

I can put my phone on the ground outside.

I can lay on the ground outside.

So the ground is always outside of your house.

So to review,

I am on the ground and my phone is on the ground as well.

The floor, I'm laying on the floor,

my phone is on the floor.

The floor is inside, the ground is outside.

So welcome to this English lesson,

where I'm going to talk about a few little mistakes

that English learners sometimes make,

and I'll explain what the right thing to say is,

or the right thing to write is in each situation.

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So another thing that I've noticed English learners

sometimes get mixed up

is when they're talking about whether something

is on the ceiling,

like this smoke detector is on the ceiling, or on the roof.

Right now, I am standing on the roof of my house.

I'm up here on the roof.

The ceiling is the thing that is above your head

when you are in your house or in your apartment.

So this smoke detector up here is on the ceiling.

Sometimes there are other things on the ceiling as well.

A little while earlier, there was a fly on the ceiling.

So once again, this is on the ceiling.

The roof is the top of a building.

I'm currently standing on the roof of my house.

There are shingles on the roof of my house,

there is a chimney on the roof,

and there are some roof vents on the roof of my house.

And I'm on the roof of my house still as well.

I promise I did this safely, by the way.

So to review, I am on the roof.

This is the roof of my house, and this is the ceiling.

There is a smoke detector on the ceiling.

Okay, enough of the crazy stuff.

I'm not climbing on the roof for the rest of this lesson.

That part of the lesson is done.

I wanted to talk though about another mistake

that I often see English learners make.

And usually I see this in the comments on my videos.

Sometimes people will say, "Thank you for your job."

This is not a correct English sentence.

The correct sentence is,

"Thank you for your work,"

or you could say, "Thank you for your hard work."

I do blame English speakers though for the confusion.

We sometimes do use job and work interchangeably.

For instance, you can say "good job" or "good work."

You can say "great job" or "great work."

Or you can say "excellent job" or "excellent work."

All of those sentences are correct,

but "thank you for your job" is not correct.

The correct sentence would be "thank you for your work,"

or "thank you for your hard work."

Another mistake that I hear English learners make

is to use a phrase that is correct in one country

but not really common

in any of the other English speaking countries,

and it's the phrase, "How are you going?"

As far as I know, this is a common greeting in Australia.

I don't think it's a common greeting

in any other English speaking country.

It certainly is not used in my part of Canada.

I would not say to someone, "How are you going?"

I would say, "How are you doing?"

Or "How's it going?"

So I think in North America,

we tend to say those two phrases.

"How's it going?

How are you doing?"

And I think in Australia,

it's a little more common to say, "How are you going?"

If someone was to ask me, "How are you going?"

If I was talking about a trip and they said,

"How are you going?" I would say I'm going by car.

So it's not a greeting here in Canada.

It's a question you would ask

to find out the means of transportation someone is taking

when they go on a trip.

So in Canada, "How are you doing?

How's it going?"

In Australia, I guess you can say, "How are you going?"

Another common mistake I often see English learners make

is that they use they're, their, and there incorrectly.

So they are, or they're,

is something you use to talk about

what someone is going to do.

They are going to go on a trip.

Their is used to show possession.

It is their car.

And there is used to talk about a location.

Here's one sentence

that I hope will help you understand this.

I hope it doesn't confuse you.

You could say they're going to take their car

in order to get there.

They're going to take their car in order to get there.

So they are going,

so they're going to do something.

The car belongs to them, so it's their car,

and the location I'm just referring to as there.

They're going to take their car

in order to get there.

I hope that helped a little bit,

but it is a confusing thing, isn't it?

By the way, they're all pronounced exactly the same.

They're, their, and there.

Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson

about some common mistakes that I see English learners make.

I hope my explanations will help you avoid these mistakes

in the future.

Remember, if this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there.

Give me a thumbs up

if this video helped you learn a bit more English.

And, as always, if you have some extra time,

why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?

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