Top 10 Confusing English Verbs for Beginners

323,474 views ・ 2016-12-06

Learn English with Rebecca


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid.
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In this lesson you will have a chance to understand 10 of the most confused verbs in English.
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Now, if you're a beginner student, then you have a chance to learn them right to begin with.
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If you're an intermediate level student, you might still want to review these verbs just
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to make sure that you're really using them properly.
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And if you are making mistakes, no worries, I'm going to explain them to you and also
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show you how to correct them.
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Okay? Here we go.
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The first set of words we have is "learn" or "teach".
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So, let me give you a sentence and you tell me what you think is right.
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What should we use here?
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Which verb?
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"Mrs. Cole learns us English" or "Mrs. Cole teaches us English"?
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Which is correct?
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If you had to think for more than one second about the answer, then I'm so glad you're watching.
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Okay?
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Because I'm going to give you this very important difference.
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I hope you said: "Mrs. Cole
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teaches us English." Okay.
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So, what's the difference between "learn" and "teach"?
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If you made a mistake, no problem.
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I'm going to explain it to you so you get it.
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So, "to learn" means to get knowledge or skills.
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All right?
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And "to teach" means to give knowledge or skills.
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So right now what are you doing?
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Are you giving knowledge or are you getting, are you receiving knowledge?
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I think you are receiving, so you are learning, you are getting.
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And I am giving, so I am teaching.
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I'm teaching, you're learning.
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Right? So, this is what it says here: "Teachers teach".
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Okay?
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That's also a big clue because the word "teacher" has the word "teach" in it, so: Teachers teach
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something, like I teach English.
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Teachers teach math, English, history, etc.
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Or teachers teach someone, they teach students, usually.
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Okay?
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And students learn something, like students learn English, or math, or history.
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And students learn from someone, usually a teacher.
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All right?
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So what are you doing right now?
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You're learning.
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What am I doing right now?
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I'm teaching.
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Good.
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Let's look at the next one.
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The next one: "bring" or "take".
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Let's look at this example.
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"Please bring this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor"
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or do we say:
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"Please take this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor"?
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Take a second to think about it.
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What did you say?
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"Bring this book to Mrs. Smith" or "Take this book to Mrs. Smith"?
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Well, the correct answer is:
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"Take this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor."
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Why?
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Well, let's look.
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"To bring something" means to move it towards the person who's speaking, to the speaker.
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Okay?
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And "to take something" means to move something away from the speaker.
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All right?
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So I could say to you: Bring it to me or take it away from me.
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Got it?
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And even if somebody else is telling you that on the phone.
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Okay?
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So it doesn't matter where that person is.
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What matters is: Who is the speaker?
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Who is saying that sentence?
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So, for example, you could say to the waiter if you're in a restaurant:
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"Please bring me some water."
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Right?
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Towards you.
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Or you could say to the waiter or waitress: "Please take my plate away."
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So now you're taking the plate away from you.
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All right?
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Got that?
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Let's look at another set of words.
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Now, "borrow" or "lend".
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Let's look at an example.
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"My father borrowed me his car last night"
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or do we say:
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"My father lent me his car last night"?
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Which one is right?
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The sentence is in the past tense, so instead of "lend", we see "lent", but which is it?
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"My father", what should it be?
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"Lent me", "My father lent me his car."
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Let's understand why.
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Okay?
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In case you didn't get it right.
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And if you did get it right, let's be 100% sure why you got it right.
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Okay, so "to borrow something" means to take something temporarily, and with...
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And you expect to...
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You are expected to give it back.
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You plan to give it back.
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You're not taking it forever.
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You're just taking it temporarily.
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All right? For a little while.
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And "to lend" means to give something temporarily, and you also expect to get it back.
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For example, a person who lends is called a "lender".
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The person who borrows is called a "borrower".
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And "lend" we often...
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Most people are...
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Have heard of money lenders, right?
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People who lend money are called money lenders because they give you money temporarily, but
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they expect to get it back.
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Okay.
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Now, so based on that let's look at how we can use these words.
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So we could say...
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I could say to a friend: "Could I borrow your pen please?", "Could I borrow?"
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That means: Could I take it and use it temporarily?
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Or another way I could ask the same question is: "Could you lend me your pen please?"
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So now I'm asking pretty much the same question, but in a different way using a different verb:
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"Could you lend me your pen?" All right?
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And, of course, we can borrow or lend all kinds of things, such as money, or cellphones,
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or books, or a coat, or something else.
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Okay?
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Hope you got that right.
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Let's look at the next pair.
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So now: "win" or "beat".
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All right, let's look at the example.
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"I beat him at tennis" or "I won him at tennis"?
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Which is correct?
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Do you know?
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What do you think?
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It should be:
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"I beat him at tennis."
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Because when you beat someone, you beat a person, another person or another team.
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When you win, you win a game, or a prize, or an award.
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Okay?
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See that difference?
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You're winning the game, but you're beating the other side, you're defeating the other
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team or opponent, the other player. All right?
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Just to understand a little bit better because I know it can be a little bit confusing, let's
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look at this example.
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So, Team A finished the game and had 25 points.
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Team B at the end of the game had only 10 points.
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So let me ask you: Who won this game?
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Team A won the game.
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Who lost the game?
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Team B lost the game because they had fewer points.
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And what's another way in which we can express this result?
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We can say that Team A beat Team B. So they won the game, but they beat the other side
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or the other team. Got it?
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Good for you.
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Let's look at the last pair of words.
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So last: "do" or "make".
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This is always a little bit confusing, but let's try.
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Okay?
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Number one: "I did a mistake" or "I made a mistake", what do you think?
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Well, it should be:
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"I made a mistake."
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Okay?
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The next one: "We did a course" or "We made a course"?
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Which one?
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What do you think?
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"We did a course."
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Okay.
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And the last one we have here:
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"They did their homework" or "They made their homework"?
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It's a really common mistake.
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Don't worry if you're not sure.
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Which is it?
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"They
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did their homework."
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So, how do you know whether to use "do" or "make"?
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Well, it's like this: I've been teaching English for a long time and I can tell you that there
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are lots and lots of rules to help you choose "do" or "make".
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But in my experience the best way to learn these is to learn the expressions by heart.
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Become familiar with the expressions.
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Okay?
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Use them a lot, write them, read them.
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Okay?
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And that way they'll come automatically.
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Because when you need to use this...
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This...
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One of these words, you can't...
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You don't have time to think through all of the different rules.
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You just have to know that you make a mistake, you do a course, and you do your homework.
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Okay?
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It just has to come.
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And you will have to work at it.
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Okay?
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And to help you with that what I've done is I've created a resource on our website
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where there are over a hundred expressions with "do" and "make" so that you can practice and
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really get to know them.
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All right?
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So for that, here are some things you can do.
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First of all, subscribe to my channel, my YouTube channel.
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I have lots of lessons like this which can help you improve your English much faster.
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Okay?
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Second: Go to our website, www.engvid.com, there you can download a free resource with
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a list of these expressions of "make" and "do", lots of other resources, too.
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Okay?
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You can also do a test or a little bit of a quiz on what we learned in this lesson.
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All right?
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And also, you can look around at lots and lots of hundreds of other lessons which can
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help you improve your English one step at a time.
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I'm so proud of you.
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It's not easy to learn English, I know that.
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But every little change you make makes a big difference-okay?-in
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your ability and your confidence in speaking English.
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All right?
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Thanks very much for watching and good luck with your English.
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Bye for now.
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