How to Apologize in English (When You've Made a Mistake)

115,905 views ・ 2019-07-17

Speak Confident English


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

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Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English.
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What would you do if you got an email from your boss because you missed a really
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important meeting? You knew about the meeting,
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but unfortunately you put it on the wrong day on your calendar,
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so you totally missed it. What would you say?
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You might panic and start to feel worried, or you could simply say,
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I'm sorry,
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but there's a much better process for how to apologize when you've made a
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mistake in English and you can do it gracefully.
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That's exactly what I'm going to help you do in today's lesson. Plus,
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you're going to learn some fun idioms and some really surprising words that we
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use in English to talk about mistakes, so be sure to keep watching.
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[inaudible]
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Very quickly, before we get started, if you find this lesson useful to you,
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I would love to know,
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and you can tell me by giving it a thumbs up on youtube and subscribing to this
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channel so you never miss a future Confident English lesson.
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But now let's get started with how to apologize when you've made a mistake in
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English.
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Step number one when you're apologizing for a mistake is to admit that you've
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made the mistake. And this is actually the hardest part.
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None of us like to admit that we've made a mistake.
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We want to believe that it's always other people,
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but if we don't admit to the mistake,
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if we try to hide it or cover it up,
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it usually leads to much bigger problems and it comes back to bite us in the
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end. I love that idiom.
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It will come back to bite us in the end.
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That means that if you don't deal with it now,
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it's going to cause much bigger problems later.
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The good news is mistakes are so common that we have a ton of different words
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that we use to talk about them and some of them are pretty surprising.
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So when you have to admit to a mistake, you could say something like,
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I've messed up, I've slipped up,
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I've fudged up.
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Other options are,
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I've mucked that up or simply I've made a mistake and that one might be the best
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for a business professional situation.
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Now if it was a really big mistake, you might hear someone say,
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that was an epic fail.
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That was a disaster or that was totally my fault,
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and honestly,
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those are just a few of the things we say when we talk about admitting to a
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mistake. If you want to get my full list,
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I've got all of those for you in the online lesson and I'll leave a link to that
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just below this video. Once you've done that,
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the second thing that you need to do is apologize. Now,
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of course you could use the words, I'm sorry,
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but there is something that native speakers do to show how sorry they are to
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give real meaning and emotion to it.
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We usually add a word like really so genuinely or truly,
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and we stress it. Listen to how I say it.
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I'm so sorry. I'm genuinely sorry.
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I'm truly sorry.
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What do you notice about how I said those words so genuinely and truly I
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stressed them.
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What I mean by stress is that I'm saying those words a little bit louder,
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clearer,
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and I'm stretching or lengthening the vowel sounds to show some additional
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emotion. I'm so sorry.
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So here are two examples and you tell me which one sounds better.
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I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
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A couple more examples that are fantastic for using at work are.
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I really want to apologize for that.
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Notice that I stressed the word. Really.
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I hope that you can accept my apology or please accept my sincerest apologies
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once you've apologized. Step three is to briefly explain what happened.
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And the key word there is briefly,
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you don't need to give all the details or tell a long story.
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You can keep it really simple and say something like,
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I didn't mean for that to happen.
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It was an oversight on my part or that wasn't what I intended.
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And finally in step four,
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you should end with what you're going to do to fix the mistake.
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It might be something that you've already started to do.
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Maybe you're doing it right now to resolve the problem or it's what you plan to
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do in the future.
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And here are a few ways that you could express those different possibilities to
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make up for it.
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I'd like to notice the use of the phrasal verb to make up,
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to make up for something means to resolve it or fix a problem to make sure that
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doesn't happen. Again, I'm going to,
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I've already started to take care of this and finally I'm working to fix this by
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tomorrow or by next week.
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Now you've got four steps and language you can use for apologizing when you make
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a mistake in English. The thing that you can do is practice it.
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So I want you to think about that situation at the beginning where you missed an
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important meeting because you put the wrong date on your calendar.
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How would you respond to your boss in that situation?
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If you want,
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you can even share your example with me in the comments just below this video,
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but now I want to share with you how I would apologize in that situation.
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Oh my gosh, that is completely my fault. I am so sorry.
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I know that the meeting was coming up, but I had it on my calendar for tomorrow.
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I know that it was an important meeting,
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so I'm going to call our partners who were there so that I can get caught up and
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make sure that we know everything we need to know.
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I can assure you that this won't happen again.
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I hope that you'll share your example with me so that I can give you feedback
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and so that you can get more comfortable using this language if you want even
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more practice with the language that you've learned in this lesson today.
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I've got additional examples,
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situations that might happen in real life so that you can practice apologizing
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when making a mistake.
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Plus if you'd like help with other difficult situations in English.
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I've got a full playlist for you on Youtube.
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It includes lessons on how to deal with uncomfortable questions or rude
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comments.
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Don't forget you can subscribe to this channel so you never miss a future
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Confident English lesson.
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Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you next time.
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