hello and welcome to a go natural English lesson are you making these top 10 mistakes in English well don't worry because it's normal a lot of English Learners make these mistakes but that's why we're here to fix them together once and for all I'm Gabby Wallace your American English fluency coach and this English lesson is sponsored by one of my favorite online language learning platforms it talkie at it talkie you can learn not only English but 150 different languages so if you're like me and you love exploring many different foreign languages it is a great
place to practice with native English conversation Partners they could be casual uh conversation partners that you just practice with or professional teachers so they have a choice if you want to study with a professional expert teacher or a community convers partner you can find native speakers on it talkie you can find people that will teach you pretty much at any time of the day depending on your schedule you can find something that fits and there's no commitment you can sign up for just one lesson and try it out and I find it to be a
very easy way to just jump in take one lesson see if it feels good if you feel like you're progressing if you want to continue then you can buy more less lessons there's never any commitment to join something bigger so I talkie is giving us a go natural English a special promotion when you take your first lesson and you buy $10 you get five free when you use my special promo code Gabby 5 use the link in the description and make sure to use my code to get this special offer join a one on-one personalized
English or any other language lesson with an eye talkie native tutor today try it out and you'll thank me when you do I'm going to show you a quick clip of myself practicing my Portuguese with my native Brazilian teacher Alexandra wow I love to keep my Portuguese language up and improving by practicing on itaki because I have a lot of Brazilian students is anyone here watching from Brazil you can let me know in the comments so this is super helpful for me and my work and I think that if you're using English in your career
then practicing conversations on II would be super helpful for you as well now let's jump into the top 10 mistakes number one there's a lot of confusion between bored and bored Bor in so the way that I think about it is you probably want to say I'm bored this is a feeling that you are having when you don't know what to do with yourself maybe you just feel unmotivated if you say I'm boring this is talking about the quality that you have as a person that is unattractive to others you're a boring person means that
no one is interested in talking to you this is hopefully not what you mean to say I don't think you're a boring person so don't say that about yourself however boring can describe a person it can describe a movie a book uh pretty much anything that you are watching or listening to if you just don't find it very interesting it could be boring but remember that bored is the feeling that you or other person has when they do not feel interested in something for each of these common mistakes I want to ask you to write
your own example in the comments this will help you to remember how to use them correctly remember practice makes perfect next overusing very instead of stronger adjectives so for example you could say you're very pretty well thank you you or you could say you're gorgeous stunning beautiful there are many interesting adjectives in the English language and I think it's fascinating to explore them and try them in your own sentences so again think of something that you would like to describe perhaps it's the weather don't say very cold try another word like a synonym of cold
like frigid or chilly in fact I recommend that you try using an online thesaurus to look up more advanced synonyms meaning similar words that are more advanced the thesaurus is your friend so try it out right now what's something that you could describe put it in the comments in your own example forgetting to use contractions and making your speech sound robotic if you are always using full words like this it can sound robotic so instead of saying if you are always using say if you're if you're so you are could be your if you're using
if you're always using the full words it can sound robotic so practice using contractions because it truly will make you sound more natural and more like a native speaker this is something that can take some time to get used to but it's definitely worth the effort effort okay here's a big one about conversations your English could be very Advanced but you need better conversation skills you're making a big mistake if you never ask follow-up questions during a conversation and you know what I think native speakers are just as guilty of this as English Learners because
it's not just about learning English as I mentioned it's conversation skills it's being interested in the person with whom you're speaking so if you are talking to someone in an everyday conversation or even maybe if you're practicing English on I talkie then ask follow-up questions so if someone for example asks Hi how are you of course you're going to say good how are you right you're not just going to say good and then stop the conversation but think about how you could do this with different questions different follow-up questions there are so many follow-up questions
that can apply to any situation that you can just keep in your mental toolbox for any conversation like how about you or tell me more about that or how did you feel about that or what would you do next time I don't know it depends a little bit on the conversation but you could try to just think of some of these that would work in many different situations and keep them in your back pocket another point I want to bring up that's not really a mistake but it could make you sound cold or too formal
if you are using more academic language than is necessary in conversation you just will sound standoffish and people don't really know how to interact with you so instead of saying for example I do not know or right do not comprehend try saying I don't know it's one of those contractions also that you can practice using so I know in school we learn a lot of academic vocabulary or ways of writing in formal ways but writing and everyday conversation are different we have to understand that they're different environments and they're different purposes so while it's really
great to write an awesome academic essay in English you have to learn how to speak in a little bit more casual way for people to feel comfortable talking with you and for you to sound more native likee there are some difficult words to pronounce some common mistakes would be comfortable or schedule you know schedule is confusing because Canadians say sh I can't do it they say schedule but Americans say schedule so here's the thing I recommend that you choose one country one accent one dialect and go with it don't mix British and Australian and American
or Canadian just try to stick with one type of English because it can get really confusing so when you come across a word that is confusing to pronounce like comfortable or schedule just slow it down and try to take it syllable by syllable and remember that we do not pronounce words the same way that they look on paper because if you tried to pronounce comfortable like it looks on paper you would say Comfort or table but it's com com I can't do it it's comfortable it's very hard to say slowly comforable similarly words like Tuesday
or Wednesday Wednesday that's how it looks but we say Wednesday okay be careful because sometimes you may hear native speakers using the words more better but that is incorrect I know I say sometimes it's okay to use English incorrectly because that's just how everyone says it but in this case it sounds uneducated so try to follow the rules and say better and not more better same with bigger or faster don't say more bigger or more faster or more big or more fast people will understand you but it really doesn't sound good another big mistake is
failing to use intonation or emphasis this is huge I'm always working with my Advanced English Learners to really stress important words to emphasize the keywords because it makes a huge difference which word you emphasize think about it I just saw a video on Instagram that was showing the example between the same sentence with different emphasis different words the example was I didn't tell them to kill him it's kind of a morbid sentence I don't like it but let's just go with it for the sake of practice I didn't tell them to kill him that means
someone else did I didn't tell them to kill him that means maybe I I wrote the message I didn't say it I didn't tell it okay I didn't tell them to kill him that means I told someone else to kill this person let's see I didn't tell them to kill him okay so gosh don't kill him I didn't say that maybe I I said something to help him or something different okay I didn't tell them to kill him oh no there was a mistake not him someone else okay so this is just an example to
show that each different word could get an emphasis and have a completely different meaning in this sentence it's very interesting I think another common mistake is apologizing too much I've noticed that in other cultures and other languages it is very common to say I'm sorry a lot more often than we do in American English um if you're Canadian then you may be used to saying sorry a lot more and if you're learning English in Canada you may hear people saying I'm sorry all the time but in American English we don't say it all the time
um instead of saying I'm sorry try to just not say anything um if it's not really necessary or you could just say something different like um if you want to say I'm sorry I'm late um you could just say excuse me or next time I'll be on time U but you don't have to always say I'm sorry because sometimes it can seem just like too much if you're always saying I'm sorry also a big thing that I see a lot of people saying I'm sorry about is your English there is no need to say I'm
sorry about English mistakes simply say thanks for your patience I'm learning English I am working really hard on improving my English something like that is so much better than showing shyness or embarrassment and apologize ing overly apologizing starting sentences with me instead of I so it's really unnecessary to say me I like ice cream for example I've been really craving ice cream today by the way I don't know why but I don't have any so tomorrow I think I will get some but I can just say I want some ice cream I don't have to
say me I want some ice cream I think this might be a pattern that comes from another language try to leave those patterns from your native language in your native language and pay more attention to how natives speak and if you don't hear natives using those speech patterns like me to start a sentence then don't do it observe first and copy what you hear fluent native speakers saying so think about it have you been making any of these mistakes I hope that these pointers were helpful and gave you some food for thought whether you're an
intermediate or Advanced English learner I am here to help you and again a great place to practice is on iie remember to use my code Gabby 5 and use the link in the description and the pinned comment to get that special promotion the buy $10 get $5 on your first lesson it's a really great way to jump back into your English conversation practice with one-on-one personalized native speaker lessons with professional teachers or Community conversation Partners so thank you so much for watching I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and enjoy speaking English
or practicing other languages all right bye for now
