Name: 3 Simple Steps to Stop Making Mistakes in English
Uploaded: 2018-09-18T07:04:02.000Z
Duration: 7 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi guys, welcome back to English with Max.

In this video, I'm going to show you three steps to help you stop making mistakes in English.

Or at least significantly reduce the number of mistakes you make.

If you get annoyed with yourself because you keep making the same mistakes, this will probably help you.

I'll warn you, though. This isn't a magic formula.

It isn't something like: just say this sentence every night before you go to bed and you will never make mistakes again.

No, it does require a little bit of work, but not a lot of work, okay?

The steps I'm going to show you are also very concrete.

I'm not just going to say "Change your mindset."

And these are actually things that I did when I was learning languages. I've tried these things.

I also want to say that mistakes are not a bad thing.

Mistakes help us learn, and the fear of making mistakes should not stop you from writing or speaking.

And at the end of the day the most important thing is communication.

However, if you sit an English exam, normally it's better if you don't make lots of mistakes.

And if you're in an academic or professional environment, normally people take you a bit more seriously if you don't make too many mistakes.

I know that sounds superficial, but usually it's true.

From my own experience learning languages, I also know how frustrating it can be when you keep making the same mistakes.

Firstly, if someone like your English teacher corrects you, pay attention to it.

Don't just say, "Ah yep, okay," and keep on talking.

Or if it's a written correction, think about why it's correct, or why you made that mistake.

I know that might sound very simple, but lots of students don't do it.

If you don't have somebody to correct you, then you can simply pay attention to English constructions when you listen to English and read English.

Obviously, you shouldn't do this all the time, because you'll just drive yourself crazy.

But sometimes it's a good idea to, for example, pay attention to the differences between your native language and English.

For example, and this is a very simple example, in English, we don't say, "I have cold," like you do, for example, in French and Spanish. (J'ai froid. Tengo frío.)

And pay attention to little things like prepositions.

In English, we say, "It depends on the weather." We don't say: "It depends of the weather."

It might be the equivalent of "of" in your language, but in English, it's always "depend on".

I know some people say that you shouldn't translate too much, or make comparisons with your own language when you learn a foreign language, but lots of people use translation.

I sometimes watch videos by polyglots on YouTube, and some of these people speak more than 10 languages.

Admittedly, some of them are better than others, but in any case, several of them use some form of translation in their learning.

It can be very effective if you do it right, and it also depends on the person.

So please don't think that translation is always bad.

If someone corrects you, or if you realise that something is different in English and it might cause you to make a mistake,

maybe it's a false friend or a specific construction, write it down.

Again, I know that sounds really simple, but lots of people don't do it.

If you don't write something down, it's just very easy to forget.

You could have a separate notebook specifically for mistakes and difficult constructions,

or you could write them in your vocabulary journal, or you could keep a list on your phone.

I've actually prepared an example for you.

Here I'm pretending that I'm a Spanish speaker and this is just my vocabulary journal.

So I have some vocabulary here, and here I have the correct sentence.

Here's the translation and that's the incorrect sentence.

Or you could just write the correct sentence without the translation, but here I've written what is incorrect.

So the correct sentence is: "I arrived in Sydney last year." It is not: "I arrived to Sydney."

I don't mean: just have a look at it occasionally.

When you revise, you should actually read the words - read the sentences - out loud (the correct sentences and phrases).

If you say them out loud, you hear them and that just reinforces it.

I arrived in Sydney last year. I arrived in Sydney last year.

You don't need to do this every day, but try to do it a few times a week.

So a few times a week, have a look at your book or your phone and say some of these sentences out loud.

If you follow all these steps, or even just one or two of them, I can guarantee you that you will start to reduce the number
of mistakes you make.

If you did, please hit the thumbs up to let me know.

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