6 English Grammar Mistakes

This lesson is going to show you some mistakes that students have made and you might be making, too. The purpose of this lesson is not to make you feel bad about these mistakes, but instead to learn from them. One problem with language learning is that if you make a fairly minor mistake that doesn’t affect communication, native speakers often don’t correct you because they understood what you meant in general. They don’t want to make you feel bad by pointing out an error in your grammar. Then you might go on making the same mistake for months or even years.

Let’s take a look at these mistakes and their corrections.

1. Don’t say “Playing sports makes me TO FEEL good”. The correct sentence is “Playing sports makes me FEEL good”. When we use the structure make someone or something take an action, meaning to cause that person or thing to take the action. We don’t use the word “To”. The verb “Let” is also like this. Don’t say “I let my kids to stay up late”. That’s incorrect. The correct sentence is “I let my kids stay up late”. Here’s the next mistake.

2. Don’t say “They got married IN October 5th”. The correct sentence is “They got married ON October 5th. We say “IN October” if we just say the month without specifying the day. But we say “ON October 5th”. Always use “ON” with days: on Monday, on the 1st of June, on my birthday, on October 5th, D

3. Don’t say “I bought several STUFFS at the store”. The correct sentence is “I bought several THINGS at the store or I bought SOME STUFF at the store. Why is this a mistake? The word “stuff” is considered an uncountable noun in English, so it is always singular even when it refers to multiple things. The word “things” is a countable noun, so it can be singular or plural. With countable nouns like “things” we can use the words “many, a few, several”. With uncountable nouns like “stuff”, we need to use different words “much, a little, some”. “Some” can actually be used with both countable and uncountable nouns, so we could also say “some books, some tools, etc.

4. Don’t say “I played the piano when I was CHILD”. The correct sentence is “I played the piano when I was A CHILD” or “I played the piano when I was YOUNG”. We say “a child, a teenager, an adult”, because these are all countable nouns, so they need an article “a” or “an”. The word “young” is an adjective, so in this case we do not need to use “a”.

5. Don’t say “There’s a cabinet BELOW OF the sink”. The correct sentence is “There’s a cabinet BELOW the sink”. You don’t need “of” with most prepositions of place or location, such as “behind, near, under, over, between, etc. For example, “My house is near a school”, “There’s a bridge over the river”. The exceptions are: “in front of”, “on top of”, “to the right of”, “to the left of”. For example, “The pot is on top of the stove”, “The sink is to the right of the toilet”.

6. Our final mistake , Don’t say “I know EVERY STUDENTS in the class”. The correct sentence is “I know EVERY STUDENT in the class” or “I know ALL THE STUDENTS in the class. When we use the word “every”, the noun immediately after “every” must be a singular countable noun. So eventhough this sentence refers to multiple students, using the word “every” means we must use the singular form “student”. The word “each” is similar, but “each” can be used two ways: we can say “The teacher gave a test to EACH STUDENT”, that is “each” plus a singular countable noun, or “The teacher gave a test to EACH OF THE STUDENTS”. We can use “each of” plus an article like “the”. We could also say “these” or “those” or a possessive like “my”, “our”, or “your” and then in this structure we would use a plural countable noun, such as “each of those cats”, “each of my cats”, etc.

Source: Espresso English Channel on Youtube