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  • Hi. My name is Rebecca. In today's lesson, you are going to have a chance to correct

  • some errors in English grammar. I've written some sentences on the board, and each of these

  • sentences has some kind of English error. It might be in verb tenses, it might be in

  • prepositions, word order, or something else. Go through the sentence, I'll give you a little

  • time to look at the sentence and try to find the mistake, and then I'll explain the mistake,

  • okay? Let's get started.

  • First one: "I have met John last year." "I have met John last year."

  • There is an error in every one of these sentences.

  • Do you know what the error is in the first sentence? Any idea? Think about it. Okay.

  • I'm going to correct it now. The error is in this part. Because we have said "last year",

  • we can't use the present perfect tense. Right now, when we said "I have met John last year.",

  • it's the present perfect tense. With present perfect tense you can't use a finished time.

  • So: finished time, as in "last year". As soon as you use something like "last year", "yesterday",

  • "last month", "last summer", and so on; that means you are talking about the past or even

  • three hours ago, which is already the past, and that's a finished time. When you use present

  • perfect, you cannot use a finished time marker. You can use an unfinished time, like "today",

  • "this week", "this month", and "this year", but you can't use a finished time. If you

  • need to mention a finished time in a sentence, then you just go back to use the past simple

  • tense, as we've done right here. I've taken out the "have", and it says

  • "I met John last year." Now, that sentence is grammatically correct.

  • Let's look at the next one: "She's engaged with a dentist." "She's engaged with a dentist."

  • Take a second. You have any

  • idea where the error is? The error is here. It's the wrong preposition. The preposition

  • should be: "She's engaged to a dentist." We actually say "engaged to", "married to". Here,

  • the problem was with the preposition.

  • Next one: "I must to go home now." "I must to go home now."

  • What's wrong there?

  • Here is the error. The error is the fact that we don't need to say,

  • "I must to go", but just, "I must go home now." "I must go home now."

  • "Must" is a modal, just like "should",

  • "could", "can", and so on. You should be saying, "I should go home now.", "I must go home now.",

  • "I could go home now." With all these modals, the verb that follows should be used directly

  • and not in the infinitive form. We don't need to say "I must to do something." "I must do

  • something", "I must go", "I must study", "I must work", and so on. That was the error

  • here.

  • Next one: "She's been in London since 5 months." "She's been in London since 5 months."

  • Take a second. What's the mistake there?

  • Now the error is over here, because we cannot say "since 5 months". We use "since", plus

  • the point in time when something happened. If you're giving the length of time, or the

  • period of time, then you have to use the preposition "for". This part is present perfect, that's

  • fine. Very often with present perfect, we do see time prepositions, like "since" and

  • "for", but you have to learn how to use them correctly.

  • Next: "My wife engineer." "My wife engineer."

  • What's wrong with that? Well, there're a couple of things wrong with that.

  • First of all, in every English sentence, it's very important to know that you do need

  • to have a verb, and this sentence has no verb. The verb in English can also be the verb "to be",

  • because that is a verb, but you need some verb. Every English sentence requires

  • a verb, so we need to add a verb here. "My wife is..." But now, because 'engineer' is only singular,

  • it's one person, we need to add the indefinite article, "a". But it's not "a" because there

  • is an "e" here, so we actually need to add "an". "My wife is an engineer." So there are

  • a couple of grammatical points to think about in making this a correct sentence, right?

  • First, we had to add the verb, "is". Next, we had to add an indefinite article. Normally,

  • if it was something else, like a doctor, then we would have just said "a doctor", "a dentist",

  • but because the word starts with an "e", we need to say "an engineer".

  • To improve your English, you need to do these kinds of exercises. Go to the RESOURCES section

  • of our website, www.engvid.com , and download a list of 50 of the most common grammar errors

  • that we have listed for you there. Good luck with your English. Thanks for watching.

  • Learn English for free www.engvid.com

Hi. My name is Rebecca. In today's lesson, you are going to have a chance to correct

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