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  • Hi. My name is Rebecca and in today's lesson you'll have a chance to identify

  • a variety of different grammar errors in each of the sentences that you see on

  • the board. Each of them has a different kind of grammar mistake and by identifying

  • them, you'll be reviewing a variety of grammatical concepts in English.

  • Okay? So let's get started.

  • The first sentence "My brother has 15 years."

  • "My brother has 15 years."

  • What's the error there? Well, in this sentence the person is trying to give the

  • age of the brother, right? So we should say "My brother is 15."

  • or "My brother is 15 years old."

  • So when we give someone's age in English,

  • we can also just say the number.

  • You don't have to say years old but you cannot say,

  • is just 15 years. So even if I corrected it and I said "My brother

  • is 15 years.", that's wrong.

  • I have to say either "My brother is 15.",

  • or "My brother is 15 years old."

  • So remember that when you're talking about age.

  • In some languages, it is expressed like this,

  • as if you have the number of years.

  • But in English it doesn't work like that.

  • Let's look at the next example.

  • "I want drink something." "I want drink something."

  • There is definitely something wrong here.

  • Can you find it?

  • So we should add "to".

  • "I want to drink something."

  • After the verb "want" if you have a verb,

  • you have to use the infinitive.

  • You can't say, "I want drink",

  • "I want eat". You need to say,

  • "I want to drink", "I want to eat",

  • "I want to see", all right? So remember that.

  • You need to add the infinitive after want.

  • Next one, "Susan enjoyed from the movie".

  • "Susan enjoyed from the movie".

  • What's wrong there? Well, in this case we don't need the preposition "from".

  • In any case, we don't need a preposition at all.

  • So you just say, "Susan enjoyed the movie".

  • This is a very common error probably because in different languages they do need a

  • preposition with the verb "enjoy".

  • But in English we don't.

  • So you just say, "She enjoyed the movie",

  • "She enjoyed the show", "She enjoyed the concert",

  • "She enjoyed the class", and so on.

  • You need no preposition after the verb "enjoy".

  • Next one, "I like very much ice cream."

  • "I like very much ice cream."

  • What's wrong with that? It seems like all the words are there.

  • Well, all the words are there but the order of the words is not right.

  • So what we need to do is this.

  • So we need to change the order here,

  • "I like ice cream very much."

  • Why do we do that? Because normally in English we have the subject,

  • we have the verb, and then we should have or we're looking for the object

  • of the verb. So if I say,

  • "I like", the person is expecting to hear that someone who is listening is expecting

  • to hear what it is that I like.

  • So that's what I should say first.

  • I could say, "I like ice cream very much",

  • "I like music very much", "I like books very much".

  • So you want that information first and then "very much",

  • which is a detail can come after.

  • But first try to put the object,

  • the direct object. Last one, "Me and my wife live here."

  • "Me and my wife live here."

  • What's wrong with that? Okay.

  • This part. This part is incorrect because in English,

  • first of all, we don't mention ourselves first and then other people.

  • First we mention another person and last we're going to mention ourselves.

  • So it should be "My wife and..."

  • The other mistake is that we don't use the word "me" as the subject.

  • So we should say "My wife and I live here."

  • So we have two mistakes here.

  • The order was wrong and you don't use "me" in the subject or as a

  • subject. You should say "I".

  • Now, this is true even if you have more people.

  • "My mother, my wife, my brother and I",

  • but, "and I" will always come at the end of the list of people.

  • It's just sort of a polite way that we speak in English when we list a

  • number of people. We usually put ourselves last.

  • So, this kind of exercise is really important to be able to do.

  • It also allows you to think about grammar as it really appears in real life.

  • Various types of mistakes, not just one type of exercise but various types of exercises.

  • So you need this kind of practice.

  • Go to our website, the resources section of our website at engvid.com and you can

  • download there a list of 50 of the most common grammar errors,

  • which I put together for you and that should help you to identify which areas

  • of English you are weak in, okay?

  • So thanks very much for watching.

  • Bye for now.

  • www.engvid.com

Hi. My name is Rebecca and in today's lesson you'll have a chance to identify

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