4 Mistakes EVEN Advanced English Learners make

While someone will definitely understand what you mean from these sentences, they sound a little bit odd to a native English speaker. So, what can you say instead? Hello everyone! Welcome to English with Kat Presents. In today's video, we are going to focus on four of the most common advanced English grammar mistakes. Mistakes like indirect vs. direct questions, tricky prepositions, how to use recommend and suggest correctly, and third person singular subject verb agreements. These are the kinds of errors and mistakes that even strong advanced English learners make. But when you make them, they can make you sound less professional and fluent. In this video, I'll teach you how to spot and avoid each of these grammar mistakes. And also, there'll be some mini quizzes along the way so you can test your understanding. Ready to sharpen your English skills? Let's get into it. First, let's talk about prepositions. Those tiny little words that can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Prepositions can be tricky because they don't follow a universal rule. Instead, they depend on collocation, which is the way that we naturally combine words in English. Native speakers don't think about it consciously, but certain nouns, verbs, and adjectives are almost always paired with a specific preposition. Some important preposition pairs to remember are depend on, listen to, good at, interested in, believe in, and scared of. Although you can use these words without prepositions, if you do use them with prepositions, they will almost always be paired with these ones. However, there are also special cases where some words can be used with more than one preposition. Like agree. We often hear agree with and agree to. But both of these phrases have different meanings. Agree to means that you have said yes to doing something. Like, she agreed to helping me move this Sunday. Agree with shows that you have the same opinion as another person. He always agrees with whatever she says. The key to reducing preposition mistakes for advanced learners is to learn prepositions as part of a phrase and not separately. Think of them as partners that always go together. For extra help, check in the description down below where I have a study sheet of the 100 most common and important preposition pairings for you to remember. Now it's time for a quick quiz. Write your answers down in the comments below and I'll reveal the answers at the end. Another difficulty advanced learners face is with the verbs recommend and suggest. In English, these two words don't behave in the same way as advise or tell, even though they have a similar meaning. Unlike advise or tell, you cannot follow recommend and suggest with a pronoun and infinitive. My teacher advised me to read this book. My teacher recommended me to read this book. She told us to take a break. She suggested us to take a break. While someone will definitely understand what you mean from these sentences, they sound a little bit odd to a native English speaker. So what can you say instead? The verbs recommend and suggest should be used in one of these following structures. Recommend and suggest can be used with a that clause, meaning that after the words recommend or suggest, you follow it with the words that, subject, base verb. For example, my teacher recommended that I read this book. Or she suggested that we take a break. Recommend and suggest can also be used when you follow it with a gerund. For example, my teacher recommended reading this book. She suggested taking a break. And lastly, we can use it by getting rid of the verb and just following it with a direct object. For example, my teacher recommended this book. She suggested a break. Now here's a mini quiz to test you. Which of these sentences is correct? Now let's move to another advanced challenge. Direct and indirect questions. These ones can be difficult because the word order changes depending on the type of question. In English, direct questions use the normal question word order. Question word, verb, subject. For example, what is the problem? Where is the library? Indirect questions are a little bit different. These happen when we ask a question that is inside of another sentence. We use indirect questions often because we're trying to be more polite. When asking an indirect question, we don't follow the same structure as a direct question. Instead, with an indirect question, the verb should go after the subject. Like this. Can you tell me what the problem is? Do you know where the library is? Now let's test you. Which question is correct? And finally, let's talk about forgetting the S ending to verbs in the third person singular. As an advanced learner, I'm sure that you know the golden rule of subject-verb agreement is for any singular subject, he, she, it, we must add an S to the verb. However, one thing that can trip people up is noun subjects that look plural but are actually singular. Like words such as traffic or news. These words might feel or look plural, but they're actually singular. So we need to remember to add the S to the verb. The traffic on the highway moves slowly during rush hour. Even though the word traffic refers to many cars, it's treated as a singular noun and a singular subject in this sentence. The news spreads quickly across social media. News might look plural because of the S on the end, but it's actually singular. So we need to put an S on the verb. Check the description for a list of other nouns that look plural but are actually singular. So you don't end up making this mistake. Another area to watch out for is collective nouns. Collective nouns are words that describe a group of people or things. Like family, committee, team, audience, or crowd. In American English, collective nouns are treated as singular nouns. So you need to use a singular verb. So in American English, you should say, My family is large. The committee has made its decision. In British English, collective nouns can be singular or plural depending on the context. So in British English, you could say, The team is winning. And the team are winning. As a teacher, I would recommend following the American rule. Treat all collective nouns as singular and use singular verbs with them. That way, you'll be correct no matter the context. So in this lesson, we covered some of the most tricky advanced English grammar mistakes. As promised, here are the answers to the quizzes that we had along the way. If you found this video helpful, don't forget to give it a like and share it with your friends. I'll also be making another advanced English grammar skills video in the future. So subscribe so you don't miss it. I'd also love to hear from you. So leave any questions that you have down in the comments below. And you can also send them to me on my social media pages. Have a great day, everyone. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye.