if you're making these common mistakes in your ielts speaking test then you're bringing your score down let me help you fix them so your score can go up let's do it [Music] hi so this is keith um from the keith speaking academy and english speaking success um here to help you speak better english give better answers and get a higher score on the ielts speaking test so listen having taught ielts for a number of years right i see students making a lot of the same mistakes right now you see i think
if you know what these mistakes are then you will be ready to hear them and to correct them so in this video i'm going to be telling you six of the most common grammar mistakes students make when speaking and as an added bonus at the end i'll tell you five of the most common communication mistakes english students make on top of that i also want to share with you a super cool mobile app it's called woodpecker learning i think you're going to love it because it makes studying fun and learning de
ep some students even say it's head and shoulders above youtube you can soon find out i'm going to tell you more about that shortly first of all let's get into those mistakes okay let's jump in with the first mistake can you spot the mistake here i came to london to work and now i live here for five months what do you think right let me show you where the problem is right the problem is with live in the present tense i came to london to work in the past yes i live here now but if i'm telling you
how long i have lived here you need the present perfect what it should be is i came to london to work and now i have lived here for five months or i've lived here for five months right so the point is if you've got an activity that started in the past coming to london or living in london it continues until now and you're now telling how long that activity lasted then it's the present perfect right you can see in the timeline came to london five months ago i live in london i've lived here for fi
ve months or i've lived here since february i've lived here for is with a duration of time i've lived here since is with a point in time that's it listen out for it take care correct it in the future let's move on one two three four oh listen do you go down to the gym do you like to work out oh great stuff right well listen the next mistake is all about that and in this example there are actually two mistakes one in each phrase but it's a similar mistake let's have a look he usually go alone to
the gym he do not go with his friends can you see the mistake let me help you and show you where the mistake is with go and do right i'm sure you can see it right what it should be of course is he usually goes alone to the gym and he does not go alone so remember the third person that's he she or it then it must take s on the verb right he goes to the gym the problem often is that you know the grammar but you forget to pronounce it he go to the gym it sounds right but it's not he goes to the gym
he works out he goes alone he enjoys himself so when you're practicing make sure you over emphasize the s he works out he goes to the gym and then it will become more of a habit notice in the negatives with it he or she we don't use do we use does you can think of it that the s goes on the do so there's still an s right does he does not go alone in the negative we contract he doesn't he doesn't go alone can you say that he doesn't go alone that's it perfect now sometimes what happens is student
s learn the s and they focus so much on the s they're dreaming they're dreaming about the s that what happens is suddenly there's a shower of s's and you get something like these mistakes does he goes alone in the question can you see the mistake the mistake is around goes right what it should be is does he go alone but suddenly it's raining s's because you're focusing so much on the s but remember right there's only one s right so if you use does that's where the s is not on the verb so in ques
tions does he go alone got it got it brilliant 17 more to go 29 30. whoa so many things to watch vikings is quite good have you seen on netflix i haven't seen bridgeton yet might be worth watching what do you like on netflix ah right yeah fair enough yep yep well that brings me into our next mistake okay let's have a look again two phrases a mistake in each one the same kind of mistake let's see if you can spot it i'm liking this netflix series i'm having a big family what's the mistake and i ca
n help you out i'll show you where the mistake is it's with liking and having it's the tense of course right what it should be is i like this netflix series or i have a big family why because some verbs such as like and have rarely take the present continuous tense the present continuous tense is b plus the verb with the ing i am liking right normally we don't use like with the present continuous because like is about a state rather than an action present continuous tense is about an action i'm
doing it now right so we normally say i like this netflix series now it's true that sometimes it does happen right for example do you remember mcdonald's i'm loving it i'm loving it right i'm loving the food now it's describing an action like when you're watching a series ago i'm loving this series if you're describing the action you can but if it's a state right i like this series we use like in the present simple now there's a group of verbs that normally not always but normally do not go with
the present continuous tense and they include verbs like like love prefer hate right believe or know you very rarely say i'm knowing everything no because normally it's a state right i know everything i understand i understand what you're saying i realize want or wish so these usually take the present simple tense great let's move on guys if you're enjoying the video so far please do remember to subscribe and turn on the notifications right now then do you know what one of the most surprising t
hings that i learned in my teacher training right many many years ago was that it's not always a good idea to correct students mistakes i know strange right i always thought we must correct students all the time well no apparently there's quite a lot of research that shows that correcting students all the time is not effective and the very often students just go on to commit to commit to make the same mistakes again and again but of course it is important as a teacher to correct sometimes but we
have to take into account the context the emotion the students learning style and things like that secondly talking about correcting mistakes there's a very interesting saying right and i think this is a chinese saying somebody told me it was from the tao te ching maybe our chinese colleagues can let me know it says when the student is ready the teacher appears meaning that if the student is not ready the teacher cannot really help the student which is the problem right if the teacher's correct
ing you and you're not ready to hear it you're not going to listen it's only when the student is ready that the teacher appears and the teacher can help the student and that is really important for correcting mistakes because it suggests to me that actually one of the best ways to correct your mistakes is self-correction is you correcting yourself right if you can be aware of the common mistakes like the ones we're seeing today right if you can record yourself speaking notice the mistakes and co
rrect them it's one of the most effective ways of self-correction and getting better i think the other important thing you can do is expose yourself so to speak to lots of english to lots of natural english which brings me on a nice segue into my next point i want to tell you a bit about this wonderful mobile app called woodpecker learning yes woodpecker like the bird i'm not sure why but it's an interesting name now with woodpecker learning it's fantastic because it makes learning english fun a
nd engaging it has over 300 000 videos brought together in the app from different sources all the videos have got transcripts and subtitles and you can use the videos to study you can if you don't understand a word you can look it up in the subtitles to see its meaning and also you can repeat phrases again and again and again to help you improve your pronunciation and your understanding and learning it's great let me show you briefly how it works okay so we can download the app for free here we
are inside the um the mobile phone version on the front page you've got all these videos organized by category category entertainment trailers and reviews food talk shows i'm into food i'm going to have a look at one of the food videos um oh look at that lemon and blueberry tart listen can't resist let's have a look at this so you get the video right and then you can see you've got the subtitles but uh it's my birthday uh and let me just go straight back to the beginning of days and uh it's like
cleaning the windscreen on a car just like cleaning the windscreen on a car what's a windscreen let me click on that ah a windscreen a transparent screen made of glass located at the front of a vehicle ah wind screen it stops the wind that's good let me add that to my dictionary to my history i can collect the words i'm studying brilliant and uh we can listen hello everybody it's barry here hope you you right you yeah ah well welcome to my kitchen today we are making uh something quite selfish
it's very selfish today uh lemon and blueberry tart let's practice that uh lemon and blueberry tart it's my birthday a lemon and blueberry tart hang on this is really lemon and blueberry tart lemon and blueberry tart it's a lemon and blueberry tart got it i want to make sure i get that right when i go to the restaurant we can repeat phrases and repeat them again fantastic absolutely brilliant you've also got in here a web browser if you want to go into different web pages for example the bbc and
that function of looking up words you don't know you can do it in the web browser as well so maybe you're reading an article this is about the oh yes and we look up breached a gap or opening made great brilliant we can look up words in the browser as well on your mobile phone lots to do here woodpecker learning videos reading websites looking at words practicing your english great go and check the links down below you can download the app for free and you can start practicing straight away impr
oving your english right now let's get back into those mistakes now mistake number four imagine if you will the scenario tom is going to visit janet tom tall dark hair handsome blue eyes nice glasses goes to janet's house he's chasing janet right he wants janet to be his girlfriend but janet lives with her mother and tom goes to call to visit janet at janet's mother's house and this is what happens tom says is janet home janet's mum says no i'm sorry she has been to london what's the mistake wel
l you may say that tom's mistake is to try and chase a girl who lives with her mother because the mother will never allow it but what's the grammatical mistake now let me give you a clue it's around the word bean that's right right what it should be is tom says is janet home janet's mum should say if she spoke correct english no i'm sorry she has gone to london she's gone to london right so what's happening here is that with the verb to go there are two past participles right there's been which
means she went and came back and then there's gone which means she went and she's still there so if you say she's been to london it means she went to london and she came back that now is part of her life experience if you say she's gone to london she went and she's still there so of course janet's mother should say oh no janet can't speak to you she's gone to london and she's still in london right but of course the big problem is janet's mother doesn't like tom poor tom our problem is to solve t
he use here of bin and gone in the present perfect tense so you can see the difference nice let's move on now mistake number five there is a very famous poem actually by a man you may know called rudyard kipling it's a wonderful poem and it's called if and it goes a bit like this if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you if you can wait and not be tired by waiting if you can meet triumph free and disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same right if you can do all of this then the your then yours is the earth and everything that's in it and which is more you'll be a man my son that's the short version it's a fantastic poem um and it's all about rudyard as a father giving advice to his son if you can do this everything will be great you know you should do that you'd better do that if i were you i'd do this lots of advice parents love giving advice sometimes children don't like receiving i
t but we still like to give it the next mistake see if you can spot what it is my dad is always giving me lots of advices and giving you a clue how the mistake is with the word advices that's right advice is an uncountable noun you cannot count it therefore you cannot have a plural right it should be my dad is always giving me lots of advice must be in the singular because it's uncountable there are lots of uncountable nouns that are very very common in ielts speaking topics and that most studen
ts put into the plural because probably in your own language it exists in the plural right for example furniture there are there's lots of furniture lots of students say oh there's many furnitures in my house and i say no there's not and they say yes there is there's a chair there's a table there's a sofa there's many furnitures no there's not no no there is i know there is but in english you have to say there is a lot of furniture you can't count it you can count the pieces of furniture there's
three pieces of furniture but if you use the uncountable noun must be in the singular similar for news information knowledge research right i'm doing lots of researches no you're not you're doing lots of research work i've got lots of works to do no you don't have a rest you've got a lot of work to do equipment luggage pollution furniture whether all of these right are uncountable nouns so when you hear them that little red light comes on and you think ah singular great thanks keith let's move
on hello and welcome to mistake number six now oh hang on wait a minute you look very familiar your face rings a bell what's your name again alright and where do you live ah do you like it there okay and how many time have you lived there right and i i wonder how long time will you um stay there in in the future okay now hang on a minute something strange is a foot something strange is happening not a foot like a foot but a foot one word something strange is happening there's some strange questi
ons there let's have a look at the two mistakes in these following two sentences number one how many time have you lived here number two how long time have you lived here what's the mistake and my clue is the mistake is around the word time in both of them okay so listen what the correct sentence should be for both of them is how long have you lived here how long have you lived here okay we never say how long time right it's just how long i know how long can mean distance as well but because of
the context it's clear how long have you lived here do not say time in the first one how many time time of course right is uncountable in this context how much time you can say how much time but here we wouldn't use it why not it doesn't sound natural we tend to use how much time when we're talking about shorter periods of time right for example well how much time do i need to finish this exam maybe two hours or three hours right um or how much time does it take to boil an egg three minutes mayb
e so how much time is a very specific and normally a short period of time but when we're using longer periods of time and particularly the present perfect right how long how long have you lived here how long have you worked here just how long much more natural much better drop time forget time how long have you lived here that's what it should be so you can ask me a question with how long i won't answer because i can't hear you but i'll move on to the next point right next for that bonus i'd lik
e to give you five of the most common communication mistakes that i see right very quickly and this is communication either in an ielts speaking test or a mock test or with students just communicating in everyday life maybe with colleagues or in the workplace or or something like that okay the first one being afraid of mistakes which means often trying to create perfect sentences very very slowly students get nervous about mistakes it puts pressure on them and therefore they make more mistakes l
isten mistakes are going to happen accepted when you're practicing slow down try and speak accurately but when you're doing the test or you're communicating in everyday life get the balance between fluency and accuracy be alert but do accept mistakes will happen it's fine number two speaking too quietly and of course this is sometimes to do with lack of confidence and the problem is it really brings down your communication skills so raise your voice speak a little more loudly than maybe you norm
ally would do it'll really help you number three speaking too quickly this often happens and it shows a lack of control of pronunciation features if if this is a problem you have slow down break down your pronunciation try and work with chunks that use pauses much more often as you're speaking the way i do listen to me i use pauses all the time can really help you number four speaking with a monotonous voice lacking emotion sometimes this comes from using your first language intonation which may
be much flatter than english intonation english intonation tends to be a bit lari it bounces up and down it can be quite melodic not as melodic as some languages some latin languages maybe italian and spanish are much more melodic but english has a certain kind of intonation so just be aware when you're speaking give a bit of emotion give a bit of liveliness to your speaking number five bad eye contact especially in a test or again in everyday life some people get nervous and then suddenly the
eye contact is is all over the place it's it's maybe completely avoiding the person you're speaking to or it's or it's looking at them very intensely and then eye contact is a really difficult thing there are no rules about it but the more relaxed you are making some eye contact now and again you can move away but come back and then maybe thinking and then come back right so not too much and not too little that's it five communication mistakes so watch out for these grammar mistakes and communic
ation mistakes and as you start correcting them you will be well on your way to improving your overall communication skills and getting a higher score in ielts speaking remember do check out the woodpecker learning mobile app i think it's fantastic you will love it you can start learning having fun watching the things that you enjoy watching helping you learn more deeply you can check out the links below you can download it for free start practicing start learning and do remember if you keep you
r learning fun you'll be learning at a much deeper level and so you will move from being just another english student to being a confident english speaker and i hope i can help you on your journey so i look forward to seeing you very soon in the next video please do remember to subscribe turn on the notifications and i will see you in a few seconds also leave me a comment below let me know what mistakes do you make in english or what things do you often confuse when speaking in english let me kn
ow in the comments below great speak to you soon bye-bye
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