4 Mistakes Speaking English
Everyone who started something new for the first time, starting a business o learning a new skill, is nearly true that is going to be difficult at the beginning and we´ll make mistakes thousand times before we reach our goal.
When we learn English, it happens the same, and there´s no need to feel ashamed by that; weird would be if it goes fine at first. Because of it, we´re going to see four mistakes we make the first time we learn English:
IS THE BALLOON RED OR THE RED BALLOON: this is related to one simple yet obvious for some learners. In English, the adjectives go before the noun, something different to Spanish where they go after the noun. For example: if we say “a balloon red” is incorrect. It means we´re still thinking in Spanish and not in English, so it would be “a red balloon”. It can also apply when it´s more than one adjective: “The big red and old house”.
MATHEMATICS ARE MATHEMATICS!: this mistake doesn´t come from who´s earning but from who´s teaching and, something common among teachers, is that they teach English grammar as they´re Mathematics.
How´s that? Something so simple like seeing the order of words can leads us to feel like we´re studying a Mathematical equation, more than just a grammatical structure; for worse if we talk about a longer structure. Conditionals for example: “IF + I + HAD + STUDIED +LAST NIGHT + , + I + WOULD + NOT/WOULDN´T + HAVE + FAILED + THE EXAM”.
All of this is an example of Mixed Conditionals, where is exposed the result of something that could´ve been in the past and has an effect in the future. All the parts of the structure are divided like they were parts of an equation, and it is for sure that all of us have learned like this way. In certain form, it works to identify the parts that compose the sentence but it works better by learning separated phrases more than each part of the sentence at once.
FROM THE THROAT: something easy in how can identify us at first sight when we´re in an only English environment, isn't our appearance or behavior… is by the way we talk. And this is something very noticeable in who never had a contact with the language and they´re learning for the first time.
We´re talking about the guttural sound this language has, contrary to Spanish where there isn't any emphasis in this sound. For example: the word “strong”. How do you pronounce it? For others who know the sounds and had contact with the language, know the intonation in the sound “o” must be deep and strong, while someone who pronounce it for the first time does it without any emphasis in that sound. The same happens with words with the letter “R”: “Teacher”. This leads us to the last point.
By: @outsider_1997
Text creator (Spanish & English)
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