What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers?

What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers?

 Evan Sarver

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Today we learned What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers. Let Evan Sarver shares with you two of the most common English mistakes made by non-native English speakers even if they speak English well.

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What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers | Evan Sarver

What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers?

Evan Sarver

How can I become fluent in English?

Can you find these 10 common English mistakes?

Thank you, “Youtube – Learn English with Rebecca [engVid]“.

Answer by Evan Sarver ( Studied at Vancouver Film School, Ukraine). All credit goes to Evan Sarver,  Thank you!

What are the common mistakes made by non-native English speakers?

Some others have pointed out that first language interference means that it depends on the first language of the learner. It is quite hard to point to a single issue of grammar or vocabulary that is a common mistake for high-level speakers who have different first languages. On the other hand, there are some areas that are universal or nearly universal.

One such area is the use of prepositions. These are notoriously tricky when learning almost any language, as they are often used quite differently. For example: in the park, at the park, on the park, by the park. Depending on your particular language, any of these might be right. In English, in or at can be right, but on is wrong, and by has a totally different meaning than on or at. Prepositions don’t have anything like a 1 to 1 correspondence between almost any two languages (though perhaps if those languages are both quite similar – they might match up quite well). This is true for most languages. Even if there is a good relative match-up between two sets of prepositions in two languages, there will be scores of examples where something totally alien is used. And thus, people have a great deal of difficulty mastering them in almost any language. They’ll make some (sometimes very elementary) mistakes even at high levels. I have advanced students who leave out “to” when they say “listen.” You end up with “I listen music when I cook.” They forget the dependent preposition because there isn’t one in their native language. Or they say “in first street,” when they mean “on first street,” which is a big difference because with the former you might be hit by a car and with the latter there’s probably a lot less chance of that happening.

Another is pronunciation of the “th” sounds. The reason for this is that very few languages have these two phonemes. As a result, most people who have a different first language have great difficulty producing these sounds. To them, they sound like s and z (Europeans and Slavs), or like t and d (Asians), and thus they produce them this way when they speak, and you end up with something like, “zis is ze most sotful book I’ve read zis year,” or “dis is de most totful book I’ve read dis year.”

Reference: Evan Sarver. “What mistake do non-native English speakers make even if they speak English well?”  originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

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