Summary 

Taking on the task of learning a new language requires lots of hard work and study. When you first start out talking to native English-speakers with your new-found language skills, you’ll no doubt be nervous about getting everything exactly right.  

However, it’s fine to have a few slip-ups in the initial stages of learning and it might make it easier for you to increase your skills. Here are five amusing and common mistakes that foreigners make in English.  

Mixing up ‘in’ and ‘on’ with transportation  

When talking about how they made a particular journey, English people will say they got ‘in’ a car or ‘on’a train. ‘In’ is used for cars and taxis and ‘on’ is used for planes, trains, busses and pretty much every other form of transport.  

If you tell someone that you travelled to class by getting ‘on’ a car, you might get some strange looks as people will assume you were sitting on the bonnet during the journey!  

Image source: Flickr

Ending sentences with contractions  

In English, ‘I’ and ‘am’ are often contracted to make the word ‘I’m’. However, this cannot happen at the end of a sentence. If someone asks you if you are feeling all right and you respond with ‘Yes, I’m’ it will sound a bit odd to the person speaking to you.  

Mixing up ‘like’ with ‘would like’ 

Saying that you ‘like’ something is not the same as saying you ‘would like’ it. If you want to say that you enjoy swimming as a hobby, you would say ‘I like swimming’. If you say ‘I would like to go swimming’, this implies that you want to go at some point in the future.  

The person who you are talking to may assume that you are asking them to go with you (which could be awkward if you don’t know them very well!).  

Image source: Flickr

Relying on a thesaurus 

A thesaurus is a great tool for learning a new language and it’s exciting to find lots of new words. However, if you rely too heavily on it, you could come up with some strange-looking sentences which don’t make much sense!  

When homophones come up (words which sound and are spelled the same but which have different meanings), you could be saying something completely different from what you intended.  

Image source: Flickr

Using too much punctuation  

Often, when people are learning English as a second language, they use too much punctuation as a way of expressing strong feelings. Surprise, shock, disbelief or anger can all be expressed without needing extra exclamation marks or question marks as these can make writing look strange.  

In English, if you use three exclamation marks at the end of a sentence, it looks a bit odd.  

The best way to improve at English quickly is to ask questions, read lots and try and surround yourself with people who are native English speakers.  

Many people come to England every year to learn English as a foreign language (for more information on available courses, click here).  

Some people want to learn for fun and others want to learn in order to open up new opportunities and enhance their careers.  

If you urgently need to speak English well (without making too many mistakes!), intensive English courses provide several hours of classes a week including one-to-one support. These courses enable students to learn quickly – perfect for those needing English for work or relationships.