10 common spoken English mistakes, and how to fix them

Most spoken English mistakes are not random. A small set shows up again and again: some copy a pattern from your first language, others come from English itself, where a rule has exceptions or takes a long time to become automatic. This page covers ten that many learners make, with the corrected sentence for each.

Here they are: 1) past events in the present tense; 2) missing articles; 3) the wrong preposition; 4) a missing third-person -s; 5) "since" and "for" swapped; 6) question word order; 7) uncountable nouns made plural; 8) "make" and "do" confused; 9) double negatives and "very much" in the wrong place; 10) sayings translated word for word.

Reading the list is the easy part. What helps is noticing the mistake as you speak and saying the corrected sentence out loud. That is what practicing with Airi is for: you talk naturally, she shows one small fix at a time and keeps the conversation going. Free to start.

The 10 common spoken English mistakes, with the corrected sentence

The numbers match the list at the top of the page. Each row has a typical wrong sentence, the corrected one, and the reason in one line.

Eight more spoken English mistakes: one verb or phrase each

The ten above are broad categories. These eight are narrower: most belong to one verb or one fixed phrase.

For these, a rule helps less than the whole phrase. Say it out loud a few times as one piece: "explain it to me", "told me to wait", "looking forward to seeing you".

Which spoken English mistakes to fix first

Start with the mistakes that change your meaning. "She work in a bank" is wrong, but nobody misunderstands it. Each sentence below is correct English, so nobody will correct you; it may simply not say what you meant.

It also helps to know which kind of mistake you are making. Teachers often separate a slip, where you know the rule and can correct yourself once you notice, from an error, where you have not learned the rule yet. Slips need speaking practice, not more study. Errors need the rule first, and then practice.

Spoken English "mistakes" that are not mistakes

Some habits learners work hard to avoid are normal in conversation.

• "Who" instead of "whom". The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English notes that in everyday spoken or written English people usually use "who" rather than "whom": "Who did you send it to?"
• A preposition at the end. "That's the colleague I was telling you about" is how the sentence is normally said.
• Short answers. "Not yet." "Sounds good." "Me too." Nobody expects a full sentence every time.
• "Can I...?" to ask permission. "Can I ask a question?" is the everyday form. "Could I" and "May I" are more formal and polite, not more correct.

How to find your own most common spoken English mistakes

A two-minute recording is enough to show which of these mistakes you actually make. The whole exercise takes about fifteen minutes.

1. Record yourself on your phone for two minutes answering one question: "What did you do last weekend?"
2. Play it back and write down exactly what you said, mistakes included.
3. Underline every sentence you would say differently now. Those are slips: you already know the fix.
4. Check the rest against the tables on this page. A mistake you only find with their help is an error: look up that one rule.
5. Count what repeats. The mistake that appears most often is this week's target.

What one classroom study found about correcting spoken mistakes

Being corrected is not the same as correcting yourself. In a 1997 study in the journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Roy Lyster and Leila Ranta analyzed how teachers in four primary-level French immersion classrooms responded to students' spoken mistakes. The teachers leaned heavily on recasts, where the teacher says the student's sentence back in its correct form, even though recasts were ineffective at getting students to come up with the correction themselves. Other kinds of feedback, such as asking the student to try again or giving a hint about the rule, led students to repair their own sentences more often.

Those were children learning French, not adults learning English, so treat this as a hint, not a rule. The practical point: try to fix the sentence yourself before anyone gives you the answer. And when someone does give you the correct sentence, whether a teacher, a friend or Airi, do not just nod. Say it yourself.

A short routine with Airi for one spoken English mistake

Airi shows one small fix at a time and keeps the conversation moving, so build the routine around a single target. Pick a topic that forces the pattern you want to fix.

1. Tell Airi the topic and speak in full sentences for a few minutes.
2. When a small fix appears, say the corrected sentence out loud before you go on.
3. Then say one new, true sentence that uses the same pattern.
4. Come back to the same topic the next day. Airi remembers your name and your last topic.

The 600 free credits you get when you sign up with Google cover about eight minutes of speaking, enough for one run of this routine. Airi will not hand you a full list of every slip, and she does not score pronunciation. For a complete list, use the recording exercise above or ask a teacher.

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Frequently asked questions

Last updated: 2026-10-03