Making mistakes while speaking in a foreign language can be terribly embarrassing and even upsetting. We have all made mistakes ranging from the simple ones that didn’t affect much to the really, really big ones that make your eyes wide and your heart beat faster.

Learning English is no different. There is a lot of room for human error, and we can generally open our mouths, and before we know it, we say something that we don’t even mean. Sometimes we don’t even realize we made a mistake until some points it out to us.

In this English tip, Gabby, explains that in most cases, it’s OK. Native speakers usually understand what you meant to say and are not offended. In the off chance that they didn’t understand what you meant, they will usually ask you to either repeat it, or explain what you intended to say.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit gonaturalenglish.com and see all the helpful tips that Gabby has for you. You will be glad you did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9guf_U0CLFI

Episode transcript below:

Hello! Hello!

What’s up?

How are you doing?

This is Go Natural English and I have a quick English tip for you.

I want to talk about making mistakes.

Imagine that you’re having a great English conversation but you stop – you start turning red and sweating because you realize you just made a mistake, and you feel embarrassed, and oh my gosh, what do you do if you realize you’ve made a grammar mistake in English in the middle of a conversation?

It’s not like you’re writing a paper and you can just erase and rewrite it, or you’re on a computer like most people do these days – you just delete and rewrite it.

You’re in the middle of a conversation, so, what do you do, oh my gosh.

Well, two things:

It depends on if the mistake affects the meaning of what you want to say.

So, if you realize that your grammar mistake means that the other person didn’t understand you, or might think something that’s wrong that you didn’t intend to say, then I would say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. What I meant to say was ...” you don’t even need to apologize.

You don’t even need to say you made a mistake.

You could just say, “What I meant to say was blah, blah, blah.”

Two – if the mistake you made was kind of superficial, meaning it doesn’t affect the meaning and everyone’s understanding everything that you mean to say – there’s no miscommunication, then let it go.

It’s totally OK.

Just let it go.

It’ll feel so good.

Just don’t worry about it.

It happens all the time.

Everybody makes mistakes, even native speakers.

So, if it doesn’t affect the understanding or your communication, just move on.

Alright?

Trust me, this will help your fluency overall because you won’t be stopping the conversation – say, “ooh, oh, I meant, ooh, uh,” and people will enjoy talking with you more because if the mistake was little, then it doesn’t really matter.

Just keep talking and it’s all good.

So, I hope that this tip is helpful for you.

If you’d like more tips, and – if you’d like to learn English the natural way, which is fun, easy, and relies on our own ability as humans to learn a language the natural way, then come back to gonaturalenglish.com where I have a lot of tips for you and I’d like to give you a free eBook, and you can find out about the premium course as well.

So, thank you so much for watching.

I believe in you, and I hope that you make a lot of mistakes.

Why?

Because mistakes are the way that we learn.

So, keep going.

Don’t worry about your mistakes.

Just do your best to clarify and make sure that you’re understanding other people and other people are understanding you.

So, you’re doing great.