Top 10 Confusing English Verbs for Beginners

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Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid.

In this lesson you will have a chance to understand 10 of the most confused verbs in English.

Now, if you're a beginner student, then you have a chance to learn them right to begin with.

If you're an intermediate level student, you might still want to review these verbs just

to make sure that you're really using them properly.

And if you are making mistakes, no worries, I'm going to explain them to you and also

show you how to correct them.

Okay? Here we go.

The first set of words we have is "learn" or "teach".

So, let me give you a sentence and you tell me what you think is right.

What should we use here?

"Mrs. Cole learns us English" or "Mrs. Cole teaches us English"?

Which is correct?

If you had to think for more than one second about the answer, then I'm so glad you're watching.

Because I'm going to give you this very important difference.

I hope you said: "Mrs. Cole

teaches us English." Okay.

So, what's the difference between "learn" and "teach"?

If you made a mistake, no problem.

I'm going to explain it to you so you get it.

So, "to learn" means to get knowledge or skills.

And "to teach" means to give knowledge or skills.

So right now what are you doing?

Are you giving knowledge or are you getting, are you receiving knowledge?

I think you are receiving, so you are learning, you are getting.

And I am giving, so I am teaching.

I'm teaching, you're learning.

Right? So, this is what it says here: "Teachers teach".

That's also a big clue because the word "teacher" has the word "teach" in it, so: Teachers teach

something, like I teach English.

Teachers teach math, English, history, etc.

Or teachers teach someone, they teach students, usually.

And students learn something, like students learn English, or math, or history.

And students learn from someone, usually a teacher.

So what are you doing right now?

You're learning.

What am I doing right now?

Let's look at the next one.

The next one: "bring" or "take".

Let's look at this example.

"Please bring this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor"

"Please take this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor"?

Take a second to think about it.

What did you say?

"Bring this book to Mrs. Smith" or "Take this book to Mrs. Smith"?

Well, the correct answer is:

"Take this book to Mrs. Smith on the second floor."

Well, let's look.

"To bring something" means to move it towards the person who's speaking, to the speaker.

And "to take something" means to move something away from the speaker.

So I could say to you: Bring it to me or take it away from me.

And even if somebody else is telling you that on the phone.

So it doesn't matter where that person is.

What matters is: Who is the speaker?

Who is saying that sentence?

So, for example, you could say to the waiter if you're in a restaurant:

"Please bring me some water."

Or you could say to the waiter or waitress: "Please take my plate away."

So now you're taking the plate away from you.

Let's look at another set of words.

Now, "borrow" or "lend".

Let's look at an example.

"My father borrowed me his car last night"

"My father lent me his car last night"?

Which one is right?

The sentence is in the past tense, so instead of "lend", we see "lent", but which is it?

"My father", what should it be?

"Lent me", "My father lent me his car."

Let's understand why.

In case you didn't get it right.

And if you did get it right, let's be 100% sure why you got it right.

Okay, so "to borrow something" means to take something temporarily, and with...

And you expect to...

You are expected to give it back.

You plan to give it back.

You're not taking it forever.

You're just taking it temporarily.

All right? For a little while.

And "to lend" means to give something temporarily, and you also expect to get it back.

For example, a person who lends is called a "lender".

The person who borrows is called a "borrower".

And "lend" we often...

Most people are...

Have heard of money lenders, right?

People who lend money are called money lenders because they give you money temporarily, but

they expect to get it back.

Now, so based on that let's look at how we can use these words.

So we could say...

I could say to a friend: "Could I borrow your pen please?", "Could I borrow?"

That means: Could I take it and use it temporarily?

Or another way I could ask the same question is: "Could you lend me your pen please?"

So now I'm asking pretty much the same question, but in a different way using a different verb:

"Could you lend me your pen?" All right?

And, of course, we can borrow or lend all kinds of things, such as money, or cellphones,

or books, or a coat, or something else.

Hope you got that right.

Let's look at the next pair.

So now: "win" or "beat".

All right, let's look at the example.

"I beat him at tennis" or "I won him at tennis"?

Which is correct?

What do you think?

"I beat him at tennis."

Because when you beat someone, you beat a person, another person or another team.

When you win, you win a game, or a prize, or an award.

See that difference?

You're winning the game, but you're beating the other side, you're defeating the other

team or opponent, the other player. All right?

Just to understand a little bit better because I know it can be a little bit confusing, let's

look at this example.

So, Team A finished the game and had 25 points.

Team B at the end of the game had only 10 points.

So let me ask you: Who won this game?

Team A won the game.

Who lost the game?

Team B lost the game because they had fewer points.

And what's another way in which we can express this result?

We can say that Team A beat Team B. So they won the game, but they beat the other side

or the other team. Got it?

Let's look at the last pair of words.

So last: "do" or "make".

This is always a little bit confusing, but let's try.

Number one: "I did a mistake" or "I made a mistake", what do you think?

Well, it should be:

"I made a mistake."

The next one: "We did a course" or "We made a course"?

What do you think?

"We did a course."

And the last one we have here:

"They did their homework" or "They made their homework"?

It's a really common mistake.

Don't worry if you're not sure.

did their homework."

So, how do you know whether to use "do" or "make"?

Well, it's like this: I've been teaching English for a long time and I can tell you that there

are lots and lots of rules to help you choose "do" or "make".

But in my experience the best way to learn these is to learn the expressions by heart.

Become familiar with the expressions.

Use them a lot, write them, read them.

And that way they'll come automatically.

Because when you need to use this...

One of these words, you can't...

You don't have time to think through all of the different rules.

You just have to know that you make a mistake, you do a course, and you do your homework.

It just has to come.

And you will have to work at it.

And to help you with that what I've done is I've created a resource on our website

where there are over a hundred expressions with "do" and "make" so that you can practice and

really get to know them.

So for that, here are some things you can do.

First of all, subscribe to my channel, my YouTube channel.

I have lots of lessons like this which can help you improve your English much faster.

Second: Go to our website, www.engvid.com, there you can download a free resource with

a list of these expressions of "make" and "do", lots of other resources, too.

You can also do a test or a little bit of a quiz on what we learned in this lesson.

And also, you can look around at lots and lots of hundreds of other lessons which can

help you improve your English one step at a time.

I'm so proud of you.

It's not easy to learn English, I know that.

But every little change you make makes a big difference-okay?-in

your ability and your confidence in speaking English.

Thanks very much for watching and good luck with your English.