Practical phrases for talking about mistakes

Hello students, it's Shana from EspressoEnglish.net. Today I want to answer a question from a student who asked about English phrases we can use for talking about making mistakes and then promising to resolve or fix those mistakes. First I want to remind you that with the word mistake we use the verb make, not do. So always say, I made a mistake. Don't say, I did a mistake. You can remember it because it's an M for make and an M for mistake. I made a mistake. Got it? Before we jump into the lesson, I also wanted to invite you to join my everyday English speaking courses so that you can learn phrases for lots of different situations in everyday life. And if you'd like to focus on correcting mistakes you might be making in English, then another good choice is my 200 Common Errors in English course. I'll put links to both these courses in the video description. Alright, now let's learn some of these phrases that native English speakers use for admitting and resolving mistakes. The first one is, I blew it. We use this for making major mistakes. Let's say you have a boyfriend and girlfriend who have been dating for a long time and the boyfriend forgets his girlfriend's birthday. So he doesn't plan a party, he doesn't give her any gifts, and he doesn't even wish her happy birthday. Of course she gets really angry about this. Well he could apologize and acknowledge his mistake by saying, I'm so sorry, I blew it. Or I really blew it, to give it even more emphasis. This is an informal phrase to say, I made a big mistake. Another one is, I messed up. This is also informal and so we use it usually when talking with friends or family members. For example, if you're inviting everybody to a party and the party is on Saturday, but you sent out 50 emails saying the party was on Sunday by mistake, then you could say, I messed up. I told everyone the party is on Sunday, but it should be on Saturday. If you want to emphasize that you made a really big mistake, then you can add the word really in here. You can say, I really messed up. Or another way is, I messed up really bad or really badly. If I'm washing the clothes for my entire family and I make the mistake of adding bleach, that's a chemical that makes things white. So if I accidentally add bleach when washing the clothes and I ruin everybody's clothes so all the colors are gone. All the clothes now have white spots. Then I could say, oh man, I messed up really bad when I added bleach to the laundry. Okay, so mess up is an informal way to talk about making mistakes. We also have the expression, I dropped the ball. This comes from baseball where the players need to catch the ball and if they drop the ball then it's a mistake, it's an error. We usually use, I dropped the ball, when there's some task or responsibility that you were supposed to do and you didn't do it. For example, if you're at work and you need to call an important client by the end of the day and you don't do it, then your boss asks you, how was the phone call? Then you could say, I'm so sorry, I dropped the ball and I didn't call that client. If there's a group project at school and you need to write one page for the project and all the other group members are asking you, hey, where's your text? And you didn't write it, you could say, I dropped the ball, meaning I didn't do the text I was responsible for. We also have, it was my fault. This phrase is used when you take responsibility that you were the one who made the mistake or caused the problem. Let's say you're at work and you try to use the office printer to print a really big document and the paper gets jammed in the printer. Everyone's trying to figure out who did this, you could say, I'm sorry, it was my fault. This is just a general phrase that can be used at work or outside of work for taking responsibility when there are many people involved, but you are saying, it was my fault. I'm the one who made the mistake or caused the problem. Now the phrases we learned are usually used for fairly significant size mistakes, but what if you only make a tiny mistake? Let's say you're talking with a native English speaking friend and you use the wrong word in a sentence and your friend corrects you, you don't want to say, I blew it or I screwed up because it's really not a big mistake, it's just a small one. In that case, you can use the expression, my bad. This is just kind of a slying expression, it's a really informal, casual way to acknowledge a very small mistake. Or if you accidentally bump somebody, you could say, oops, sorry, my bad, just for a small mistake. Now let's learn some phrases after you have admitted your mistake, what can you say after that? You can say, I'm sorry or sorry about that, but there are some other phrases you can use as well. A good one to use at work is this, it won't happen again. So if your boss finds out you made a mistake, you drop the ball and you want to promise your boss that you're going to be more careful in the future, then you can say, it won't happen again. This just shows that you are very determined to improve your work, improve your behavior and you are promising that you will do better in the future, saying the mistake or the problem won't happen again. Another very common thing we say is, I'll, and then we say the action we're going to take to resolve or fix the problem right away. So you can say, I'll fix it right away, or I'll resolve this right away, or I'll take care of this right away. In the example I gave earlier, where there was an important client that you didn't call, you could say, I'll call the client right away. Right away means immediately or very soon in the future. This phrase shows that you are going to take action to resolve the problem immediately. This can make other people feel better because you admitted you made a mistake, but now you're taking action to resolve the problem. Now if you really want to show that you are going to invest a lot of effort in fixing this problem, you can use this expression, I'll do everything in my power to resolve the problem. I'll do everything in my power to make the client happy. This is just a way to give extra emphasis to the fact that you are going to do everything, make many efforts to fix this problem, to make things right, or to make up for or compensate for your mistake. Another expression you can use, let's say you have a problem between you and your friend. For example, you promised to give your friend a ride somewhere and you forgot. You didn't do it. You're not sure what you can do to fix it, the relationship between you and your friend. So you can ask the question, how can I make it up to you? Or what can I do to make it up to you? This is asking, what can I do to compensate for this problem or repair the damage I've caused to our relationship? That's a good one to use between friends when you've made a mistake, you've caused a problem, but you want to make things better. You can ask the person, what can I do to make it up to you? That means compensate you for this problem I have caused. I hope this gives you a better idea of some phrases you can use for making mistakes and then making up for the mistakes or promising that the mistakes will be fixed or compensated for. I'd like to help you improve your English even further so that you don't make many mistakes when you talk. Inside my Everyday English Speaking courses, not only will you learn practical phrases, but you can also get feedback on your speaking. There are speaking tasks where you can record yourself responding, and then a teacher on our team will listen to you and send comments on things you're doing well, things you can improve, and of course, correct any mistakes. It's a really valuable part of the course. Make sure to check it out if you'd like to improve your speaking fast. Thanks for watching, and I'll talk to you in the next video.