Language Lunch: Common Mistakes & False Friends

The Language Lunch series is a fun and time-saving opportunity to improve your English-language competence over lunch! In the summer semester, the series continues with the following three workshops:

1. English Grammar for People Who Hate Grammar
2. Common Mistakes & False Friends
3. Let’s Talk about Tech

These workshops are part of the “Language Lunch” series and can be booked individually. Please note that even if you would like to attend all three, you must still book them separately. If you want to sign up for "Common Mistakes & False Friends” please click "Register" at the bottom of this page. If you want to sign up for the other ones, please click on the respective workshop title above.

Content

I am at WU since two years …. I’ll shortly explain why … let’s now look on the actual figures … it’s unsure whether this will work …

Do these sound familiar? All are examples of so-called ‘false friends’ or other errors typically made by speakers whose native language is German. Yet such errors can be avoided if one knows why they occur, and how they can be put right.

Avoiding avoidable mistakes: That’s essentially what this brief workshop is about. Of course, not all such errors lead directly to misunderstandings. But many do. And, just as importantly, repeated errors can give the impression of a more general lack of competence, and so undermine the message a speaker wishes to convey.

Method

On the basis of authentic examples (i.e., errors that other learners have made in the past) we’ll discuss mistakes with the help of the FACE approach: FIND – ANALYSE – CORRECT – EXPLAIN.

• Avoiding avoidable mistakes
• Discussing common mistakes with the help of the FACE approach: FIND – ANALYSE – CORRECT – EXPLAIN