In this episode we will look at a very common mistake in Taiwan.

This mistake has come about because many people commonly directly translate from their own language to English. And most of the time, that works OK. But sometimes English doesn't have exactly the right word, or idea to translate too.

In this case Taiwanese people are using 'help me' in mandarin to soften the impact of their sentence. But in English this doesn't achieve that result... Instead it completely changes the meaning of the sentence!

So today let's look at some examples and see how we can fix this problem.

And if you're not from Taiwan, then think about your own language...are there any common words or phrases that you're directly translating to English that just don't work?

Remember, all the vocabulary and example sentences are available on the blog:⁠ ⁠https://www.emmaseslenglish.com/post/episode-163-taiwanese-students-avoid-this-common-mistake-when-speaking-english