Hi students, it’s Shayna from EspressoEnglish.net. This week is the holiday of Thanksgiving in the United States… so in today’s lesson, you’ll learn useful expressions with the word THANK or THANKS.
I’ll also teach you about a couple common mistakes – so make sure you watch the whole video so you can avoid the errors.
Thank God / Thank goodness
Thank God is used when we are really thankful and happy for something, especially when we are relieved because something very bad could have happened, but it didn’t happen.
For example, imagine you have a friend and your friend got into a car accident, but fortunately nobody was injured. You could say, “Thank God no one was hurt in the accident.” You were expressing your great relief that everyone is okay and no bad injuries happened in the car accident.
You can also use the phrase thank goodness in these situations. You could say, “Thank goodness nobody was hurt.” or if you get lost in a city but you have a cell phone so you can call for help, or find some directions then you can say, “I got lost but thank goodness I had a cell phone, so I was able to get to the right place.”
Both thank God and thank goodness are used in similar situations, when something bad could have happened but didn’t happen, and so you are happy, you are thankful, you’re relieved.
Imagine that your friend is driving their car and it’s a very rainy day, so the roads are slippery and dangerous but your friend arrives safely at your house. You can say, “Thank God you arrived safely.”, or “Thank goodness you arrived safely.” to express that great relief.
Now I see some students, especially my Spanish and Portuguese speaking students sometimes make the mistake of writing thanks God. That’s actually incorrect, I know we have a similar expression, expressing thankfulness to God in Spanish and Portuguese, but in English we actually write, thank God and not thanks God.
Thanks to (someone)
We also have the expression, thanks to someone and this expression is used in a slightly different situation. Thanks to someone is used when we want to give the person credit for something good that they did.
If you have a big project at work and your co-worker helps you a lot and because of your co-worker the project is finished on time, then you can tell this co-worker, “Thanks to you, the project was finished on time.” You are giving that person credit for the good thing that they did. Or you can use it to give credit to someone else, not necessarily the person that you’re talking to.
A good example is that, my dad taught me how to change a car tire. If I have a problem like I have a flat tire when I’m driving then my dad, he taught me how to change the tire. If I get a flat tire and then because of my dad’s teaching, I can change the tire myself. Then I could say, “Thanks to my dad, I was able to change the tire.” I’m giving my dad credit for the good thing he did in teaching me.
Let’s review. Thank God and thank goodness are used when you are very happy and relieved that something bad didn’t happen. Then thanks to a person is used for when you want to give that person credit for a good thing he or she did.
I’m thankful / I’m grateful
You can also use the phrases, “I’m thankful” and “I’m grateful” to express thankfulness and gratitude in general. Use these phrases to express how happy you are for the good things in your life.
We usually use, “I’m thankful” and “I’m grateful” with the preposition for and then a noun. For example, “I’m thankful for my friends” or “I’m thankful for my family.” Let’s imagine that you got an opportunity to study in another country and you’re really happy. You could say, “I’m grateful for this opportunity.” These two phrases are used to express thankfulness and gratitude in general.
One final mistake to avoid, look at how we spell these words thankful and grateful. Don’t write two l’s – it’s only one l at the end of thankful and grateful, and don’t get the word grateful confused with the word great. We have the word great, it’s spelled G-R-E-A-T. The word grateful it’s pronounced very similarly but it’s spelled G-R-A-T-E-F-U-L.
Learn phrases for speaking English
Now you know a few different phrases for expressing relief, giving credit, and talking about gratitude in English. As you can see, these expressions are similar, but we use them in different ways.
You can learn a lot more phrases inside my Everyday English Speaking Courses. In these courses, you’ll learn what to say when shopping, traveling, eating at a restaurant, talking with other people, and in lots of other common situations.
Well, if you enjoyed this video please like it and share it with other English learners – and I’d love if you could leave a comment saying one thing that you are thankful for grateful for, to put these phrases into practice. Bye for now.
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