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Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to ask Alicia the Weekly Siri's where you ask me questions and I answer them.

He first question this week comes from Alexander.

Hi, Alexander, Alexander says, Hi, Alicia, What's the difference between error and mistake?

Are these words interchangeable?

Mistake Sounds like something a human did.

Error Sounds like something a machine did.

That's the basic difference.

Here.

They have the same meaning, like something made a mistake or something had an error.

We use those two expressions to mean roughly the same thing, but the feeling is a little different.

You'll also notice that the verbs I used with those expressions were different.

When it's a human, we say I made a mistake or in present, tense to make a mistake.

When we use error, we used the expression to have an error, as in, my computer had an error.

So these air some small differences in how we use thes as verbs.

Ah, but in general the difference is that mistake is applied more to humans, and error is applied more to computers and machines and so on.

You may also here in certain situations where a person made a big mistake at, like, company and it had a really, really bad effect.

You might hear the company maybe write an official statement like, we deeply apologize for the error, something like that, which kind of removes the human feeling from the situation.

So I can't say whether that's good or not to D'oh!

But you may sometimes here cos do that sort of thing in official statements where they need to make an apology.

So in some, they have the same meaning, but just missed a kiss for humans.

Error is four machines.

I hope that this helps you.

Thanks for the question.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question.

It comes from Eliana.

Hello, Iliana, Iliana says.

Should I say Have you received my message, or did you receive my message?

I think you may hear both, but in American English, we would probably use Did you receive my message?

Did you receive my message?

It's a simple question.

A simple yes or no question about a one time action that happened in the past.

So did you receive my message?

You may hear, Have you received my message?

But I feel that that's probably less common than did you receive my message?

It's just a simple yes or no question.

So I would probably use.

Did you receive my message or to make it even more natural?

I would probably say, Did you get my message received?

Sounds a little bit more polite.

In most cases, I would say, Did you get my message?

Did you get my message?

Or if it's a text message, I would say, Did you see my message?

Did you see my message?

Cases where I might use the have pattern are in, like correspondence sharing situations, like if a colleague is sending a group of people some information and I want to ask if they have seen the information, have checked everything I might say.

Have you seen his message or have you seen her message?

That's a situation where I might use the half pattern as opposed to the did pattern.

There's a bit of flexibility there, so it kind of depends a little bit on the situation.

But if you just want to quickly confirm If you just want to quickly check, I would suggest using the simple past form.

Did you see my message?

That sounds very natural, So I hope that this helps answer your question.

Thanks very much.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question comes from Mohammed J T.

Hello, Mohammed Mohammed says.

What is the difference between resign and re sign?

Also, compliment and compliment.

Great.

So spelling is very important for this one, especially for the second question.

Complement.

The 1st 1 is spelled with an I and Compliment.

The 2nd 1 is spelled with an E.

Let's talk about the difference between resign and re sign first.

So to resign means to quit as in, to quit a job or to quit and official position to re sign something.

The hyphen is important here to resign, something means to sign something again.

So the prefix re R E means to do something again or just again.

So we see this as in redo or, like reheat for when we're using a microwave or when we're using a computer.

So to re sign means to assign something again.

Some examples.

He resigned his manager, the CEO resigned yesterday.

Can you please resign your contract?

There was a mistake in the previous version.

We need to resign our paperwork.

There were some changes, so I mentioned this hyphen in the 2nd 1 here.

So this hyphen between the R E and the sign helps prevent confusion between resign and re sign.

So you don't see this kind of hyphenation in the other words that I mentioned, like redo, for example, because there's not another word to confuse it with, but in this case, resign and re sign look very similar.

So we use that hyphenated version to mean re sign to sign something again.

Let's continue on to compliment and compliment, which sound extremely similar in speech.

Compliment with an eye can be used as a noun and a verb, and it means to say something nice.

So, for example, your shirt looks nice, is a compliment as a noun to use it as a verb, I could say my coworker complimented my shirt.

So to compliment with an I is to say something nice.

Compliment with an E, however, means to improve something or to enhance something.

So it's something that goes well with something else.

or something that completes something else.

For example, maple syrup is an excellent compliment to pancakes, so that's used as a noun there or to use it as a verb.

I think that maple syrup compliments pancakes wonderfully so we can use that as a noun or a verb.

But please keep in mind this spelling difference between these words.

Say something nice I to enhance or improve or complete something.

E.

So I hope that this helps you understand the differences between these words.

Thanks very much for the question.

Okay, let's move on to your next question.

Next question comes from O C A T n.

I hope I said that, right?

Heigh ho seh seh says, Hi, Alicia.

When do I definitely know that I am at the advanced level?

Well, I would suggest you first consider what advanced means to you.

So to me, at an advanced level, I think a person should be able to give a business presentation or to be able to write a research paper or to be able to participate in a business meeting as a key person.

So those are things that I think require an advanced level of linguistic capability to do so.

You should ask yourself, Can I do those things?

So once you can determine the things that you think are advanced skills, think about Can I do those things in English?

Can I do those things in my target language?

If the answer is yes, cool, then you're advanced in terms of your judgment for what is advanced.

If your answer is no, then you're not advanced.

So I would suggest if you're having a little trouble determining your level, Maybe think about the things that you would like to be able to dio and ask yourself, Can I do those things?

And if the answer is no, then focus your studies on those things that you answered no to.

If the answer is yes, cool, you can do those things.

You can study something else.

So maybe begin by thinking about the kinds of things that you consider advanced.

I don't necessarily think knowing like 3000 vocabulary words equals advanced, like maybe you know, lots of vocabulary words, which is great, but that's different from like communication skills are like the ability to put all of your ideas together in a research paper.

So think about those sorts of advanced level things and ask yourself, Can I do this or not?

Hopefully asking yourself these questions of Can I do this or not will help you to be able to at any time understand your level and the next thing that you need to be able to do.

So I hope that this helps you.

Thanks very much for the question.

Okay, let's move on to the next question for this week.

Next question comes from Newman.

Hello, Newman, Newman says.

When talking to teachers, Do we say teacher, Miss or mister?

Ah, yeah, good question.

When you're talking with your instructor is, at least in American English, we do not use teacher.

We don't use that as a title for our teachers.

If you are talking to a high school level instructor or below.

In most cases, we use Mr for male teachers.

We use Mrs for married female teachers, and we use Miss or Mrs for unmarried female teachers or for female teachers that we don't know their marital status, so we don't know if she is married or not.

That's usually the guideline we used for instructors at high school level or lower.

If you are talking about a college, a university level instructor, sometimes they ask you to call them professor.

If they have a PhD, they may prefer to be called doctor.

Some people prefer to just be called Mister or Miss, as we talked about earlier.

Some people prefer you just used their first name, so it's actually very common for instructors to tell their students.

Please call me so it.

So, for example, in my lessons, I always want students to just call me Alicia because it's important to me Toe have a friendly and conversational feel, so I don't want my students to ever feel like I'm above them and they're below me somehow that's not good.

So it should be a friendly and open communication setting.

So I prefer to use first names in my class, so that's my style.

But each teacher has their own preferences, and usually they'll tell their students.

If you're ever not sure, just go with Mr or Miss or Missus.

That's a pretty good guidelines to follow.

The only time we might use Teacher is in like a very, very like specific setting.

It's like for a little kid who doesn't yet know the name of his or her teacher.

They might just a teacher teacher like before they know the teacher's name.

That's maybe the Onley situation.

I can think of where we use teacher as a title.

So once you're old enough to learn people's names, it's best to use those so help that this helps you.

Thanks very much for the question.

Okay, that is everything that I have for this week.

Thank you.

As always for sending your questions.

Remember, you can send them to me in English class 11 dot com slash ask hyphen Alicia.

Of course, If you like this week's lesson, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up.

Subscribe to our channel if you haven't already, and check us out in English class 121 dot com for some other things that can help you with your English studies.

Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alicia and I Will See you again next week.

Bye bye.

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