In English, we have the saying ‘everyone makes mistakes’, and it is a common saying for a reason: everyone does make mistakes. But, when it happens to you it sure doesn’t feel okay. The good news is, I can help you know how to apologize in English, without feeling too awkward.
You’ll learn exactly what to say and how to smooth things over so you can move forward.
Even better, by the end of this lesson you’ll know how to resolve mistakes gracefully and with confidence, both at work and in your daily life, with 4 simple steps.
Step 1: Admit the mistake.
It sounds easy, but this is something many people are uncomfortable with.
It takes a really mature person to own up or admit that they made a mistake. Hiding it or trying to cover it up frequently leads to trouble and as we say in English, it can come back to bite you! For the sake of your professional and social reputation, it’s much better to be honest and admit you’ve made a mistake.
Mistakes are so common that we have many words for them, and will be useful in admitting it. We often use the present perfect when it happened recently or the effects of the mistake are still being felt.
You can say:
We also say things such as:
Of course, we sometimes get emotional about making mistakes. So it is natural to say things to express those feelings.
You can include these together with admitting your mistake:
Step 2: It’s time to apologize.
You’ve recognized you made a mistake, admitted it and got some of those feelings out.
Now the mature thing to do is to apologize. Of course, you could say, “I’m sorry.” But we have many more options to apologize in English.
Plus, we often use stress to show we’re genuinely sorry with some key words. For example, you’ll want to stress words like "SO sorry" and "REALLY sorry".
Here are some of the best ways to apologize:
These are good ones to use at work:
Step 3: Explain what happened (briefly).
After apologizing, it is helpful to briefly explain what happened.
You don’t want your explanations to be too long and complicated or it will sound like you are just making excuses.
Keep it short and clear.
In a moment I’ll show you exactly how to do that by putting this all together but for now, here are some short explanations you can use:
Step 4: Say how you’ll resolve it.
You’ve admitted you made a mistake and apologized. The last thing left to do is let people know what you’re doing to fix the mistake.
It might be what you’re doing right now or what you plan to do in the future to avoid this happening again.
You could say something like:
