Common mistake

"I must submit this report until next month."
This is a common mistake only among the Japanese. Of course "until" has to be "by". I was once asked by a native English teacher why almost all the Japanese English learners make this particular mistake. At first i could not get why he asked such an obvious question. But I understood. Both "by" and "until" happens to be translated into Japanese as 「まで」. To be precise, "by" is 「までに」, but it is confusing enough. It is not obvious enough to an American.
As long as you think in Japanese and then put it into English you cannot avoid this type of mistake.
I just thought of another example that I find hard to teach. It is "substitute" and "replace". Both are translated as 「置き換える」. "we are going to substitute coal for oil." is roughly equal to " We are going to replace oil with coal." Very confusing. "Coal" and "oil" are the other way around in the two sentences. The confusion only occurs through Japanese-English translation process.
When I say "we are going to substitute coal for oil.", I feel like saying "We are going to use coal instead of oil." For me "substitute" may be kind of "use" followed by "for" which means "instead of". So I never confuse these two. In English these two are different words as you can see. We know. But when using them, our Japanese interferes and mix them up.
There are mistakes unique to each country I guess. We can get over the problem only by getting used to the language we are learning. It takes time.