Grammar issues are quite common among students. Even in their native language, grammar issues can occur because a student might have come from a background where slang and colloquialisms are common. So, their understanding of the language is skewed and incorrect.
As such they make lots of grammar mistakes such as typos, incorrect word forms, and classic incorrect punctuation. These are just a few types of grammar errors. Today, we are going to check out the most common grammar errors that students make as well as how to avoid them later.
Common Grammar Errors and How to Avoid Them
Here are some common English grammar mistakes that students tend to make.
Subject and Verb Disagreement
Most sentences in the English language have a subject performing an action (the verb). Now English has the property of having singular and plural word forms. The grammatically correct form of English requires that the subject and verb agree on the singular or plural form.
Meaning that if the subject is in the plural, then the verb must be in the plural too. The same goes for the singular form. Subject and verb disagreement occurs when either the subject is plural, but the verb is singular or vice versa.
Here is an example:
“The cat on the table are sleeping”
Cat is the subject and is singular, but later in the sentence the singular cat is described as multiple with the use of “are”. This is incorrect, instead of “are” “is” should have been used as it is singular. To avoid this kind of error, students should focus on keeping track of the subject and verbs.
Incomplete Sentences
Incomplete sentences refer to sentences that have missing verbs or subjects. In other words, incomplete sentences are dependent clauses. As you may already know, dependent clauses always require an independent clause to provide context. Otherwise, they are just incomplete.
Incomplete sentences fail to convey any meaning to the reader. For a student that is problematic because that means their answers or essays would have glaring issues that will cost them precious marks.
Here is an example of an incomplete sentence.
“Because he was tired.”
Who was tired? What did he do because he was tired? We do not have this information, because this info is missing from this incomplete sentence.
The correct form should have been:
“Because he was tired, he went to bed/took a rest.”
As you can see the independent clause “went to bed” or “took a rest” provides the context for the incomplete sentence. The easiest way to avoid this is to ensure that every sentence has a subject and a verb.
Apostrophe Misuse
Apostrophe misuse is another common grammar mistake that students make often. An Apostrophe is a floating comma that is used to indicate possession of something by someone. For example, if we say “Brian’s car” then we are implying that the car is the possession of the subject Brian.
The confusion arises when students get confused between the plural form of a word and the apostrophe version because the utterance of both forms is the same. For example, the pronunciation for “Dogs” and “Dog’s” is the same.
Here is an example of a complete sentence in which this error is made.
“The dog's are barking loudly in the yard.”
Here the plural version is supposed to be used rather than the possessive version. So the correct form would be:
“The dogs are barking loudly in the yard.”
This is an error that can be avoided with experience, but for students, an easier way exists. They can rely on an online grammar checker or an AI homework helper to detect this error for them. Over time, students will automatically get better at recognizing this mistake and not need an online grammar checker.
Tense Shifts
Typically when writing anything, you have to stick to just one instance of time. So your writing could be in present tense, past tense, or future tense. However, a common mistake students make is that they shift tenses mid-sentence. Meaning that they start a sentence in the past tense and switch to the present tense somewhere in the middle.
Here is an example of this error.
“She was reading a book when the phone rings.”
The first part of the sentence is in the past tense, we know this from the use of the word “Was” which is used to depict the past. However, the verb “rings” is not the past version but rather the present. The correct form should have been “rang” which is also the past tense.
This mistake is common among students because of unfamiliarity with word forms. The best way to avoid it is to learn the word forms for each type of tense. The more word forms the student is familiar with, the better they will be at avoiding this error.
Comma Splices
Comma splices are a type of grammar error in which two or more independent clauses are joined together with a comma. That is incorrect because an independent clause can only be joined with a dependent clause by using a comma. In any situation where the independent clause is not paired with a dependent clause, it is concluded with a period/full stop, semi-colon, or conjunction.
Here is an example of a comma splice.
“He was tired so he went to bed, he also brushed his teeth.”
Both statements are independent clauses, so the comma is incorrect. The correct method to write these sentences is as follows:
“He was tired so he went to bed; he also brushed his teeth.”
Or
“He was tired so he went to bed. He also brushed his teeth.”
This is perhaps one of the most widespread grammar mistakes that students tend to make. The best to avoid this is to make a habit of writing simple sentences and avoid complex sentences. Another method of avoiding this issue is to use periods to end sentences rather than drag them on using commas and conjunctions. This has the added benefit of avoiding the confusion between using a comma, semi-colon, and conjunction.
Conclusion
So, those were five types of common grammar mistakes that students make. We learned about these mistakes using examples and we saw how to correct them. Finally, we shared tips to help students avoid these errors in the future. Those tips involved learning more about the specific grammar rules that help to avoid these mistakes as well as using some online tools. By applying these tips, you too will be able to avoid the grammar mistakes highlighted in this article.