Become a Better Writer by Fixing the Most Common Grammatical Errors
Whether you are a native English speaker or not, knowing how to improve your English writing skills can make a difference between advancing and stagnating in your business endeavor. Besides that, learning how to improve your English skills has an immense benefit for your small online business—with better writing, more online exposure, and more clients will come.
In previous articles, we discussed some of the most common grammatical errors and how to fix them. We’ve even discussed how to improve your English writing skills with the right grammatical knowledge and made some book recommendations for you.
In this piece on how to improve your English writing skills, we will dive deeper into the quest of mastering the English language. We will go through the most common grammatical errors presented by learner Corpora—large, computerized databases of real-world essays, articles, and manuscripts that have been systematically analyzed.
After reading this article, you will be more aware of the most common grammatical errors. Moreover, you will know how to improve your English writing skills and become a better writer.
The Two Categories of Errors Made by Learners and English Speakers
Since we are using Learner Corpora to determine what the most common grammatical errors are and how to improve your English writing skills, we must differentiate between errors made by English learners and errors made by native speakers.
Not all English grammatical errors are equal. If you are not a native speaker, you will most likely be interested in English grammar errors made by non-natives. Regardless of whether you are a native or not, you will most likely be interested in studying and understanding the errors made by natives for academic reasons or simply because you want to conquer this language.
If you are interested in technology, learning apps are great tools for improving your English writing skills. Check out our article on the best app for learning languages to learn how to improve your English writing skills on such an app.
The Errors Made by Non-Native Speakers
In this part of the article, you will learn how learner corpora can tell you more about your patterns of errors and how to improve your English writing skills in the most efficient way possible.
In studies analyzing large-scale written samples from English as a Foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESL), errors are systematic. They generally relate to structural elements that don’t exist or work differently in the writer’s native language. This should tell us something clear: detect the patterns that you always make, and you will surely understand better how to improve your English writing skills.
What are the most common English grammatical errors according to corpora-style research?
Article and determiner misuse.
Yes, these little linguistic elements are often misused by those who are learning the language, as well as by those who have been speaking and writing in English for years.
You may read something like
“He is fluent in the English,” instead of “He is fluent in English.”
“Without vaccination, death caused by in the Iran will be high,” instead of “Without vaccination, death caused by in Iran will be high.”
It’s important to be aware of these, given that they make up over 20% of grammatical errors made by non-native English speakers. The issue is that articles and determiners are used differently in different languages. When a non-native speaker translates a sentence, an article may be misused, or a determiner dropped. That’s why it is important to form the habit of thinking in English.
Verb tenses and aspect errors.
A grave grammatical error that many non-natives make is to use the wrong verb tense or shift from one tense to another. This error is also pervasive, given that it accounts for a quarter of the errors made by non-native speakers in learner-corpus research.
As with determiners and articles, these grammatical errors are mostly due to translation issues faced by non-native speakers. Besides that, English has too many tenses.
For many English learners, to grasp the different usages of the past simple and the present perfect may take time simply because in their languages of origin, there are no such distinctions. This should tell you that if you want to learn how to improve your English writing skills, you do need to have a firm grasp of the language’s grammar.
Subject-verb agreement.
This error accounts for 12% of errors, according to research. While some simple agreements can be complicated, many times, the errors are caused by the words between the subject and the verb.
“Neither the man nor the woman want to go out.”
Here, we are dealing with a subject-verb disagreement. Despite its construction, the subject is singular, so it needs to take the singular form of the verb.
Thus, it should be
“Neither the man nor the woman wants to go out.”
This error stems from grammatical ignorance. However, the following example differs.
“The man not wanting to sit on any of the chairs deserve to be admired.”
Here, the error most likely comes from a lack of attention. The person who wrote the sentence simply forgot, given the long string of words, that “The man” is the subject of the sentence, not “chairs.”
However, this shows that paying attention to words and sentences is as important as understanding grammar. If you want to know how to improve your English writing skills, it is important to always improve your focus.
Preposition misuse.
Surprisingly, not so many people sin by using the wrong prepositions. Only ten percent of the errors found in the research consisted of using the wrong prepositions. This also has to do with translation issues. Prepositions are those small linguistic entities that show a relation between two other parts of speech. Given their abstractness, they can be misused easily.
Quite a few people write, “He is not in home.” This, of course, is a misuse. Instead, it should be, “He is not at home.” Such small, but meaningful errors often appear in pieces of text written by non-native English speakers. Unfortunately, prepositions don’t follow strict rules, but they must be memorized by the speaker. This shows us that focus and close attention are virtues that need to be nurtured if you want to learn how to improve your English writing skills as a non-native speaker.
Writing full sentences and forgetting to pause.
A worrying discovery in research about the most common grammatical errors made by non-native speakers is that many of them don’t punctuate sentences correctly or don’t even finish them.
These are known as run-on sentences. They are punctuated like a normal sentence, but, upon a much clearer analysis, we can notice that something is wrong.
“My mother phoned me last night now, I am thinking about what she said.”
If you read this sentence quickly, you may make sense of it. However, on a closer inspection, you should notice that a major punctuation mark should have been placed after “last night.”
“My mother phoned me last night; now, I am thinking about what she said.”
Or
“My mother phoned me last night. Now, I am thinking about what she said.”
The other type of error is sentence fragmenting.
“If he only were here.”
This does not make sense in English as a stand-alone sentence. Of course, you may understand the meaning of this “sentence.” However, grammatically, this is not a sentence per se.
Avoiding such issues requires you to understand the grammar, as well as how punctuation works. By understanding the mechanics of the English language, you learn how to improve your English writing skills.
Formal & Academic Writing Errors
Besides the grammatical errors discussed above, some errors are often made by native speakers. These represent complex issues, and they should concern you if you are studying at a university, working in an English-speaking environment, or simply striving toward mastery of the language. Understanding these common advanced errors will help you learn how to improve your English writing skills.
Colloquialisms
We can refer to it as the curse of speaking too informally. This was flagged as the most common formal error, appearing in 76.1% of the analyzed manuscripts. Of course, this error was mostly found in academic papers. This shows us that understanding when and how to use the language is an integral part of learning how to improve your English writing skills. This means one thing: to improve your English overall, you must always read more. You must become used to different registers of the language, and you must know when a word or phrase is too formal or too informal for a specific context. This is how you improve your English writing skills.
Pronoun ambiguity
While this type of error could have been easily placed in the first category, many advanced users and native speakers of English make use of the wrong pronouns.
For example, someone may write
“Everyone in the office must bring their own laptop.”
You may say that there’s nothing wrong with the sentence. In fact, you understand it perfectly. This wouldn’t be a surprise. Your intuition may fairly grasp its meaning. However, there is an issue present.
Words like “everyone” or “each” are singular, but “their” is plural. There is a disagreement between the two pronouns found in the sentence.
A better version of the sentence would be
“Everyone in the office must bring his or her (or their) own laptop.”
Dangling modifiers
Lastly, we should discuss dangling modifiers as a common grammatical error that you should be aware of if you want to improve your English writing skills.
Many times, even native speakers are unaware of how we place words in a sentence and how that placement may affect communication. This is an error that many ignore, but you, if you truly want to improve your English writing skills, must become aware of it.
“Reviewing the job description, my previous experience aligns perfectly with your needs.”
“Designed with premium leather, our customers love the durability of this briefcase.”
“Having lost the client files, no work could be completed on the account yesterday.”
At first glance, all these sentences make perfect sense. You may not have anything to argue against while reading them. The grammar is perfect, and the message is clear. However, a grammatical rule requires that a phrase be as close as possible to the phrase that it modifies. Following this rule, we can conclude that
> My previous experience was reviewing the job description.
> Our customer was designed with premium leather.
> The work lost the client files.
Of course, such conclusions are absurd and funny, but they highlight the issues with dangling modifiers.
Many academics and journalists make this error from the English-speaking world, and it’s an error that you should fix if you want to improve your English writing skills.
How to Improve Your English Writing Skills
The answer to this question is simple: practice, awareness, and repetition. You need to read a lot in English, be aware of various grammatical errors (as the ones discussed today), and write constantly. Do not forget that repetition is the essence of improvement.
If you found this article helpful, we recommend you read our article on how to become a better freelance writer. A skill like writing should be put to good use, and how do you go about it if not by starting your own freelance writing or copywriting business?
