10 Most Common Writing Mistakes In English: Why & How to Fix
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Teacher Mei
Here are my solutions for fixing common writing mistakes in English for ESL learners
The funny thing is, not only ESL learners make these common errors in writing but natives too! This reality highlights even more that learning English as a second language is tough. Are you struggling with common grammar mistakes in your writing as an ESL student? Don’t worry; you’re not alone, trust me!
I’ve seen countless students face this challenge. It’s tough enough learning new material in your field, let alone mastering a new language at the same time! This double whammy can affect your writing abilities and make following lectures and understanding the content covered tricky, leading to grammar errors and other typical English slip-ups in your writing.
Trust me, I get it. Writing essays and papers in a non-native language can feel overwhelming (I have gone through this!). But you know what? Hats off to you and everyone sticking with it! Your perseverance is truly admirable.
In this article, we’ll look into some of the most common writing mistakes in English. But don’t stress! We’ll also share some handy tips to help you fix these typical grammar errors and other common writing blunders.
10 Most Frequently Encountered Writing Mistakes in English Academic Writing by ESL Students - With Examples and Effective Solutions:
1. Misuse of articles
If you’re writing in English as a non-native, you might find it hard to understand the difference between indefinite and definite articles. This ranks among the most common mistakes in English academic writing.
Let me quickly give you an overview of these articles! We use indefinite articles like ‘a’ or ‘an’ when we refer to a noun without a specific identity (we don’t know this thing (noun) we are talking or writing about). In this case, we will use ‘a’ when the noun begins with a consonant sound and ‘an’ when it starts with a vowel sound. Take these examples: “a dog” or “an egg.” We do not know what dog or egg it is; it can be any dog or type of egg.
If you want a more in-depth analysis of these indefinite articles and learn when and how to use them, check out this post: difference-between-a-and-an.
Now let’s look at ‘the.’ It is the only definite article in English, so you don’t need to listen for any vowel or consonant sounds as we do with the two indefinite articles. We use ʻtheʻ before nouns and adjectives, whether singular or plural, to talk or write about something both the writer and reader know.
Take ‘a duck’ for example—it’s just some random duck; we do not know who this duck is. But when you say ‘the duck’, you’re pointing to a specific duck you and the person you’re talking or writing to both recognize.
Look at another example: if you say, “I need to see a dentist!” You mean you want to see any available dentist, not a specific dentist. On the other hand, “I need to see the dentist!” means you’re looking for a specific dentist, not just anyone.
I hope you understand these differences between definite and indefinite articles better now; it will help you avoid some common article-related errors in your English writing.
2. Overusing transitional phrases
I have been guilty of doing this! Overusing transition words is a common mistake in English writing in academic papers. Often, you don’t need a transitional word to connect two related sentences.
Take this example: “The lumberjacks cut the tree. As a result, it fell.”
Here, adding “as a result” isn’t needed or necessary because readers can figure out on their own that the tree fell because the lumberjacks cut it.
Check out another example of using too many transition words:
“During the summer holidays, we went to my uncle’s farm. Therefore, I wanted to bring a gift. However, I wasn’t sure what to buy. At the same time, we didn’t have time to go shopping, so I went without a gift.”
This is the corrected version:
“During the summer holidays, we went to my uncle’s farm. I wanted to bring a gift. However, I wasn’t sure what to buy. We didn’t have time to go shopping, so I went without a gift.”
Look at how the writing becomes clearer and easier to follow when we remove the transition words “therefore” and “at the same time” because we don’t need them! The writing makes perfect sense without them.
Getting rid of these unnecessary words will help you avoid this common usage error in writing. It will make your writing more to the point and improve the overall flow, making it more captivating for your readers.
3. Watch your order of adjectives
If you’re struggling with using multiple adjectives to describe a noun, don’t worry! It can be tricky, but there’s a specific order of placing adjectives you can follow to avoid this mistake in speech or writing. The order goes like this:
- Quantity (e.g., two, five, some, many, few)
- Quality/opinion (e.g., good, bad, tasty, boring, funny)
- Size (e.g., small, big, long, tiny, narrow)
- Age (e.g., new, old, young, mature, ancient)
- Physical quality/shape (e.g., smooth, square, triangular)
- Color/shade (e.g., blue, green, red, yellow)
- Origin/nationality (e.g., French, American, Victorian)
- Material (e.g., cotton, plastic, metal, leather)
- Qualifier/purpose (e.g., sleeping: “sleeping bag”, running: “running shoes”, pickup: “pickup truck”)
To make it easier, think of it as a checklist. Start with ʻhow manyʻ (quantity), then ʻwhat you thinkʻ about it (opinion), followed by its ʻsizeʻ, and so on. This way, you can create a clear and vivid image in the reader’s mind.
For example, if you want to say, “He wants a red new bike,” it might sound a little off. That’s because “new” (4. age) should come before “red” (6. color). So if you switch it to “He wants a new red bike,” it sounds much better! So as you can see, if you mix up the order, it can sound awkward and confusing.
More examples of the order of adjectives in sentences:
- They discovered two beautiful, tiny, yellow Canadian birds at the park in London.
- I love those five big, old-black dogs that live across the street.
- I bought an expensive, large blue-cotton sleeping bag for my camping trip coming up.
So all you have to do is follow the specific order in which adjectives should appear before a noun, and you will avoid making this common mistake in English writing.
4. Wordiness
Long-winded writing, as some of us call it, is another common mistake ESL writers often make in English. Have you ever heard the saying “less is more?” Well, this is a good example of that expression. It’s important to be clear and brief when forming sentences, especially in essay writing.
Using too many unnecessary words can hide your ideas. Take this sentence: “Mary believed, but could not confirm, that James had feelings of affection for her.” This sentence can be simplified to “Mary assumed James liked her,” which gets the same point across; in other words, the meaning stays the same but in a more straightforward/direct way.
If I read an essay with too many words, I lose interest and become bored, as it takes me forever to figure out what message the writer is trying to get out!
Here’s another example: “Because of his laziness, John received a written warning.” This sentence would become clearer as “John received a written warning for laziness.”
If you want to write a good, solid essay, be careful of using too many words in one sentence because this will distract the reader from the argument you are trying to make. Concentrate on creating clear and precise sentences that will get your point across sooner rather than later!
If you can shorten a sentence without losing meaning, then you know the sentence is too wordy. Please follow this approach to avoid making this common mistake in writing.
5. Plural possessives
Many people struggle to understand plural possessives, whether they’re learning English or grew up speaking it. You need to use the right placement of the apostrophe when you want to show that something belongs to more than one person or thing, or if that something belongs to only one person or thing.
Let’s look at a situation where something belongs to multiple people or things: Take “the dogs’ collars are all red” as an example. It tells us that several dogs have a red collar (not just one dog). This tiny detail can change how easy your writing is to understand. So as we can see here, to show ownership of a plural noun, you should put an apostrophe after the last “s.”
Now let’s look at a situation where something belongs to only one person or thing: If you write “the dog’s collar is red,” it says that only one dog has a red collar. In this case, we add the apostrophe before the letter “s.”
These simple rules can help you avoid apostrophe errors in your English writing.
6. Using a thesaurus incorrectly
A thesaurus can be useful if you want to spice up your writing and add some variety. But there’s a catch! Many ESL students who use a thesaurus don’t always know exactly what the meaning of the original word is. This unfortunately leads them to pick a homonym for that original word that means something entirely different. Homonyms are words that look and sound the same but have different meanings.
Let’s check out an example:
“Dates, when eaten in excess, can make you gain weight because they are high in calories.”
Now let’s use a thesaurus to find a fancier word for “dates”:
“Appointments, when eaten in excess, can make you gain weight because they are high in calories.” This does not make any sense!
So we can see here that “dates” got mistakenly replaced with “appointments.” This mix-up completely changes what the sentence means. In this case, “dates” is the right word to use.
So, it’s important to know what a word means before you swap it out, or you might end up saying something you didn’t mean to and cause a lot of confusion.
Let’s check out some more examples:
“A tear ran down her cheek when she said goodbye.”
Wrong swap/incorrect replacement: “A rip ran down her cheek when she said goodbye.”
“She gave me the wrong directions. When she said I had to turn left, I was supposed to turn right.”
Wrong swap/incorrect replacement: “She gave me the wrong directions. When she said I had to turn left, I was supposed to turn correctly.” This one makes me laugh; I’m not sure why—maybe just because it sounds so silly!
So now, to avoid these mistakes, it’s a good idea to look up the meaning of the word you want to replace by using a dictionary before picking new words from a thesaurus. This will help you ensure you’re using the newly chosen word correctly and getting your point across clearly.
7. Coordinating conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions are words like “and,” “but,” “if,” and “or” that we often use to join two ideas together into one sentence.
But when a sentence has too many conjunctions, it’s better to split it into two, three, or four separate sentences for clarity and to avoid run-on sentences. If you find yourself using too many coordinating conjunctions in a sentence, take a look at the sentence structure and see where you can make it simpler.
8. Relative clauses - Which/that
If you’re learning English as a second language, you might struggle with using “which” (for non-restrictive relative clauses) and “that” (for restrictive relative clauses).
Here’s the deal: We use ‘That’ when the information added is needed to understand the main point of a sentence.
For example: “All the cars that we rented were stolen.” The phrase “that we rented” is restrictive because it tells us we’re talking about the rented cars, not any other cars. We call this a “restrictive” clause because you can’t take it out without changing what the sentence means.
Now, ‘which’ comes into play when the extra info is not essential to the main point.
Look at this sentence: “The cupcake, which was delicious, was blue.” The “which” part lets us know that the cupcake was delicious, but it’s not vital to the main point that it was blue. You could remove the part, “which was delicious,” without changing the main point of the sentence, as in “The cupcake was blue.”
It’s also good to remember that we put commas to split the “which” part from the main part of the sentence to show that it is additional information. For example: “I spent months living in infested buildings, which wasn’t much fun.”
To determine whether “that” or “which” fits better in a sentence, you need to ask yourself if the clause is essential to the meaning or the main point of the sentence.
If taking it out would change the sentence’s meaning, you should use the restrictive relative clause “that.” But if removing the clause doesn’t affect the basic point of the sentence, we use the non-restrictive relative clause “which” and add commas to separate the clause.
9. Not making definitive statements
ESL writers often shy away from strong statements. This could be because they want to stay objective or lack confidence in their English writing abilities.
But don’t be afraid to make definitive claims. You should know that direct statements can make your writing clearer and more concise. When you use definitive statements, your sentences are usually shorter and more straightforward.
How do we do this? Make positive, specific statements that don’t leave any wiggle room for doubt. Wishy-washy (uncertain) phrases like “might seem possible” can make readers think you haven’t fully thought through your argument.
If you want to make bold statements, it is a good idea to do thorough research on the subject and wrestle with the problem at hand. To create a solid argument, it is important to dig into the facts, form well-informed opinions, and express them confidently.
To pull this off, avoid using words like “may,” “might,” “could,” “would,” and “seem,” as well as their adverbial counterparts “possibly” and “probably.” Instead, aim to present your opinion in clear, confident terms backed by cold, hard facts. Stick to these tips, and you’ll end up with a paper that’s to the point, persuasive, and packs a real punch!
10. Failing to proofread
A common writing mistake is not checking your work for errors. It’s tempting to skip proofreading after spending all that time writing. I’m guilty of this!
However, taking time to look over your work can help you spot mistakes and make your writing better. Get into the habit of reading your work at least once before you turn it in. Check for spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and awkward phrasing.
You can also ask a friend or teacher to review your work, as a fresh set of eyes often catches things you might have missed.
Feel free to share your thoughts on common writing mistakes in English using the comment box below.
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