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Some of the most common grammar mistakes are pronoun errors. They occur when pronouns do not agree in number with the nouns to which they refer. If the noun is singular, the pronoun must be singular. If the noun is plural, the pronoun must be plural as well.

For example:

Incorrect: “Every girl must bring their own lunch.”

Correct: “Every girl must bring her own lunch.”

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Punctuation mistakes can drastically alter the intended message. For example, in the cartoon above, the omission of a simple dash changes the statement to mean that the song was written the day before rather than the famous song called "Yesterday".

Give the students an exercise that provides pairs of the same sentence punctuated differently. Each sentence must be matched with its meaning. To make the work more interesting, humorous examples can be used such as "Let's eat, Grandma," vs. "Let's eat Grandma." This can be followed up with a provided letter that must be punctuated correctly.

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we need to Bear in mind the importance to establish a good rapport with our students and never forget that learning is a process.

Students are working in pairs, while walking around the class the teacher takes down notes on different pieces of papers noting down some errors. Once they finish, she/he will hand out the papers and ask students to read and find if there are any errors. If so, they must correct them and try to say why they are wrong.  hence, will help students to develop their critical thinking skills.  they will feel more involved with the class, they will also feel more independent.  and ofcourse the feeling of co-operation will be greater.

It is important to take into account that a student receiving good feedback will feel motivated and will keep on working, while a student receiving poor feedback will feel the opposite. Furthermore, we need to correct students in order not to destroy their confidence and encourage them not to give up.

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I have an year-4-student at primary school who tends to ask the question this way instead of asking "Can YOU repeat, please?". At first, I just used motherese after listening to him but then I started analysing why he had this fossilised mistake. I came to a conclusion so I resorted (using the Grammar Translation Method) to contrastive analysis between English and Spanish and I explained this to him:
- In Spanish, we can omit the person when talking, and you can say, for instance "podés repetir, por favor?" not including the "vos/tu". But English is different because we need the person in the sentence. The thing is that sometimes it is confusing because you think in Spanish and you translate it into English, but let's practise it! :)
(Of course I did not use the technical terms with him; the fact that there is little pro in Spanish but there is BIG pro in English, and also that thinking in your L1 and translating that into your L2 is called transfer... that would have made matters worse 😂)

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To begin with, sometimes students get confused about when to use Who or Whom —even native speakers get confused with this—, and it’s important for them to know the difference. In order to correct this, I would explain the difference between the use of these words, the rules, how to use them, provide them several examples and correct sentences together in the classroom.

The grammar rule is to use “who” when providing extra information about the subject of the sentence, when you are talking about the subject of the verb. Also, we use “who” with subject pronouns like “I”, “She”, “He”, “We” and so on.

On the other hand, “whom” is used when providing extra information about the object in the sentence, when you are talking about the object of the verb (and after prepositions). In this case, we use “whom” with object pronouns such as “Him”, “Her”, “Us” and so on.

Examples with WHO:

Who took my phone? (Who is the subject of the verb “took”).

Angelina is the one who lied! (Who is the subject of the verb “lied”).

Examples with WHOM:

Whom should I help? (Whom is the object of the verb “help”).

To whom should I address the letter? (Whom is used after prepositions).

*In addition, we generally use “whom” only with prepositions, in expressions such as “some of whom”, “most of whom” and in expressions like “To whom it may concern” (in a letter of reference).

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 giving feedback on an oral presentation

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 giving feedback on an oral presentation

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We know that for most students Speaking in front of the class is intimidating, especially if they are shy. Correcting them in front of all their classmates can lower their self-esteem, thus making the student not want to speak in class again.

I think we should provide a delayed error correction slot when the learners have finished, writing down some of the learners ’utterances on the whiteboard and then getting them to try to correct them. will be a good way of giving them a willingness to make and learn from their mistakes.

In my opinion it is very important not to interrupt while they speak to make corrections in this way we will help them to realize how the English speech flows naturally. Show them that they can have a real conversation.

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The use of prepositions in English is easy to confuse, especially when they have similar expressions to the learners' L1.

We can detect errors related to phrasal verbs, or when English learners translate directly from their first language, and a third common mistake related to prepositions is the form of the verb following a preposition.

I would correct them together with the students, checking the use of each preposition and when to apply it again. I would provide different examples with several answer options, where students participate by indicating which preposition is correct and then ask them to form sentences using the prepositions left out.

I would also explain the difference in translating them into L1, and as homework to revise in the next class I would give them exercises with sentences where there are prepositions that do not correspond, for the students to correct.

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A very common mistake is the use of final "–s/–es" in verbs when it comes to talking about present simple. Students forget or confuse its use. In most cases, students use the correct form of the verb when they see the pronoun She/He/It explicit in the sentence.

e.g. She teaches English at school. (teach)

From my point of view, this might happen because students focus their attention on the chart we provide when we present the first view of this tense.
__________________________

Affirmative Sentences

I live
You live
He lives
She lives
It lives
We live
You live
They live

____________________________

However, when the pronouns are replaced with an alternative, students tend to forget the subject-verb agreement they need to use in this tense.

Emma sing(s) in the shower every week. (sing)

One possibility for this to happen is that students are focus on the chart we present, especially in the combination between pronoun and verb. So, it’s easy for them to look for these specific pronouns (she/he/it) to check if they have to change the verb in the correct form for present simple and in doing so they overlook names and noun phrases which represent a third person pronoun.

Regarding correction, two things could happen. One, if the student is working on an exercise that is related to tense, we must correct the mistake. However, we could try to involve another student and encourage them to figure out which is the mistake and try to correct it. Also, once they achieved that, we can provide a couple of sentences where the students can recognize how the subject-verb agreement in present simple works. Two, if the mistake is produced verbally, we could try some of the gestures techniques to students realize that there is a mistake and help her/him to figure out which is.

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Spanish learners of English often use this combination of words, especially in spoken language. This error is a clear instance of language interference/language transfer from our L1.

◾In Spanish, the verb esperar can take a person (In this case in the form of a proclitic) as its direct object, and it does not require a preposition.
A Spanish native speaker would normally say “esperame [un minuto]”, so it’s only natural for this to happen.

◾ In English, the verb wait could be either transitive or intransitive.

Meaning: to stay where you are or delay doing something until somebody/something comes or something happens.

✔ The V must be followed by the preposition ‘for’ when what we want to express is the action of waiting for somebody/something:  Wait for me!

❗ Notice that it’s also possible to say “Wait a minute”, yet this is a fixed expression used for getting someone's attention, or when you suddenly think of something important: Wait a minute - I've just had an idea.

Something similar happens with the verb explain. Spanish speakers tend to follow the same pattern that their L1’s grammar establishes when they utter something such as “explain me”. The verb explicar can also take a person (proclitic) as an object (explicame), yet in English, the pattern we must adjust to is the following:

Explain sth. to someone: Explain it/that to me.

Every time I encounter myself detecting this error, I resort to an explanation based on contrastive analysis. First, I usually ask my students to repeat the phrase in our L1 and write their answers on the board. Then, I try to elicit the structure from them by asking them to brainstorm alternatives to the original sentence.

Finally, I provide them with the English equivalent, explain what a transfer is, and remind them that even though translating directly from our L1 might sometimes work, it leads to errors more often than not.

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"He went to the store and he went back home."

The student is not providing a reference when using "he" so naturally we do not know who "he" is. A better sentence or statement would be: "My husband, Tony, went to the store, and then he returned." When using sentence like this, is important for students to understand the use of anaphoric and cataphoric references.

One exercise to correct these errors is a reading in which the student underlines all the pronouns and then links them to their referents.

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ERROR: some advices
COREECTION: Some advice / some pieces of advice

ERROR: some informations
CORRECTION: some information / some pieces of information

As I said in the previous example, I would share examples of common errors in a DRIVE for them to identify and correct, or as a warm-up activity, I would copy on the board sentences with errors from different students and ask them randomly to identify at least one error in each of them and the suggested correction. Then I would ask the others if they agree and if they are OK, we would move on to the next one.... If it was still wrong, I would guide them until they spotted it and I was satisfied that everyone understood it.

In these examples, the mistakes made were to put in plural uncountable words like "ADVICE", "INFORMATION" which do not have plural and which are usually preceded by "SOME" or "SOME PIECES OF".

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I believe that students have to be actively involved in the process of dealing with errors.Perhaps to avoid embarrassment for some of them, I would do an exercise based on mixed sentences with mistakes from all students in a shared document where they would have to choose two each, find mistakes, say what kind of mistakes they are and correct them.

In my opinion, this is a good way of identifying mistakes and not making them again.

In this example, they would have to clarify that the verb in the phrasal verb was used wrongly as "GOING" should have been used instead of "GETTING", meaning raising, and "ARE" instead of "IS" as "PEOPLE" is a plural word.

In the case of students not correcting properly, the teacher should do so, as well as explaining it orally to make sure that everyone understands.

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Dangling modifiers- Lourdes de Figueiredo 

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Dangling modifiers- Lourdes de Figueiredo 

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Sometimes, people tend to write their pieces of writing making use of dangling modifiers, which are words or phrases that modify a previous sentence.
Dangling modifiers are not severe errors, but the problem arises when the reader isn't sure the exact object the used modifier is trying to modify. And that's the very moment when the reader gets stuck in that line, not knowing what the writer is referring to.

HOW TO MEND THIS MISTAKE: If a writer finds a dangling modifier
in his/her writing, there are a few ways to fix it in order to restore the meaning of the sentence:
1) Insert a new subject on the sentence. The main problem with the dangling modifier is that the sentence subject does not exist.
2) Insert a subject in the introductory clause.
3) Rearrange the sentence. e.g.:
❌  This is why I don't go to concerts; I easily get tired.
✔ I don't go to concerts because I easily get tired.

How I would handle it in the classroom: Although this kind of mistake can affect the readability of a text, I'd calm down my students by telling them even native speakers commonly commit it. Moreover, I'd re-explain how to fix this mistake, to finally suggest them to reread their productions twice or trice next time!

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This is a typical case of false friends, which are English words that look similar to other words in Spanish, but they differ significantly in meaning.

For instance, “embarrassed” and “embarazada” sound very similar in English and Spanish. However, their meaning is completely different. To be “embarrassed” is to feel ashamed or self-conscious about something, whereas “embarazada” in Spanish means that the person is pregnant.

I would correct this mistake, mainly because it may lead to a communication or interpretation problem, so it is important to avoid it.

I would probably correct it using humor but not trying to make the student feel bad or ashamed. I’d make a comment or gesture to check if what they meant by “embarrassed” is having a baby or something else. Then, I would come up with a situational example in which this misinterpretation could happen and the possible consequences. I’d treat it as a light error that is also important to foresee to avoid misunderstandings.

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CORRECT FORM: IT LOOKED LIKE THERE WASN'T ANYHTING THEY COULD DO

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In the first place, we find the  possesive adjective (pronoun) " thier" which in this case doesn't match with the meaning that the student is trying to convey, so It should be replaced by the demostrative "there" to indicate that there was something.

As regards the verb wasn't needs to have the apostrophere in the middle of n and t letters since it is the way we abbreviate the negation of the verb was not.

All in all, what I would probably tell to my students when It's time to correct errors would be that no matter how many mistakes we commit, but how we understand them and practice them. Thus, we can avoid making them once again.

Making mistakes is part of our learning process and I't is okey to commit them!

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The correct use of A or AN is sometimes a difficult task for kids .In this photo we can depict the incorrect use of it.

Use A  before words, abbreviations, acronyms, or letters that begin with a consonant sound, regardless of their spelling.

For example:
-A dog.
-A car.
-A university

The relevant part is the sound of the word that follows, not necessarily the letter with which it starts. The above examples have words that begin with vowels and consonants, but we use A for all of them because they begin with the sound of a consonant.

Use An before words, abbreviations, acronyms, or letters that begin with a vowel sound, regardless of their spelling.

For example:
-An element.
-An honor.

The rule only becomes tricky when you have a vowel with a consonant sound or a consonant with a vowel sound like in our above examples,

A university

An honor

When you come across these, ignore what the first letter is and just listen to the sound that it makes.

Regardless the grammar we teach, as proffessors we should highlight our students that  mistakes play positive role in the process of learning ,  not solely the grades they might achieve.They look at mistakes not as something to be dreaded and avoided, but as an inevitable—and often very helpful—part of learning.

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Putting an apostrophe in the wrong place is a very common mistake. In this poster we can see the use of the apostrophe to make a word plural.
Apostrophes should never be used to make a word plural.

To begin with, apostrophes indicate something belongs to something or is owned by someone else.
The apostrophe has three uses:
- to form possessive nouns;
-to show the omission of letters;
-to indicate plurals of letters, numbers, and symbols.

For example - John's shop opens on Sundays from 11am to 4pm.

In this case the apostrophe indicates that the shop belongs to John.

If this error occurs, the best way to correct mistakes is to have students correct themselves. But if this were not to happen I  would revise the uses and rules with them.  It is important students use apostrophes correctly so that meaning is clear and not misinterpreted.

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The error, which is highlighted in yellow, seems to be a transfer. To correct it, I would simply point out that the word ‘besides’ does not need to be followed by the word ‘of’. Although the error could be corrected using more technical terms, I think that, rather than helping the person who made the mistake understand why it is wrong, doing that would only confuse him/her. Correcting this kind of mistake is important because it not only prevents further confusion but also gives us a chance to let students know that translating word by word usually does more harm than good, however tempting it may appear.

Regardless of the kinds of mistakes students make, I think it is extremely important not to forget, and to remind them, that making mistakes is OK, and an inalienable part of learning. Besides, I strongly believe that we should always take into account who the person who made the mistake is, considering his/her English level, or whether s/he has made the same mistake on many occasions, which would signal that s/he is having trouble understanding certain structures or some vocabulary, or if it is just a slip.

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Highlighted in yellow is the mistake that I decided to focus on (not the only one in the sentence, though). As speakers of a language in which the omission of subjects is grammatical, since it could be inferred by the morphology of the main verb of the sentence, it is very common for us to think that dropping the subject is possible in English, too, but that is not the case. If I spotted this error in a student’s piece of writing, I would simply write on the side of the page ‘Watch out! The subject of this sentence is missing.’ I may as well write “What is not going to be so long?” If this was an oral mistake, I like to think I’d dare to resort to the ‘pretending not to understand’ correction method, as I think that addressing the issue humorously would make whoever made the mistake not feel so anxious about it. I think that correcting this kind of mistake is very important because it could not allow the student who made it to convey the message that s/he wants to.

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Past simple: WAS/ WERE and The indefinite articles A/ AN

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Past simple: WAS/ WERE and The indefinite articles A/ AN

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The image above is my student's homework that was placed twice in order to show you the errors at the top, and my corrections at the bottom. Notice how my student wrote the past simple of the verb to be: "beed". Despite I  explained her that the past simple of "BE" is WAS/ WERE, she committed the most common mistake  in grammar by applying "beed". Moreover, while I was checking her homework, I noticed that she misspelled the following word: beautiful, and at the same time she forgot to apply the indefinite article "a" before "girl". So, I decided to correct those mistakes with her. That is to say, together in our virtual class, and not just provide feedback without any explanation. I consider that the encouragement to our students plays a key role in class, and also the manner in which a teacher corrects a mistake is fundamental, since a teacher must correct errors without making students feel inferior.

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This is a very common mistake that students make and that leads us to explain countable and uncountable nouns. The girl made a mistake by saying “an advice” The reason is that the noun “advice” is uncountable in English. The correct sentence would have been “My dad gave me a piece of advice.” (if it is a single item of advice) or “My dad gave me some advice.” (if we refer to several items of advice). You can say “a piece of advice” or “two pieces of advice” but never advices !!!

Also, you must bear in mind that advice is the noun, and advise is the verb.

Ex. “My dad advised me to study hard.”

It is important to explain this to avoid confusion.

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Sometimes mistakes occur because the words are homophones (they sound the same). In this case, the mistake is in the last line of the phrase. The writer clearly wanted to write “their” instead of “they’re''.  Firstly, it’s important to explain why it’s a mistake: on the one hand, “They’re” is a contraction of “They are” (Ex. “They’re brother and sister.”). On the other hand, “Their” shows possession (Ex. “This is their car”). Therefore, as the writer wanted to refer to the cups belonging to certain people, he/she should have used “Their”.  It’s essential to correct this mistake for the students to be aware of the fact that although some words may sound very similar, they have different meanings.

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This is a very common mistake among both native and non-native speakers of English.
Adjectives and adverbs come in three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative, and superlative. When we wish to compare/contrast two entities, such as people, places, or things, we use the comparative degree. However, when comparing three or more entities, we use the superlative degree.

It is highly important that we teach this topic clearly to our students, since we use adjectives/adverbs to compare items, express likes/dislikes or give value judgments all the time in our lives. We should present the topic in an entertaining way, maybe showing our students some pics about people with different characteristics or different holiday destinations for them to compare.

If they make mistakes while learning this topic, we could help them by avoiding to correct them immediately. We could guide them in order for them to make the corrections. That way they´ll feel more committed to the task, more independent and even more comfortable.

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This is a common mistake made by anybody, even native-speakers. Sometimes external factors such as tiredness (like the fellow of the comic above), boredom or nerves affect our students, leading them to make this type of mistake. However, this sort of errors does not imply they are not acquainted with their mother tonge or the foreign language they're learning. When facing this situation, we should try to identify whether our students do not understand what we are teaching or if it is just a matter of linguistic performance.

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As they are confusing words, they tend to lead to misunderstanding, so they need to be clarified; however, this will depend on the situation.
If this mistake happened between students, and one of them knew the difference between these terms, I could help, if necessary, by encouraging the students to ask for more clarification. The idea is to act as we normally act in everyday conversations when a misunderstanding of this type affects the flow of the communication.

If I were involved in the conversation, I would try by answering in a way that could help to clarify the issue, e.g.

“It would be amazing if you could remind me to call her because it is hard for me to remember this kind of thing.”

But if it was still not enough, we could try by searching the meanings or elicit them among the rest of the students to see if we could get to better examples.

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Why?
Firstly, we know that it is a third-person singular pronoun. When we say “ITS” we are using the possessive form of the pronoun, to say that something belongs to it.
For example: The movie was wonderful, its scenes were astonishing.

On the other hand, “it’s” is built up by the pronoun it plus the verb to be is or the verb has, and it is used as a contraction.  For example: It’s really late. / It's got two arms.

So, in this case we should use it's as in the sentence there is no reference of possesion and the verb to be is being used to express an state.

In both errors, it is important to know this so that the meaning of the sentence is correct and people can understand what you are saying.

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CORRECT FORM: IT'S GOING TO BE YOUR DECISION.

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*IT’S GOING TO BE YOU’RE DECISION. (Belén Grigolatto)

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*IT’S GOING TO BE YOU’RE DECISION. (Belén Grigolatto)

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Why?
Because “you’re” is the subject "you" plus the verb to be "are". We use it to refer to someone.
For example: You’re wrong!

On the other hand, “your” is a possessive pronoun. Possessive pronouns show that something belongs to someone.
For example: This is your car.

Taking into account this, in this case, the person wanted to say that it was someone’s decision, therefore we must use the possessive pronoun “Your”.