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Presented by Dina Viktorovna Polyakova
THE MOST COMMON ERRORS IN ENGLISH
What is an error in English? Straight away, we have to underline that the concept of language error is a quite fuzzy question. It is better to leave all technical definitions to professional linguists.
Here we are concerned only with deviations from the standard use of English.
The aim of this work is to help students, learning English as a second language (ESL), avoid titters of amusement at the way they write or speak. Cutting poor figure is not an encouraging way to learn a foreign language!
So, the present work is dedicated to errors in usage. It is not dealing with grammar in general.
A first list of these errors (or, if you prefer, language forms to be avoid) might concern with using wrong prepositions.
Among these most common errors, we picked out to consider here the language forms a Russian speaker instinctively would be inclined to use. Only some examples.
Afraid of
Raisa is afraid of Victor’s dog.
(In Russian, for example, it would be simply to be afraid the dog).
Arrive at
We arrived at the village at night.
Travel by
We travelled by train yesterday.
Depend on, upon
It depends on You.
Play for
He plays regularly for the team.
Popular with
John’s popular with his friends
Spend time on
I spend a lot of time on my computer, on my phone. Et cetera, et cetera…
A second , not shorter, list might concern with the misuse of the infinitive. This is a very frequent error. To say the truth, not only among foreign students.
Think of
I often think of going to England.
Used to + -ing form
She’s used to getting up early.
Finish + -ing form
Have you finished speaking with your boy-friend?
A third list concerns the omissions of some preposition, adverbs or any language component. The most frequent misuse regards: see, hear, feel, et cetera, et cetera. By example:
See + infinitive (but without to)
They saw him leave the house
Other common errors concern the relative pronouns who, which what.
You know you must use which as a relative pronoun for animals or things, and the right pronoun to use for people is who, whose, whom. So, we say: I have a brother who is a doctor.
However, we use the interrogative pronoun which? for both people and things when we ask for one out a definite number.
Which of the two boys is the taller?
We point here out that the interrogative pronoun what doesn’t imply choice. Ex:
What ‘s your telephone number?
What signifies here one thing, just that thing we want to know. Consequently, we say:
What’s your father? She is an engineer. (and not: Who’s…?)
As we previously said, we leave any explanation about these questions to professional linguists!
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