Welcome to 'Step 6 Online', which supports the exercises in your 'Roadmap to IELTS Speaking Success' ebook. Today we're looking at the kind of grammar mistakes advanced students often make.
Our top 6 common mistakes
Have
you noticed how some mistakes seem to hang around quite a while during your studies?
Even at advanced level, after years of studying English, you find yourself making
the same errors again and again.
Having taught a huge number of English students over the years, I've noted how the following 6 types of grammatical mistakes are often made at this level - the chances are you'll be making one or two of these errors yourself:
- Prepositions
- Articles
- Verb patterns (ing/to/infinitive)
- Tenses
- Pronouns
- Countable
and uncountable nouns
Let's see how good you are at spotting mistakes of this kind.
Task 1: How many errors of this kind can you spot in these sentences?
- I have to say that the staff was very polite in our hotel.
- I strongly recommend you to pay a visit to my home city.
- I wanted to work abroad and this played a big part on my decision to study English.
- I try to do exercise in a daily basis.
- My new job offers possibility of working from home.
- I know how to use different Office softwares like Word and Powerpoint.
- Nowadays the email and mobile phones enable communication to be instantaneous.
- I've sometimes thought about to do a different job.
- Maria is my best friend who I met her at college.
- My friend knew the restaurant and suggested me to go there.
- I think learning a language increases tolerance at society and among people.
- My local market where I shop it quite often has some good bargains.
- I lived there since I got married.
- I don’t have enough time to take a part in sport.
- When I was at school I didn't realise how important learning English will have been.
- Unfortunately, I had some problems getting the sports equipments.
- I think you only have you to blame if you don't study hard enough and fail.
- I wasn't able to
pass my driving test yet.
(Answers below)
Task 2: Perfect your English grammar
Were there any mistakes above that you didn't find? What kind of errors were they? Try to identify the particular problems you have with English grammar and focus on these areas during your studies.
NB: IELTS Speaking: Advanced offers practice in ALL these areas of grammar!
Answers
- I
have to say that the staff were very polite in our hotel.
(countable x uncountable nouns) - I strongly recommend (that) you pay
a visit to my home city.
(verb patterns) - I wanted to work abroad and
this played a big part in my decision to study English.
(prepositions) - I
try to do exercise on a daily basis.
(prepositions) - My new job
offers the possibility of working from home.
(articles) - I know
how to use different Office software like Word and Powerpoint.
(countable x uncountable nouns) - Nowadays email and mobile phones enable communication
to be instantaneous. (not 'the email')
(articles) - I've
sometimes thought about doing a different job.
(verb patterns) - Maria
is my best friend who I met at college. (not 'I met her')
(pronouns) -
My friend knew the restaurant and suggested (that) I go there.
(verb patterns) - I think learning a language increases tolerance in society
and among people.
(prepositions) - My local market where I shop quite
often has some good bargains. (not 'where I shop it')
(pronouns) - I
have lived there since I got married.
(tenses) - I don’t
have enough time to take part in sport. (not 'take a part')
(articles) - When
I was at school I didn't realise how important learning English would be.
(tenses) - Unfortunately I had some problems getting the sports equipment.
(countable x uncountable nouns) - I think you only have yourself to blame
if you don't study hard enough and fail.
(pronouns) - I haven't been
able to pass my driving test yet.
(tenses)
Look out for the Step 7 email
In 4 days time we'll send you the seventh of our emails, and the chance to rate non-native speakers’ fluency skills.