3 English Grammar Mistakes to Always Correct With Beginners

Beginners make all sorts of grammar mistakes! Today, let's go over three categories of mistakes we should look out for.

#1 Sentence Structure Mistakes

Sentence structure mistakes interfere with a student's ability to speak clearly, so let's keep an eye out for them. Here are the main types.

Mistakes like these happen for a few reasons.

• Beginners tend to use sentence structures from their native language. For example, "His brother English speak well" is correct in Chinese and "I don't speak very well English" is correct in French.
• Many beginners have studied sentence structures, but haven't practiced them enough.
• Some sentence structures don't exist in the student's native tongue. For example, the empty "it" structure is nonexistent in many languages.

If a student needs a refresher, we can recommend they study the following grammar lessons.

• I am happy. (SVC)
• I cook dinner. (SV/SVO)
• There is an egg. (Expletive Construction)
• It's 4pm on Friday (Empty 'It')
• Are you OK? - No, I'm not. (Forming Questions and Negative Sentences With the Verb 'Be')

#2 Mistakes Using Simple Past and Present

There are so many tenses in English that it's hard to know which ones to focus on. With beginners, the answer is simple: simple verb tenses. These are:

• the simple present: "cook/cooks," "wash/washes," "eat/eats," "am/is/are"
• the simple past: "cooked," "washed," "ate," "was/were"

As you can see in the following chart, we use simple verb forms a lot more than the other verb forms (i.e. perfect and progressive).

So let's help beginners master their simple tenses. Here are some common mistakes to look out for.

If a student is still struggling with the simple stuff, it may be best to disregard mistakes with other tenses for now. Here are some relevant grammar lessons for those who need more practice.

• I cook, you cook, he cooks. (Simple Present Tense)
• Was he your friend? (Past Tense of the Verb 'Be')
• I cooked, you cooked. (Simple Past Tense With Verbs Other Than 'Be')
• Do you cook? (Questions in Simple Present Tense)
• I do not cook. (Negative Simple Present Sentences)

#3 Mistakes With Basic Prepositions

Prepositions are tricky for students of all levels. They are even more difficult for beginners for a few reasons.

1. Beginners are unaware that many verbs and adjectives in English must be used with prepositions (e.g. "wait for me" or "listen to her").
2. They tend to use prepositions just as they'd use them in their native language. For example, you might hear a Japanese student say something like "I went skiing to the mountain" (instead of "I went skiing on the mountain"), because that's how they would use the preposition that corresponds to "to" in Japanese.

Since we can't point out every single preposition mistake, let's focus on the prepositions that beginners use most often.

Here are some relevant grammar lessons we can go over with beginners:

• "I am in the kitchen." (In/At/On/Near)
• "I am in front of the microwave." (Under/Over, In Front Of/Behind, Between)
• "A fly got into my soup!" (From, To, Into, Onto, Away)
• "I cook in the morning and at night." (Prepositions of Time)

👋 That’s It For Now!

We hope this post gives you an idea of what types of grammar mistakes to look out for when you're teaching beginners. Happy tutoring!