It’s been a week since I retired from teaching after forty years. For the last sixteen years I taught EFL (English as a foreign language) which meant that, for the most part, my students were visiting the U.S. primarily to take intensive English classes. I thought it might be interesting to share the most common mistakes I encountered. Mind you, most of the classes I had were at the intermediate level, more of my students were upper-intermediate than lower-intermediate. One interesting thing about a lot of these mistakes is that they were just as likely to come from a Japanese student as a French one. However there were particular kinds of mistakes that came from particular kinds of speakers. For example Spanish speakers often used the word “history” for “story” and they were constantly saying things like “in this moment” rather than “now.” They grossly overused the word moment. Germans would often use the continuous tense when the present simple was called for. They would say: “I am eating lunch every day at noon” instead of “I eat lunch everyday at noon.”
The biggest problem for students from anywhere else in the world was prepositions. This is understandable given the capricious nature of prepositions and the lack of rules governing their use. For example why do we get “on” busses, trains and — most frighteningly of all — airplanes. Seems more logical to get “in” them. More examples will become evident below.
Mistake: “He lives near to the store.” “Near to” was a universally made mistake and it was hard for students to shed it. We have “next to” and “close to” so why not “near to?”
Mistake: “We are going to go to shopping.” Same with going to swimming, dancing or any other activity. That damn word “to” was a constant. Students either used it too often or substituted an incorrect preposition for it as in, “I’m going for the store.”
Mistake: “He has been married with her for four years.” This would rank among the top ten most common mistakes and again that damn word “to” is involved. It’s understandable, being married with another person does make sense.
Double mistake: “It is the birthday of Betty, she has twenty-four years.” The second mistake “having” your years is the more common. I think the French led the way in making this mistake but Spanish speakers made it as well. The house of Ed rather than Ed’s house was mostly a lower level problem, most common among Italians.
Mistake: “Baseball is very famous in the United States.” No it is popular, not famous. This one sounded silly, especially when I’d be asked something like: “Are burritos famous in California?”
Mistake: “I saw one dog running in the store.” No, you saw “a” dog running in the store. In English when there’s just one of something we almost always go with “a” or “an.” Not so in other languages.
Mistake: “My friends and I will make a party this weekend.” Nope. We “have” parties, barbecues and picnics, we don’t make them. Students sometimes also wanted to “make a test” rather than take one.
Mistake: “Do you all the time go to that cafe?” I had to familiarize hundreds of students with the word “always” and its regular use.
Mistake: “We went to a movie yesterday night.” How many times did I tell a class: it’s yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon but last night. (Please note, that was a rhetorical question.)
Mistake: “Do you practice basketball?” This could go for any sport, including skiing. Students had trouble understanding that while you can “practice” a sport when you’re working on your skills, we don’t use the word to mean participating in the sport. You don’t practice basketball every Saturday, you play basketball. You don’t practice skiing, you go skiing.
Mistake: “We had a great weekend, it was so funny.” This one slipped by me a few times in my early days. I assumed that there were a lot of laughs. But it soon become evident that students thought that fun and funny were related words with the latter being an extension of the former.
Mistake: “It would be more better if you came with us.” Students loved to put a “more” before a comparative. Imagine their confusion when I said that you could say: much better.
Mistake: “All the people like going to the beach.” “As with ‘always,’ I was constantly introducing students to the word “everybody.”
Mistake: “I was in New York during two weeks.” How about “for” two weeks? Another preposition problem.
Mistake: “How can I spell this word?” This is another one that would crack the top ten. It was also a difficult one to explain. “How do you spell this word?” just didn’t make sense to them.
Mistake: “I must go now.” Technically not a mistake, however I was forever pointing out that ninety-five per cent of the time we would say “I have to go now.” The word “must” in this sense is rarely used and then only in serious situations.
Mistake: “When do you come back to your country?” Folks, you come here, you go there.
Mistake: “We were twelve people on the trip.” There were twelve of us on the trip.
Those are far and away the leaders among common mistakes. In addition to all the other grammar we did, the reading, the listening, the writing, the talking, the activities, I would often give them error correction papers. The assignment was to find the mistakes in each sentence and correct them. Invariably a few minutes into working on the paper someone would ask: “does every sentence have a mistake?” When I assured them they all did, I’d see faces sag and people look bewildered. But students who stuck around figured it out. Most important of all was the fact that in understanding these mistakes they were also learning about other aspects of the language. The point was not just to remember to say “last night” but understand other aspects of the language.
I’ll miss watching students figure things out. That was fun.
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