by
Ryan Frayne
| Jan 10, 2012
English is one of the more difficult languages to learn. It has rules which simplify, but it has countless exceptions to those rules. And some rules are not that easy to remember. Despite what you learn in ESL school, these mistakes remain easy to make.
1. Plural Possessives. ESL students make this mistake, but alarmingly so do many native English speakers, as well. If a noun is singular, the rule is to add an apostrophe and then the letter "s" at the end of the word (the boy's bicycle). But when you have a plural noun, it already ends with "s." To make it possessive, you add an apostrophe as with the singular noun, but omit adding a second "s" (the employees' Christmas fund).
2. Adverb Misuse. Adverbs are words which modify or "color" verbs making the action or state of being different or more specific—"typed rapidly," "hovered gracefully," or "napped fitfully," for example. The mistake of many ESL students involves placing the adverb too far away from the verb it modifies.
Another common mistake is to insert an adverb between the word "to" and its verb, creating what is called a "split infinitive"—for example, "to aggressively sell." This is sometimes found in informal writing, but should be avoided entirely in academic writing.
3. Thesaurus Abuse. The thesaurus is a wonderful tool for learning new words, but synonym lists are not compilations of equivalent words. Most words have multiple meanings and cannot be used interchangeably in every instance. The following is an example of a sentence mangled beyond recognition by using a thesaurus list of synonyms to replace words:
"The baton extremity rescued patron for abandonment with each paycheck."
Translation: "The staff member saved money for retirement with each paycheck."
The proper way to use a thesaurus is to understand firstly the definition of the word with which you start, to find a word you like, to look up that word and to see if its definitions allow it to be used in the context of your sentence.
4. Conjunction Madness. This is another problem found with ESL students and native English speakers, alike. This problem involves the overuse of conjunctions (and, but, if, or). A sentence containing too many of these can easily be carved into a number of smaller sentences while achieving greater clarity. In academic writing, beginning a sentence with one of these words is not regarded highly. Frequently, such sentences prove to be weakened by such usage and can be improved simply by removing the conjunction from the start.
5. Which-that Confusion. Another common ESL mistake involves the usage of "which" and "that." The word "that" should be used when the information being included is important to the clarity of a sentence—for example, "The word that Bill had used was incorrect." "Which," on the other hand, is used when the added information is not essential. Any "which" statement should be offset with commas.