Are you an English as a Second Language (ESL) author responsible of creating among the extra frequent ESL writing errors? Do you combine up your topics and objects, write your adjectives all out of order, and confuse annoying English verbs that imply almost the identical factor?
Are you even conscious that you’re making these errors?
We’re right here that can assist you enhance your written English. We edit a whole lot of ESL essays each month. By evaluating a number of these essays, I’ve uncovered among the extra frequent ESL writing errors. These errors could make the distinction between writing like a local English speaker and … effectively … not!
If you happen to’re an ESL author who desires to enhance your English writing expertise, then this put up is for you. In case you are a local English author, then this put up can function overview for you too as, consider it or not, you additionally is perhaps responsible of creating a few of these errors.
On this put up, I’ll offer you three frequent ESL writing errors that we’ve noticed in essays and a few simple methods to study to repair them.
Widespread ESL Writing Mistake #1: Improper Adjective Order
“Have a look at the grey, large whale!”
An adjective is a phrase that’s used to explain a noun (like fats, inexperienced, or good). And a noun, by definition, is an individual, place, or factor (like cat, scorching canine, Australia, or man).
In case you are unfamiliar with English, then it could seem to be the order of adjectives isn’t crucial, so that you would possibly write one thing like this:
“The blue, big, ugly sea monster swims within the ocean.”
On this pattern sentence, the adjectives are: blue, big, and ugly.
A local English speaker will (hopefully) write the sentence like this:
“The ugly, big, blue sea monster swims within the ocean.”
The one distinction between these two sentences is the order of the adjectives—the that means is just about the identical. Nevertheless, having the flawed order of adjectives positively makes your writing extra complicated for the reader.
I hope this simple lesson helped educate you concerning the correct order of adjectives. If you happen to want apply, take a look at this nice sequence of workout routines on adjective order supplied by the College of Victoria English Language Middle.
Widespread ESL Writing Mistake #2: Mistaking the Distinction between Make and Do
Among the many prime commonest ESL writing errors we see within the essays we edit is confusion between the verbs make and do.
Verbs are phrases that describe actions (to make, to do, to run, to sing…and so forth.).
In English, make and do are two totally different verbs, whereas in lots of different languages, like French and Spanish, one verb works for each (faire in French and hacer in Spanish). No marvel it may be so complicated for ESL writers!
Right here is a simple approach to bear in mind the fundamental distinction between make and do:
Write do if you find yourself performing an motion or a process, and, ultimately, you gained’t have something new to point out for it.
Write make if you find yourself creating or constructing one thing. Ultimately, you’ll have created one thing new!
Do can be used if you’re unsure what you’re about to do—it’s a nonspecific verb that English audio system actually wish to throw round!
Widespread ESL Writing Mistake #3: Complicated Me and I
Right here’s the principle distinction between me and I.
I = the topic of the sentence. The topic is the factor, on this case the particular person, who’s doing one thing, like consuming dinner. “I need to eat dinner alone…”
Me = the thing of the sentence. It’s the factor that’s having one thing achieved to it, like being left by your boyfriend. “…as a result of my boyfriend left me.”
If you confuse me and I in a sentence, you threat sounding rather a lot like what we think about our cavemen ancestors may need seemed like!
One Last Word
Don’t be afraid to be your self in your writing. Writing in English is troublesome to grasp, and your purpose is progress, not perfection.
You’ll most likely by no means write in excellent English—most native English audio system can’t even write in excellent English! Come to think about it, what is ideal English?
The purpose is, in case you make little errors in your writing that offer you away as being ESL, that’s okay!
There are a number of profitable ESL writers on the market running a blog and writing in less-than-perfect English. They’re profitable as a result of they’re attempting and consistently bettering, not as a result of they’re excellent.
I hope you discovered this put up to be useful. Now we have extra, nice ESL writing ideas the place these got here from developing within the close to future, and if you’d like to know more about the common mistakes, read this: https://www.thoughtco.com/common-writing-mistakes-1210273.