5 Common English Grammar Mistakes

If you’re currently an English Language student, you will be all too familiar with making common language mistakes. It’s easy to let that get you down, or make you feel like your progress is slow, but we’re here to tell you that it’s completely normal! Learning a new language can be difficult, and even native speakers make mistakes when it comes to more technical areas like grammar.

Here are 5 common grammar mistakes that we have noticed from our students that will help you feel more assured that you’re not the only one:

1. To agree

“To agree” means to have the same opinion or idea as someone else. We often find that students will commonly say “I am agree” by mistake. The correct way to use this verb is:

• For affirmative sentences: I agree.
• For negative sentences: I disagree / I do not agree.
• For interrogative sentences: Do you agree?

Let’s see some examples:

• I agree, we should work harder.
• They disagreed on almost everything.
• I think we should go out to dinner tomorrow. Do you agree?

You can also use the verb “to be” with “in agreement”. For example:

• The family is not in agreement with her.

2. Collective Nouns: Person or People

There is also sometimes confusion over the difference between one person and a group of people. People is the plural of person.

There is one person in the office.

People are often more relaxed closer to the weekend.

However, “everybody” or “everyone” are both accompanied by singular verb forms such as: “everybody is tired today”.

3. Your / You’re

Another common mistake is to confuse “Your” and “You’re”. Both words sound the same but are spelled differently. It’s easy to see the difference when you are reading an article but seems more complicated when you have to write one. Let’s look at the differences:

• Your: This word corresponds to the pronoun “you” and it’s often used to express possession. Your friends are lovely!
• You’re: This word is an abbreviation of the phrase “You are”. I thought about what you said, and you’re right.

Abbreviations are generally used in an informal context. For example, if you are sending a daily email or texting your friend, you can use abbreviations. If the article or letter is addressed to an institution, company or to someone in your work, we recommend that you spell words in full.

4. Adjectives ending in -ING and -ED

In English, many adjectives are formed with two types of suffixes: –ED and –ING, and sometimes we do not know when to use one or the other. 

• On one hand, an adjective that ends in -ING describes the characteristic of someone or something.

“Her boyfriend is so boring; I think she’s going to break up with him.”

• On the other hand, an adjective that ends in -ED is used to describe how someone feels about something.

“Her boyfriend is bored because he doesn’t like romantic films.” (He’s not boring, he feels bored).

5. Incomplete comparisons

Comparisons help us to show the similarity between two ideas. Adjectives and adverbs are usually used to make comparisons.

The most common mistake in this kind of sentence is not finishing the comparison. For example:

• My new fragrance is fresher (fresher than what? The fragrance is not being compared with anything).

If the adjective is one or two syllables, you must add -er. 

If it’s 3 or more, add “more” before the adjective. Take a look at the examples below.

• This shop is more expensive than the other one we went to this morning.
• The new boss is much nicer than the old one.

If you want to say one thing is less than another, you can use the word less but you still need to describe what you are referring to, as below.

• He finished his job in less time than I did.

After reading all of these mistakes in action, you can see how easy they are to make. It just goes to show that learning a language takes time and effort and that you should be kind to yourself in the process.