Hierarchy of ESL Errors

Most serious - usually interferes with the reader's ability to understand

1. Word order in the sentence confused

Verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs seem to be out of order. This type of error pattern often produces an uneasy feeling in the reader. As the tutor, you might feel that you don’t know what is wrong with the sentence. “She is a too clever woman to stay in a so boring job.”

2. Misplaced Phrases/Clauses

With these errors, the meaning is clear but awkward: “My mother always after we cooked told me to wash the bowls.”

3. Subject-Verb Agreement

“The mother of the children call other parents and complain.”  This happens with ESL and native speakers, especially when the subject is separated from the verb by a phrase or clause.  Students seem to lose sight of the subject and instead match the verb with the noun next to it.

4. Word form

This error pattern, like sentences structure problems, produces sentences that sound really strange.  Very common with word endings (ing, ed, y), especially adjectives (bored vs. boring).  “I am so scary when I scene a creep house.” (I am so scared when I see a creepy house.)

5. Mixed Construction

Subordinate clauses often create problems for ESL students, leading to “two-headed sentences” like “Although the U.S. is wealthy, but there are still many people in poverty.”

6. Verb Tense

Many languages do not have verb tenses at all, so it’s not surprising that students have trouble mastering the many tenses of English (past, present, future, progressive, perfect, etc.). “They are living there for the past six months.”

7. Preposition Use

The preposition usage that students have the most trouble with is usually idiomatic.  (For these types of prepositions, unfortunately, they can’t memorize some rule in a grammar book– e.g. We talk on the phone.  We wrote papers in that class. We sit at the table.  We went to his house.)

Less serious - but still bothersome to a reader who is a native speaker

8. Idioms

Idioms are set phrases or combinations of words used in English, sometimes for no apparent logical or grammatical reason. For example, we say “I got married” rather than “I got marriage.”

9. Misused or Missing Articles

Non-native speakers may never master this point of English grammar.  Articles are the determiners a, an, and the. Many non-Western languages do not include articles at all, hence the extreme difficulty some students have deciding whether a noun needs an article, and which one. “I told the teacher that I didn’t have a homework.” 

10. Missing Plural ‘s’

This is one of the hardest errors for ESL students to eradicate and one of the most stubborn errors that stick around as students (especially ear learners) acquire English. “He has five kid and two dog.”