Three of my most common grammatical mistakes are in the areas of the subject-verb agreement, parallelism and pronoun reference.
Subject-verb agreement (SVA)
As the name implies, when constructing a sentence, the subject and its verb must agree with each other in order for the sentence to make sense. I personally find this section of grammar particularly difficult as sometimes, the subject can be separated from the verb. Other than that, the SVA can also change due to the nature of the subject, such as if the subject is singular or plural, or if it is countable or uncountable.
Examples:
1) My mother said that living in big cities are not good for health. (wrong)
My mother said that living in big cities is not good for health. (correct)
2) There is some mistakes in your sentence. (wrong)
There are some mistakes in your sentence. (correct)
Parallelism
The basic definition of parallelism is to make two or more words or clauses parallel, or have the same idea or level of importance. Parallel structures are mainly broken down into two parts, which are logical parallelism and grammatical parallelism. The parallel structure of the sentence can easily disappear just by mistyping a few words in a sentence. This will be shown in the examples below.
Examples:
1) The three main races in Malaysia are the Malays, Chinese, and the Indians. (wrong)
The three main races in Malaysia are the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. (correct)
2) Jack loves swimming, canoeing and to ride a bicycle. (wrong)
Jack loves swimming, canoeing and cycling. (correct)
Pronoun reference
A pronoun reference is used when the writer wants to refer to the subject again without rewriting the whole subject of the sentence again. Normally, a sentence will carry an ambiguous meaning if the pronoun reference is not used properly.
Examples:
1) Take the shoes out of the box and throw it away. (faulty)
Here, “it” can refer to the shoes or the box.
Take the shoes out of the box and throw the box away. (clear)
2) The teachers told their students that they would be having a day off tomorrow. (faulty)
‘it’ may refer to the teachers or the students.
The teachers told their students that the students would be having a day off tomorrow.(clear)
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Tsing. I guess most of us are faced with more or less the same grammatical errors found in our essays. It is good that you are now able to identify your mistakes and correct them. Explanation on your part of the grammatical mistakes you commonly use is easily understood.
ReplyDeleteI agreed with you guys. Most of us have problems with the subject-verb agreement and parallelism. If i list down all my grammatical mistakes, I will definitely need a long essay. By the way, I like your last Pronoun reference example.
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