Most English mistakes fall into a small number of categories, and once you understand the pattern behind a category, you can catch similar errors in your own writing and speech — not just memorise individual corrections. This guide is organised that way: by mistake type, with a strategy for fixing each.
1. Tense mistakes
The most frequent tense error is using the wrong aspect for the situation — especially confusing present simple with present continuous, or past simple with present perfect.
| Mistake | Correction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| I am knowing the answer. | I know the answer. | State verbs (know, want, believe) aren't used in continuous forms. |
| I live here since 2019. | I have lived here since 2019. | An action starting in the past and continuing now needs present perfect, not present simple. |
| I have seen that film yesterday. | I saw that film yesterday. | A specific, finished past time ("yesterday") needs past simple, not present perfect. |
Correction strategy: before writing a sentence, ask whether the action is a fact/habit, happening now, connected to the present, or fully finished in the past — that answer tells you the tense. Our complete tenses guide covers this decision process in depth.
2. Article mistakes (a, an, the)
Many languages don't use articles at all, which makes them easy to forget or misuse — even at advanced levels.
| Mistake | Correction |
|---|---|
| I bought book yesterday. | I bought a book yesterday. |
| She is a best student in class. | She is the best student in the class. |
| I love a nature. | I love nature. (no article for general/abstract concepts) |
Correction strategy: use "a/an" for one non-specific thing, "the" when both speaker and listener know exactly which thing is meant, and no article for general, plural, or uncountable nouns used broadly ("I love music," not "I love a music").
3. Preposition mistakes
Prepositions after specific verbs and adjectives are often fixed and don't translate directly between languages.
| Mistake | Correction |
|---|---|
| married with | married to |
| depend of | depend on |
| good in something | good at something |
| discuss about the plan | discuss the plan (no preposition needed after "discuss") |
Correction strategy: don't try to translate prepositions from your first language — learn them as a fixed pair with the verb or adjective ("interested in," "afraid of," "good at") and review them in context, not as an isolated list.
4. Subject-verb agreement
The verb must match the subject in number, which becomes tricky with collective or uncountable nouns and long subjects.
| Mistake | Correction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The information are useful. | The information is useful. | "Information" is uncountable and always singular. |
| Neither of them are ready. | Neither of them is ready. | "Neither of" is grammatically singular in formal English. |
| The list of items are long. | The list of items is long. | The verb agrees with "list" (singular), not "items." |
Correction strategy: find the true subject of the sentence — ignore the words in between the subject and the verb, since they often mislead you into matching the wrong noun.
5. Confusing word pairs
| Pair | Difference |
|---|---|
| affect / effect | "Affect" is usually a verb (to influence); "effect" is usually a noun (a result). |
| its / it's | "It's" always means "it is" or "it has." "Its" (no apostrophe) shows possession. |
| lose / loose | "Lose" (verb) means to no longer have something; "loose" (adjective) means not tight. |
| advice / advise | "Advice" is the noun; "advise" is the verb. |
| then / than | "Then" refers to time or sequence; "than" is used for comparisons. |
Correction strategy: for pairs like these, learn one clear example sentence per word — recalling a full sentence is more reliable than recalling an abstract rule.
6. Sentence structure mistakes
- Run-on sentences: joining two full sentences with only a comma. "I was tired, I went home" should be "I was tired, so I went home" or split into two sentences.
- Wrong word order in questions: "Where you are going?" should be "Where are you going?" — the subject and auxiliary verb swap in questions.
- Double negatives: "I don't know nothing" is non-standard — standard English uses a single negative: "I don't know anything."
Correction strategy: read your sentence aloud — awkward word order and run-ons are often easier to hear than to see on the page.
7. Common writing-specific mistakes
- Contractions in formal writing ("don't," "can't") — spell them out in formal letters, essays, and reports.
- Starting a sentence with a numeral — spell out numbers that begin a sentence: "Twenty students attended," not "20 students attended."
- Inconsistent tense across a paragraph — decide on a base tense for a narrative or description and stay consistent unless there's a clear reason to shift.
See our essay writing structure and formal letter writing guides for more on formal register.
8. Pronunciation-related writing mistakes
Some spelling mistakes actually come from pronunciation confusion — writing "of" instead of "have" in "should have" (because "should've" sounds like "should of"), or mixing up homophones like "there/their/they're." Reviewing the sound-spelling relationship in our Pronunciation Guide can help reduce these.
A practical self-correction strategy
- Write first, correct second — don't try to write perfectly and edit at the same time; it slows down fluency without improving accuracy much.
- Check one category at a time — read your text once just for tenses, once for articles, once for prepositions, rather than trying to catch everything in a single pass.
- Keep a personal "mistake log" — note down your own recurring errors; most learners repeat the same 5–10 mistakes far more than they make random new ones.
- Read your work aloud — this catches sentence-structure and rhythm issues that silent reading often misses.
Where to go next
For a shorter, quick-reference version of some of these points, see our 10 Common English Mistakes post. To practise fixing tense and agreement errors interactively, try our Grammar Quiz.
Two of the mistake categories above have their own complete guides: subject-verb agreement (12 rules) and articles (including the a/an exceptions).