My common grammar mistakes

I have learned English as a second language for years. It is an interesting but tough process. After completing 2 writing assignments in EG1471, I identified 3 major grammar mistakes appeared in my essay.

First of all, wrong verb tense occurred quite often in my essay. For example, there is one sentence in my essay: “but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claimed.” Here what I mean is that biofuel is not as environmental friendly as its supporters claim. I thought the action of claim was already happened in the past, so initially I used simple past tense. Simple past tense indicates that an action occurred in the past and is no longer true in the present. It contradicts my original meaning of claim. So I changed it to simple present tense: but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claim. There are total 12 different verb tenses in English grammar. To understand their differences and similarities is very vital in English writing.

The next mistake I noticed is lack of transition signals. In the body paragraphs, my topic sentences come out without transitions which make me feel abrupt. Take last paragraph as an example: Biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. I corrected it as: Lastly, biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. Use of transitions gives readers a sense of hierarchy and helps readers understand articles smoothly and logically. My weakness is I do not have the sense of using transitions probably because my limited vocabularies. I used to write simple sentences but the connection between each other is plain and not coherent. In order to improve on it, memorizing of frequently used transitions is beneficial.

Lastly, I found a lot of missing articles in my essay. It is really unbelievable that I have made such a lot simple mistakes when I re-check my essay. But actually I do make those mistakes. I think it is because I do not take good care of nouns. Typical examples are as following: the 21st century, in the current situation.

In summary, verb tense, transition signals and articles are the building blocks of English sentences. They are vital and have different roles to play in English language. The appropriate way to strengthen my weakness in writing is to maximize vocabulary and take special attention to those common mistakes I usually made.