“You need to improve your grammar.”
Learners of English are often told vague things such as “You need to improve your grammar.” Of course, this advice is useless, unless it comes with more specific information telling you what is wrong with your grammar.
Of all the advice I can give, two things may be most helpful: Firstly, don’t assume that everything you hear from native speakers is said with perfect grammar – native speakers generally don’t care too much about ‘perfect grammar.’ This leads to my second point: Don’t be too stressed about having perfect grammar yourself, as this may be frustrating and actually make learning English harder. Yes, it’s important to improve your grammar, but if fear of making mistakes is stopping you using your English, that’s not helpful.
How can I identify my specific problems?
We make grammar mistakes because when we’re learning a language, we are often guessing how to say things. It’s quite hard to see our own mistakes, so we need help. You could try to find general advice for speakers of your first language in a textbook or via an online search such as “ESL typical grammar mistakes Chinese speakers” or you could ask your teacher for feedback on mistakes you make often. From this information, keep an “error profile,” which is a list of grammar mistakes that you make often (Click here to open an explanation of error profiles in a new tab).
“But I have too many mistakes. Where do I start?
It isn’t possible to fix all your problems overnight – you need time and practice. The following strategies may help:
- Practice your English often. Read books for pleasure. Read often. Exposure to English will provide a model for you to follow, and you will unconsciously improve your grammar. This worked for me in Spanish, but I did also need lessons to help me “become aware” of certain grammar points.
- To improve your grammar in writing, don’t focus on the little things – focus on the big picture. Improving your topic sentences, linking of ideas and paragraph structure will offer you the fastest improvement in your writing.
- Once you’ve identified some of the mistakes you make most often, focus on one error each time you write.
- Use a grammar textbook with explanations and practice exercises such as the Raymond Murphy English Grammar in Use series. You could focus on one grammar point for a week or a month and refer to the book when you edit and correct your own writing. Referring to the textbook while reviewing your own writing will help you ‘notice’ the mistakes you make. However, only focus on one problem at a time. If you try to solve all your grammar problems at once, you’ll just get confused.
- Compare and contrast grammar points with the same grammar point in your first language. For example, if Chinese is your first language, you may write sentences like “Although Peter is overweight, but he can run fast” （虽然彼得太胖，但他可以跑得很快） because in Chinese it’s normal to use two contrast words to make one contrast. In English however, you should only use one contrast word here: “Although Peter is overweight, he can run fast” or “Peter is overweight, but he can run fast” (See the grammar note at the end of this section). Being aware of the rule in your first language and how it’s different in English will help you remember and apply the rule in English.
- Be aware of different text types in English and how we leave words out in short form sentences in bullet points, advertisements and instructional texts such as recipes. This activity may help. It’s important to understand that we leave words out in some text types and why, so you don’t apply these rules in the wrong place.
- Read your own writing out aloud. You’ll be surprised how this helps you to find mistakes.
- Software that provides feedback and correction may help a bit, but I’m not a big believer in the commercially available apps I’ve seen so far. The best-known app for this is Grammarly, and I’ve trialled the free version of it. I found that too much of its feedback is incorrect. The technology simply doesn’t look at whole sentences and ‘understand’ the grammar of a full sentence. I doubt that the paid version is much better. From what I’ve seen, it is useful for good writers, but would not be very useful for learners, who are unlikely to be able to see the mistakes in its feedback. I certainly wouldn’t spend money on it for its grammar checking ability. However, the paid version offers plagiarism checking, so it may be valuable for that. XJTLU University in China offers a free tool for academic writing called Marking Mate, which I believe is far more useful.
- Prioritise: Identify which of your problems are worth working on first. Ask a teacher for advice – I would recommend that you leave articles (a, an & the) for last, as they are a complicated area of grammar and there may be more important things to work on. In addition, consider if there are other skills you should spend more time on. For example, if you are working on your Speaking, maybe your pronunciation is a more serious problem that your grammar. Likewise, if you are working on Writing, topic sentences, structure and formality might be better things to focus on first.