ACCUPLACER ESL Language Use common mistakes
ACCUPLACER ESL Language Use · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing a verb form by matching it to the noun nearest the blank rather than to the actual subject - for example writing "The list of items are on the desk" or "One of the students have a question."
Intervening prepositional phrases create a strong proximity effect, so the ear locks onto the closest noun and the real subject's number is never checked. This is especially likely under time pressure when reading silently.
What to do instead
Before choosing any verb, bracket and delete every prepositional phrase between the subject and the verb, then read the bare skeleton aloud ("The list ... is"). Train on sentences containing of, along with, together with, and as well as so the deletion becomes automatic.
Shifting tense mid-sentence or mid-paragraph without a time signal, such as "She walks into the room and closed the door" or narrating a whole story in present then drifting into past.
Writers rehearse the story in their heads in one tense but transcribe verbs one at a time, and spoken English tolerates casual switching. Without an explicit time marker the shift feels natural and goes unnoticed.
What to do instead
After drafting, underline every verb in a sentence and label it past, present, or future on the spot. Any change must be justified by a visible time word (yesterday, now, next year) or a genuine change of time frame; otherwise make the verbs match.
Using a reflexive pronoun where a plain object pronoun is required ("Please contact myself if you have questions") or a subject pronoun where an object is required ("between you and I").
Reflexives sound formal and polite in business contexts, and "you and I" was drilled as the correct-sounding phrase without the rule that prepositions and verbs take object forms.
What to do instead
Apply the removal test: drop the other person and say the sentence with one pronoun ("contact me," "between us"). If the reflexive has no antecedent doing the action to itself, replace it with me, him, her, us, or them.
Joining two independent clauses with only a comma, producing a run-on such as "The test was difficult, many students ran out of time."
In speech this sequence is separated by a pause, and the comma is mentally substituted for the pause. Writers who fear periods as too abrupt reach for the comma as a default connector.
What to do instead
Check every comma by reading each side alone: if both halves stand as complete sentences, replace the comma with a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus and/but/so/because. Practise rewriting ten comma splices three different ways each.
Writing a fragment that begins with a subordinator or a verbal phrase and never supplies a main clause, such as "Because the bus was late. We missed the first class." or "Walking to the store, the rain started."
The writer hears the sentence as complete because it carries full meaning in context, and a capital letter after the period masks the missing main clause. Dangling participles also slip by because the intended subject is obvious to the writer.
What to do instead
Attach every because/although/when/if clause to a main clause in the same sentence. For opening verb phrases, name the doer immediately after the comma so it matches the phrase ("Walking to the store, I was caught in the rain").
Changing topic mid-paragraph or inserting a sentence that does not support the stated main idea - for instance adding a detail about the writer's brother in a paragraph about library hours.
Related memories surface while writing, and each new sentence feels connected to the previous one rather than to the paragraph's controlling idea. The writer never re-reads the topic sentence before adding material.
What to do instead
Write or underline the topic sentence, then test each sentence against one question: does this support that idea? Move off-topic sentences to a new paragraph or delete them. Do the same check for order, moving general statements before examples and causes before effects.
Choosing a transition by sound rather than by logic - using "however" to add a similar idea, "therefore" to introduce a contrast, or "for example" before a general statement.
Transitions are memorised as isolated vocabulary words, often with a single translation, and the direction of the relationship (same direction versus reversal) is never articulated.
What to do instead
Label the relationship first in plain words - addition, contrast, cause, example, sequence - then pick from a short list for that label. Practise by deleting the transition and asking whether the second sentence agrees with or reverses the first.
Leaving a pronoun with no clear antecedent or with several possible ones, as in "When Maria met her sister, she was surprised," or scattering "it" and "they" across sentences without a stated noun.
The antecedent is vivid in the writer's mind, so an ambiguous reference reads as obvious. Writers also avoid repeating nouns because repetition was taught as a stylistic fault.
What to do instead
For every pronoun, find the single noun it replaces and confirm it is the only plausible candidate. When two nouns compete, repeat the noun or restructure the sentence; repeat the key noun at the start of a new paragraph even if it feels redundant.
Omitting apostrophes or misplacing them in possessives and contractions ("the students books," "its a problem," "the Smith's house"), and not capitalising proper nouns, languages, and days of the week.
Apostrophes are barely audible in speech, so the error is invisible when proofreading by ear. Contractions are also confused with possessive forms because both end in s.
What to do instead
Proofread punctuation with your voice off, scanning specifically for apostrophes and capital letters. Apply fixed rules: singular owner adds 's, plural owner ending in s adds only the apostrophe, and it's always means it is.
Selecting the wrong preposition or collocation in fixed phrases - "depend of," "married with," "in the other hand," "discuss about," "good in math" - or translating a preposition directly from the first language.
Prepositions rarely have a one-to-one equivalent across languages, so learners substitute the preposition their native phrase uses. These phrases are stored as whole units, so rules about prepositional meaning do not help.
What to do instead
Record collocations as complete chunks in a personal list (depend on, married to, on the other hand, discuss, good at) rather than as single words, and review them aloud in full sentences. When unsure in the exam, recall the whole phrase, never the preposition alone.