BCS Written English common mistakes
BCS Written English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the essay as a list of disconnected points, with each paragraph opening a new topic and no paragraph referring back to the thesis stated in the introduction.
Under time pressure candidates brainstorm many ideas and dump them paragraph by paragraph, treating the essay as a memory test rather than an argument; they were often taught that 'more points means more marks'.
What to do instead
Before writing, draft a one-sentence thesis and a three-line outline; give each body paragraph a topic sentence that advances the thesis and a closing sentence that links to the next paragraph. Practise timed 40-minute essays where the outline must be visible in the margin.
Producing a précis that keeps the original's examples, figures, and rhetorical questions, or that adds the candidate's own opinion, instead of compressing only the central argument into roughly one-third of the original length.
Candidates confuse summarizing with selecting 'important-looking' content; concrete details feel important, and the habit of writing opinion essays bleeds into the précis task.
What to do instead
Use a two-column pass: first underline only the main claim and its supporting reasons, crossing out all examples and illustrations; then write from the underlined words alone and count words to hit the required proportion. Check that no sentence contains a judgement not present in the passage.
Shifting tense or person midway through a composition, e.g. starting in the third person and sliding into 'you' or 'we', or moving from past to present narrative without reason.
Spoken Bengali and English habitually use impersonal 'you' for general statements, and candidates draft orally in their heads, so the shift feels natural and goes unnoticed.
What to do instead
Fix person and tense in the outline ('third person, present tense for general truths') and do a dedicated final pass reading only the first two words of every sentence to check subject and verb form consistency.
Translating English to Bengali word-for-word, producing Bengali sentences that preserve English word order, passive constructions, and idioms literally (e.g. rendering an English idiom with its literal Bengali image).
Candidates translate at the level of the word rather than the sentence, and lack practice in finding Bengali equivalents for English collocations and idioms.
What to do instead
Translate sentence by sentence: read the whole English sentence, cover it, and write the Bengali meaning without looking back. Build a personal glossary of 100 common English idioms with their established Bengali equivalents, and compare translations against a Bengali newspaper's rendering of the same news item.
In Bengali-to-English translation, carrying over Bengali syntax-placing the verb at the end, stacking relative clauses before the noun, and omitting articles-so the English reads as translated Bengali.
Bengali is verb-final and article-poor, and literal transfer is the path of least effort; candidates also fear that restructuring will change the meaning.
What to do instead
After drafting, rewrite each sentence starting from the English verb: identify the main subject and verb first, then attach modifiers. Do a separate pass inserting a/an/the and checking subject-verb agreement, since these are the most frequent transfer errors.
Using high-register vocabulary incorrectly-inserting long Latinate words or memorized 'impressive' phrases whose collocations or connotations do not fit the sentence.
Candidates believe ornate diction earns marks and learn words from bilingual word lists without their collocations or register.
What to do instead
Learn every new word in a full sentence with its typical preposition and object, and record register (formal/neutral/informal). In the exam, prefer a word you can use correctly; keep a short list of 20 reliable formal connectives and use those instead of risky synonyms.
Misusing idioms by changing a fixed word, preposition, or article (e.g. altering 'in the nick of time' or 'take something for granted'), or using an idiom whose tone clashes with a formal essay.
Idioms are memorized as gist rather than exact form, and candidates assume any idiom adds colour regardless of register.
What to do instead
Maintain an idiom log with the exact wording, its meaning, one original example, and a register tag; test yourself by cloze (blank out one fixed word) rather than by meaning-matching. In formal essays, restrict yourself to idioms you have verified are standard in formal prose.
Comma splicing and run-on sentences: joining two independent clauses with only a comma, or stringing clauses with 'however' or 'therefore' preceded by a comma.
In Bengali, clause boundaries are often marked by commas where English requires a full stop or semicolon; candidates punctuate by pause rather than by grammatical structure.
What to do instead
Apply the 'period test': if the words on both sides of a comma could stand alone as sentences, replace the comma with a full stop, semicolon, or a conjunction. Do editing drills on unpunctuated paragraphs, inserting stops before commas.
Spelling errors produced by phonetic spelling and by confusing near-homophones (affect/effect, principal/principle, complement/compliment, loose/lose), plus British/American inconsistency within one script.
English spelling is not phonetic, and candidates spell by sound; near-homophones are rarely contrasted in rote spelling lists, and mixed exposure to American media and British textbooks creates inconsistency.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error list drawn only from your own marked scripts and review it weekly. Learn confusable pairs as minimal pairs in sentences, and choose British spelling throughout, since the exam expects it, checking -ise/-ize, -our/-or, and -re/-er endings in a final proofread.
Failing to proofread for subject-verb agreement and dangling modifiers in long sentences, especially when a phrase separates the subject from its verb or when a sentence opens with a participial phrase.
Long, ambitious sentences are written to impress, and attention is consumed by content during drafting; the intervening phrase masks the true subject, and opening participles are left without a logical subject.
What to do instead
Reserve the final five minutes for a targeted check: bracket every subject and verb and confirm agreement, and for each sentence-initial participle confirm that the subject of the main clause is the doer. Practise on your own past scripts by marking subjects and verbs in a different colour.