Junkao English common mistakes
Junkao English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing an answer because the Chinese gloss 'feels right' without checking the word's part of speech, transitivity, or collocation (e.g., picking a verb where the sentence needs a noun, or using 'do a decision' instead of 'make a decision').
Candidates memorize one Chinese equivalent per English word and treat the two as interchangeable, so they never learn the grammatical frame or fixed partner words each item requires.
What to do instead
Build vocabulary cards that record part of speech, one collocation, and one full example sentence per entry, and before marking an answer, say the whole sentence aloud to test whether the word fits the slot grammatically.
Confusing near-synonyms that differ in register, intensity, or connotation (e.g., 'childish' vs 'childlike', 'refuse' vs 'decline', 'economical' vs 'economic') and selecting the wrong one in a sentence-completion item.
Study lists group words by Chinese meaning, which collapses distinctions the exam tests; candidates never compare the words side by side in context.
What to do instead
Study synonyms in contrastive pairs, writing one sentence for each word that only that word can fill, and note the collocation or tone that separates them.
Forming sentences with a missing or doubled subject/verb, or joining two independent clauses with only a comma (comma splice), especially in the writing and translation sections.
Chinese allows topic-comment structures and frequent comma-linked clauses, and candidates transfer that pattern directly into English.
What to do instead
After drafting, run a clause check: underline every finite verb and confirm each has an explicit subject, then join clauses only with a conjunction, semicolon, or full stop.
Misplacing modifiers so that they dangle or attach to the wrong noun (e.g., 'Walking to school, the rain started'), and mismatching pronoun reference.
Chinese places adverbial phrases more freely before the main clause, so the English rule that a fronted participle must share the main subject is not intuitive.
What to do instead
For every sentence opening with a participle or prepositional phrase, name the subject of the main clause and confirm it is the logical doer; rewrite if not.
Answering detail questions from memory of the passage's general topic rather than locating the exact sentence, and choosing an option that is true in the world but not stated in the text.
Time pressure pushes candidates to skim once and rely on background knowledge, and distractors are deliberately plausible and on-topic.
What to do instead
For each question, find and underline the source sentence, then match the option word by word against it; reject any option containing information the passage does not supply.
Treating 'NOT mentioned' and 'EXCEPT' questions like ordinary detail questions, picking the first true statement instead of the one statement that is absent or false.
Candidates read the stem quickly and default to the familiar 'find the true option' routine.
What to do instead
Circle the negative word in the stem before reading the options, then test each option against the passage and mark T or F beside it; select the single odd one out.
Filling cloze blanks one at a time in order, using only the immediate sentence, and never rereading the completed passage for coherence.
The cloze is treated as a series of isolated vocabulary items, but many blanks depend on discourse markers, pronoun reference, or information in a later sentence.
What to do instead
Read the whole passage first for gist, fill the blanks you are sure of, then use connectives and repeated terms to resolve the rest, and do a final read-through checking tense and logic across sentences.
Translating English–Chinese word by word, producing Chinese that keeps English word order and passive voice, or producing English that calques Chinese phrasing such as 'open the light' or 'very like'.
Candidates translate at the word level instead of the clause level, and lack ready equivalents for common Chinese collocations.
What to do instead
Draft the meaning of the whole clause first, then restructure it in the target language's natural order, and keep a personal list of standard equivalents (e.g., 开灯 → turn on the light) to review.
Writing an essay with no clear thesis and no paragraph topic sentences, so the composition becomes a list of related observations rather than an argued response to the prompt.
Candidates draft sentence by sentence without planning, and under time pressure they write whatever comes to mind rather than organizing first.
What to do instead
Spend three to five minutes outlining: state a one-sentence thesis, list two or three supporting points, and give each point its own paragraph opening with a topic sentence that the rest of the paragraph supports.
Submitting a composition with repeated high-frequency words and simple sentence patterns throughout, plus uncorrected errors in articles, subject-verb agreement, and plurals.
Limited active vocabulary and no reserved editing time mean the first draft is the final draft, and these small errors are invisible to the writer.
What to do instead
Reserve the last five minutes to proofread specifically for articles, agreement, and plurals, and pre-learn a small set of paraphrase alternatives and one complex structure (relative clause, concessive clause) to deploy deliberately.