PNG Grade 8 English common mistakes
PNG Grade 8 English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the listening section, candidates start writing the full answer as soon as they hear the first keyword and stop listening, so they miss the correction or qualification that follows (e.g. the speaker says 'Thursday, no wait, Friday').
PNG Grade 8 candidates often treat listening as dictation and try to capture every word rather than the meaning; the passage is played once or twice and they have not been taught to listen past the first number or name.
What to do instead
Practise the 'listen to the end of the sentence' habit: during practice, students keep pencils down until the speaker finishes, then write. Teach them to note only keywords and abbreviations while listening, and to copy the final answer in the pause afterwards.
Candidates answer a listening question with their own opinion or general knowledge instead of what the recording actually says (e.g. asked why the boy was late, they write 'because he was lazy' rather than 'the bus broke down').
Inference questions are unfamiliar, and students confuse 'what I think' with 'what the speaker said'; this is common where English is a second or third language and the recording is fast.
What to do instead
Give repeated practice with the instruction 'the answer must be in the recording'. Have students underline the exact words in a transcript that support their answer, then remove the transcript and answer again.
In reading comprehension, candidates copy a whole sentence from the passage as the answer instead of answering in their own words, or lift a sentence that contains the keyword but does not answer the question.
Students are taught to 'find the answer in the text' but not how to select the relevant part; copying feels safe because the words are correct English.
What to do instead
Teach a two-step routine: locate the sentence, then rewrite it starting from the question words (e.g. 'The author says the river flooded because...'). Mark answers that are copied whole and show why a shorter, targeted response earns the mark.
Candidates misread the question type, giving a personal opinion when asked for a fact from the text, or giving one word when the question asks 'Give two reasons'.
Under exam pressure students skim the question stem and jump to the topic; they also overlook instruction words such as 'two', 'both', 'in your own words' or 'according to the passage'.
What to do instead
Drill question stems: circle the instruction word and the number required before reading the passage. Train students to number their answers (1) and (2) so they can check they have given the required count.
In writing, candidates produce a paragraph or letter with no paragraphing, no greeting or closing, and no clear beginning, middle and end, so the piece reads as one block of sentences.
Many candidates have little experience of formal text structure and write the way they speak; they do not plan before writing and run out of time, so structure is the first thing lost.
What to do instead
Teach fixed frames for the common PNG tasks: a letter (address, date, greeting, purpose sentence, body paragraphs, closing) and a narrative (setting, problem, events, resolution). Require a five-minute plan with headings before any writing is done.
Candidates write the whole essay in one tense, or switch tense mid-sentence, and use 'will' for a story that should be in the past.
In PNG languages tense is often marked differently or not at all, so the English tense system is not intuitive; students translate directly from their first language.
What to do instead
Give short controlled practice: rewrite five sentences from present to past, then write a six-sentence narrative using only past tense. Have students underline every verb in their draft and check tense consistency as an editing step.
Candidates write run-on sentences joined only by 'and' or commas, and use full stops incorrectly, producing very long sentences with several ideas.
Sentence boundaries are not taught explicitly in many classrooms, and punctuation is treated as decoration rather than meaning; spoken PNG English also strings clauses together with 'and'.
What to do instead
Teach the three sentence types with examples, then use a 'one idea, one sentence' exercise where students split given run-ons. In editing, have them read their draft aloud and put a full stop wherever they pause and the idea is complete.
Candidates confuse subject-verb agreement and pronoun case in writing, especially with compound subjects and collective nouns ('The boys was', 'Me and my friend went', 'The team are').
Agreement rules are memorised as isolated facts and not applied during composition; interference from the first language and from spoken usage is strong.
What to do instead
Use short daily drills with compound subjects and intervening phrases ('The box of books is...'), and require a proofreading pass focused only on verbs and pronouns before submission. Mark agreement errors separately from content so students see the pattern.
Candidates misspell common homophones and everyday words in their own writing ('their/there', 'to/too/two', 'because', 'friend', 'beautiful', 'received') and lose marks for spelling in extended writing.
Spelling is learned by rote and rarely revisited; students rely on how a word sounds, which fails for English, and they do not proofread for spelling at all.
What to do instead
Keep a personal spelling list of the ten words each student most often misspells and test it weekly. Teach the homophone pairs in sentence context, and build a final two-minute spelling check into every writing task.
In literature answers, candidates retell the plot of the poem or story instead of answering the question about character, theme or the poet's technique, and give no textual evidence.
Students are used to comprehension-style retelling and have not been taught the difference between summary and analysis; they also lack the vocabulary to name techniques such as simile, metaphor or repetition.
What to do instead
Model the difference with a single short poem: write a plot summary and an analysis side by side and compare. Teach a fixed answer pattern ('The poet shows X by saying "...", which suggests...') and require one short quotation in every literature response.