In this blog series, we unveil curated lists on diverse topics—from grammar to product recommendations—equipping you with the most up-to-date resources to boost your English fluency.

Parallelism

International learners of English may have trouble at first noticing errors in parallelism that they make, but much like subject-verb agreement, parallelism is a relatively consistent rule that is easy to execute.

Fewer vs. Less

Fewer is used for quantities that can be counted with finite numbers (whole numbers like 1, 2, 3). Meanwhile, less is used with uncountable nouns and continuous amounts.

Negative Questions and Agreeing With Negatives

Suppose there was a table with apples on it, but you happened to not take any of the apples. Would you answer yes or no to this question?

Double Negatives

Multiple negations would actually contradict the original intention of the sentence because the two negatives would cancel each other out.

Subordinating Conjunctions With Coordinating Conjunctions

When using a subordinating conjunction at the beginning of a sentence, you do not need to use its coordinating equivalent after the comma.

Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices

Run-on sentences are common within the writing of people whose first language is not English and in casual sentences of native speakers of the language. A run-on is a sentence with multiple independent clauses or sentences that are not joined or separated properly

Punctuation - Missing Commas

Writers whose first language is not English tend to omit commas in places that need commas. This is the most common type of punctuation errors among non-native English speakers.

Subject-Verb Agreement

The subject-verb agreement rule requires a noun to match the plurality of the verb that goes with it. Even native English speakers get wrong time to time, especially if the subject and the verb are not right next to each other.

Idiomatic Usage Errors

Idiomatic phrases are learned through experience and exposure to the English language, so it’s difficult for non-native speakers of English to know these phrases right off the bat.