Typical mistakes made by students on the Unified State Exam in English. Typical mistakes made by students on the Unified State Exam in English Reasons for errors in English

The Unified State Exam in English is planned to be included in the list of mandatory tests in the near future, but an increasing number of graduates are already choosing it. It is known that any foreign language is not easy to learn. The Unified State Exam comprehensively assesses the level of proficiency, which includes general understanding, written skills, speaking, and therefore is divided into sections according to its structure: listening, speaking, grammar and vocabulary, reading, writing. Also, the exercises are distributed in terms of difficulty according to levels: from minimal basic to high.

The goal of Russian educational institutions is to optimize teaching and improve the level of knowledge. Statistics show that there is an increase in results and a decrease in the number of children scoring below the threshold and failing overall. Expert commissions note that the answers become more logical and consistent with each person. But tasks on grammar and presentation of thoughts are still difficult to complete.

What mistakes do schoolchildren make?

Listening to passages or dialogues in English is still not an easy task, although most people do it successfully. Difficulties lie in distinguishing between main and secondary information, the inability to “skip” unfamiliar words and take into account numerous details and specific context, and highlight the main idea of the text. During the preparation stage, listen to recordings as often as possible, giving preference to different genres. This will help to form a phonetic ear, train your memory, learn to remember the main thing and isolate key words.

Working with passages also poses difficulties for students: many demonstrate ignorance of idiomatic expressions and their sociocultural meaning, and do not have the skills to read meaningfully (with an emphasis on context). In order to cope, read more, developing memory and comprehension, while trying not to look in the dictionary. It is also useful to make a plan and retell it to yourself or out loud.

The “Grammar and Vocabulary” section is the “record holder” for reducing scores, traditionally the most difficult in learning not only a foreign language, but also your native language. Common: students do not fully understand the essence of the text, they “get confused” about tenses and voices, they do not know how to use words taking into account compatibility, form phrases, and spelling “suffers.” Read the task carefully, study the peculiarities of using grammatical forms, parts of speech, and synonyms.

In the “Letter” there are frequent spelling and grammatical errors, inattentive reading of the terms and the text itself and, as a consequence, misunderstanding of the topic. Also often encountered is the inability to formulate a problem and express an opinion, giving adequate arguments and counter-arguments to justify one’s point of view and the opposite one. Following the correct structure of the introduction and conclusion, avoiding logical errors are points that you should pay attention to. Recommendations: learn the composition of the essay genre, definitions of thesis and arguments, carefully choose appeals, final phrases, linking words, follow the order of sentences.

Overall it is quite successful. Typical shortcomings: violation of logic and incorrect interpretation of illustrations (when it is necessary to highlight their characteristics, common and different when comparing), lack of an elementary introduction and conclusion in the answer, non-compliance with intonation and pronunciation norms, stress. What is needed here is stable speaking practice in a variety of situations that the teacher will create during the lessons. It is better if the speech is spontaneous and unprepared. To do this, use atypical forms and situations of dialogue, create conditions for developing the skill of expressing judgments.

Preparation - conscious daily work and a creative approach throughout all years of study, searching for new topics and forms of communication. It would be useful to comprehensively introduce watching films, reading books and listening to music in the original. Taking into account such efforts, a good result on the Unified State Exam will not be long in coming.

They say that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a smart man learns from his own, but a fool learns nothing from his own mistakes. In this article, we propose to act wisely and learn from the most common mistakes that Russian-speaking students make in English. To compile a list of such mistakes, we interviewed native English teachers at our school, because they easily catch mistakes in our speech. We have given a brief explanation for each point, so that you can not only become familiar with typical errors in English, but also understand how to get rid of them.

So, we asked our English-speaking teachers one question: “What mistakes do your students make most often in English?” Here are the answers we received.

Saying “most of people”, instead of “most people”.
They say “most of people” instead of “most people”.
Explanation: You just need to remember the phrase “most people”, which translates as “most people”. The preposition “of” can appear after the word “most” only if you want to indicate a specific group of people, but then the definite article “the” must be placed before the word “people”. For example:
Most of the people in my country enjoy reading. - Most people in my country like to read.
However, most often the phrase “most people” should be used.
Using “and etc.” instead of “... etc.”
Use “and etc.” instead of “... etc”.
Explanation: The word “etc” is translated as “and so on”; it does not require the conjunction “and” (“and”) in front of it.
Pronouncing “clothes” as “klo-thus”.
Pronounce “clothes” as /kləʊðəz/ (closes).
Explanation: The word “clothes” (“clothes”) is used only in the plural and is pronounced /kləʊðz/. Many Russian-speaking students remembered the incorrect pronunciation from school, because there, as a rule, they taught to say /kləʊðəz/. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is difficult for us to pronounce the similar sounds /ð/ and /z/ together, so we simplify our work and insert a vowel sound between them - this makes the word easier to pronounce.
Stressing the end of words, saying “cele-brAtion”.
Place the accent at the end of the word, pronouncing “cele-brAtion”.
Explanation: You might be surprised to hear that Dave wrote that putting the stress on the last syllable of the word “celebration” causes incorrect pronunciation. However, if you look in the dictionary, you will see the following transcription of this word /ˌseləˈbreɪʃ(ə)n/. The sound /s/ below is preceded by an additional stress mark. As a rule, such stress is present in words where there are 4 or more vowel sounds, and it is there for rhythmicity and euphony of speech. Here are examples of such words with two accents: “delegation”, “demonstration”, “motivation”, “generation”. By the way, in the Russian language there is also an additional stress, pay attention to how we pronounce the words “construction site”, “twelve-story” - they also have two accents. To learn how to correctly pronounce words with two accents in English, you need to listen to native speakers speak more often and communicate in English. Gradually you will get used to the correct placement of accents.
Using the definite article for place names, e. g. “the Moscow” or “the Sochi”.
They use definite articles with city names, for example: “the Moscow” or “the Sochi”.
Explanation: Please note: articles, as a rule, are not placed before city names. If you put an article, the word will have a different meaning: “a certain city of Sochi” (“the Sochi”) or “that very Moscow” (“the Moscow”). Here is an example of a sentence where you need to write an article before the name of the city:
This is the Moscow of my childhood. - This is (the same) Moscow of my childhood.
Mistaking adjectives for nouns when talking about countries, e. g. “I live in Russian.”
They confuse adjectives and nouns when talking about countries, for example, “I live in Russian” (“I live in Russian”).
Explanation: The error is that the country Russia in English will be “Russia”, and the name of the nationality “Russian” will be “Russian”. That is, you need to say “I am Russian, I live in Russia.” The names of countries and nationalities can be very similar, so it’s easy to get confused. To prevent this from happening in the future, practice using these words, for example, using tests on agendaweb.org and englishpedia.net.
Using (noun) + it is/are (adj) - for example, “my friend he is nice” instead of “my friend is nice”.
They construct a sentence incorrectly, for example, they put two subjects: “My friend he is nice” (“My friend he is nice”) instead of “My friend is nice” (“My friend is good”).
Explanation: Typical error in English sentence“My friend he is nice” is associated with the peculiarities of our colloquial speech. So, we can start saying the sentence “My friend...”, then we think and pause, and then we forget that we have already named the character, so we start saying again “... he is nice”. To eradicate such an absurd mistake, you need to train your conversational speech more often, then you will select words and speak faster, pauses and unnecessary subjects will disappear from the sentence.
Using “one” instead of an indefinite article, saying “I read one book” not “I read a book”.
Use the word “one” instead of the indefinite article, for example, “I read one book” rather than “I read a book”.
Explanation: The article “a”/“an”, although it comes from the numeral “one” (“one”), cannot always be replaced by this word. The word “one” should be used if you really need to indicate that you have read ONE book.
Asking “How is it named in English?” not “What"s it called in English?”.
They ask “How is it named in English?” instead of “What"s it called in English?”.
Explanation: Sentence “How is it named in English?” contains 3 errors at once: the word “called” is replaced with “named”, the word “what” with “how” and a completely Russified version of “on English” instead of “in English”. Note: “how” is usually used to clarify how something happens, for example, “How does it work?” ("How it works?"). Therefore, we cannot use this word in questions like “What is it called in English?”, “What do you think?”, in such cases we will say “What"s it called in English?”, “What do you think?” .
A student once said their wife was boring. They meant to say she was bored.
A student once said that “wife was boring” instead of “wife was bored”.
Explanation: In the sentence with a bored (not boring) wife, the student got confused with the adjectives. In such cases there is a simple rule. The ending -ed indicates the feeling of the person we are talking about in the sentence: “bored” - the wife was bored, she was bored. The ending -ing indicates to us the characteristics of the subject, that is, if a student wanted to characterize his wife as a boring person, he should really say “My wife was boring” (and then only if the wife does not know English:- )).
Another common error I"d like to mention is the confusion between “say” and “tell”.
Another common mistake I would like to mention is confusing the words “say” and “tell”.
Explanation: In fact, in English you should say “tell somebody” and “said to somebody”, for example:
I told him / I said TO him - I told him.
To understand in what cases to use the words “tell” and “say”, we suggest watching the following useful video. In it you will learn about another common mistake Russians make in English - the confusion of the words “hear” and “listen”.

Experience as a teacher: 8 years

Experience at Englex: 2 years

Interesting fact from biography: Worked for American Airlines for 17 years

My students like to ask: “how to say” instead of “how DO you say”? My students are not fond of the word “do” in any form.
My students like to ask “how to say” instead of “how DO you say.” My students don't like the word “do” in all its forms.
Explanation: This kind of error most often occurs because we are trying to literally translate the question “How to say...?” into English. However, in English such a question should be structured differently: you need to add the subject “you” (“you”) and the auxiliary verb “do”. Russian-speaking students quite often forget about the auxiliary verb when constructing interrogative sentences, which should not be done.
Also, they use the term “I should”, when they really mean “I have to”. My students like to put the word “to” after modal verbs e.g. “I should to...”. And, they hate prepositions.
They also use the expression “I should” when what they really mean is “I have to.” My students like to insert “to” after modal verbs, for example, “I should to”. And they hate English prepositions.
Explanation: After modal verbs the particle “to” is not placed (exceptions are “ought to”, “have to” and “be to”), you just need to remember this rule. The above modal verbs are translated differently: “should” - “should”, “have to” - “must”. To get used to speaking correctly and not to confuse “should” and “have to,” practice on our tests for the use of modal verbs in English.
Additionally, the mistake “say” and “tell” is something terrible. e.g. “he said me” or “she told that”.
On top of that, a mistake with the words “say” and “tell” is something terrible, for example: “he said me” or “she told that”.
Explanation: In addition to the previous explanations, watch this useful video from engvid, in which a native speaker briefly and clearly explains how not to get confused by the words “tell” and “say” in indirect speech.
One more thing. My students use question forms a lot when they make general statements. For example they might say "I don"t know who is he" or "I"m not sure where they are or where is it". They get the forms confused.
One more thing. My students use interrogative forms when making general statements. For example, they can say “I don"t know who is he” or “I"m not sure where they are or where is it.” They get confused in sentence construction.
Explanation: The sentences “I don"t know who is he” and “I"m not sure where they are or where is it” are formulated incorrectly because the student did not take into account that these are not questions, but statements with so-called indirect or embedded questions . Since the phrase is a statement, the structure of the sentence should be the same as in an affirmative, not an interrogative, sentence. The correct options are “I don"t know who he is” and “I"m not sure where they are or where it is.” In the article “Do you know what Embedded questions are? Built-in questions in English » you can study this rule in detail.

Pronouncing “clothes” with 2 syllables.
The word “clothes” is pronounced as /kləʊðəz/ (two syllables).
Explanation: Teacher Christine also mentioned the notorious mistake in pronunciation of the word “clothes”. Apparently, this is the “weak point” of many Russian-speaking students.
Saying the expression “Oy!” when they make a mistake which we would only use when we call someone or shout at them.
They say “Oops!” when they make a mistake, but we only use this word when we call someone out or yell at someone.
Explanation: As for the interjection “Oy!”, here students simply automatically pronounce the Russian “Oy!”, without thinking that in English it has a completely different meaning. Interjection “Oy!” in English it is similar to our “Hey!”, which we use to call out to someone, to attract someone’s attention. Therefore, it seems very strange to native speakers that we shout at them when we make a mistake

Experience as a teacher: 4 years