[emile]

Based on y'all's experience, what are the top ten grammar or language errors ESL students make?

[mesmark]

S1: I like cat.
Mark: Kat's a lucky girl.

[susan53]

Some common ones for Italians -

-using the definite article with general statements : I like the music, I'm working on the energy efficiency.

- Use of a present form for past and present events, and confusion between since and forI live here since 10 years

- word order for adverbials, especially splitting a verb/object : I saw last week my mother; I bought only some books.

- Using used to in the present to mean usually : I use to go swimming every Friday.

- Using an infinitive after suggest : I suggest to stop now.

- confusing the sentence constructions of say and tell : She said me that ... (also : She explained us that ...)

- Using actually to mean currently : We're actually working on a new project

[livinginkorea]

Big one for Korea is between L and R, and between v, p and b.

Also many students get confused between HE and SHE.

The word order is different here as well so that causes more problems.

There is a huge effort by everybody to show off that they are using English but if you watch advertisments on the television you can hear a lot of Konglish (Korean~English mixed), which is clearly wrong to a native speaker but many Koreans don't know about it.

[jenniferp]

Also,
mis-using prepositions: I'll meet you at Saturday.
Either over-using or not using a, an, the: He went to [the] toilet,
or personal pronouns: He looked out of [his] window

I recently gave some incorrect grammar sentences to my high school students to correct and they had the most trouble understanding why the sentence
I have been in England 2 years ago
was incorrect. There are a lot of verb tenses in English that don't directly translate.

[clivehawkins]

Some more for the Italians:

My sister she lives in Spain. My dog it is brown.

I went to the shops for to buy some bread.

Is raining? Was difficult?

[michèle 2]

All of them in this thread !!! and : the last/next week /year/month ...

[simplyesl]

plurals
and using 'the' "I will eat the lunch."

[emile]

I can recognise almost all these errors in my own students. (Err... before I teach them, of course)

Notice that the most basic errors (articles, plurals) are the ones hardest to get rid of.

[HUE]

As the posts indicate, there are universals like articles and plurals. There are also problems that come in at the lower levels because of direct translation. For example, low level Japanese speakers of English tend to use the present progressive far too much, because it's often used in Japanese. But even at higher levels, the errors that students make tend to result from their native language.

Then there's culture to consider. How much of the students' culture gets translated (or mistranslated) into English? For example, Japanese are often accused of being indirect by Westerners, because of the whole upsetting the harmony thing. Wouldn't this also be an error of language, albeit a slightly different one, because one needs to understand the culture that goes along with langauge?

[Manuela]

I alsofind that most of the mistakes have as their source the kids' native language.
Greek learners have problems pronouncing "treasure" "join", they have difficulty understanding the diference in pronunciation between "sip" and "ship" since "s" and "sh" are interchangeable in Greek, without triggering any change in meaning.
Greek students have to learn to introduce themselves as:"I'm Mary" not "I'm the Mary" and they confuse the simple present with the present progressive forming a mixture of both that produces utterances of the type"Where are you live?" "I am live in Athens." I have to work really hard to get students to get rid of this "new" tense.