Common fossilised errors Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“i’m going to brazil ” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“How do you spell pie?” “P – E – I” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“He works in an office “He works in an office Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“They is very angry with James and Anna” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“I have 20 years” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“Can you borrow me a pencil?” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“It was so excited!” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

”I feeled sick.” “I felled in love.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“Look at this dresses.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

"The most places have problems." Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“He married your best friend.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“He work very hard.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“You are new here?” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“I am a lawyer for 10 years.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“He work-ed there all night.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“Are you coming?” “It depends of the weather.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“There’s lot of researches on this.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“When I was young, I usually would play football every day.” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“I've seen La La Land but I didn't like because it's boring." Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

"I have a doubt." Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“What?” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

“It’s three and thirty” Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

Answer key Capital letters Confusing ‘your’ with “his” or “her” Confusing ‘e’ with ‘i’ Third person –s Confusing he and she Question formation Subject verb agreement Overuse of the present simple, not using present perfect Using have not be to say age Pronunciation of –ed endings Confusing borrow and lend Dependent prepositions Switching –ed and –ing adjective endings Uncountable nouns Mistakes with the past forms of feel and fall Confusing ‘usually’ and ‘used to’ Missing object Writing this instead of these Confusing ‘doubt’ with ‘question’ Adding an unnecessary article Not using ‘pardon’ or ‘excuse me’ Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

Teachers’ notes Show students pictures on slides 2 to 23. Tell them these are typical mistakes that upper intermediate and above students make. Ask them to try and identify the errors. You can go through them as a class or ask them to work together in pairs and make a list. The answers are on slide 25. Show sts picture on slide 24. Tell them that they are going to read a story about this family. Can they predict what it will be about? (The following activity is adapted from Mess it Up, an activity in 52 by Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings.) Put students in groups of 5, give them the following text divided into 75 words chunks and ask them to read their section. They should not show it to the other members of their group: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qEdFzRWBE_o7IkuDkCcv_HGLBnAO- R0elfGubhmNuc0/edit?usp=sharing. Ask them to share what they've learnt from their paragraph. Together they should be able to piece it together. Make sure that they summarise the text and do not read from it, or show it to each other. Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

Teachers’ notes Check the story together as a class. By the way, I chose this story as it is an opportunity to teach the students some critical thinking and analytical skills, so try to embrace that. Ask them to rewrite the text on piece of paper but ask them to add mistakes into it. Ask them to imagine the kind of mistakes they might have made themselves and include them. Ask them to - mix up verb forms, change some spellings, swap words around etc. Ask students to swap texts around, and correct what they think is wrong. They can then check with the student who made the changes and see if they were right and what they missed. Created by James Taylor www.theteacherjames.com

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