To get a good score in the writing portion of the IELTS, you need to have accurate grammar,
but also to have a good range of grammar.
What does it mean to say that your grammar has good accuracy and range?
- good control of tenses
- a mix of shorter, simple and longer, more complex sentences
- more difficult structures like conditionals,relative clauses and passive voice (where appropriate)
- 'little words' like articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs being used correctly
- an understanding of subject-verb agreement, and countable and uncountable nouns.
Practice activity 9 .1: Identifying errors
Here is an extract from a student essay. The paragraph contains ten common grammatical
errors. Can you identify all of them?
One step government could take to reduce peoples water consumptions would be to
have more water restrictions and stricter penalties for those what do not comply. At the
moment in western australia, people is only permitted to water their lawns in particular
days and within particular hours. These Law were in place for a number of years, however,
many people flaunt them, knowing they they are unlikely to be punish and that even if they
are caught the penalty will likely only be a fine minor. If people knew, the restriction's
would be policed more strictly, they will have more incentive to follow the rules.
The paragraph also contains five punctuation errors. Can you identify them?
When you think you've found all 15 mistakes, turn to the following page to see the
answers.
Grammar errors
- the government: missing article
- consumption: uncountable noun
- those who/that do not comply: incorrect relative pronoun
- people are only permitted: subject-verb agreement error
- on particular days: incorrect preposition
- These laws: missing plural 's'
- these laws have been in place: incorrect tense
- unlikely to be punished: passive voice error
- a minor fine: incorrect word order
- they would have more incentive: conditionals error
Punctuation errors
- people's: missing apostrophe
- Western Australia: missing capital letters
- ; however, or. However,: using a comma incorrectly
- if people knew the: unnecessary comma
- restrictions: unnecessary apostrophe
Here is the same paragraph written in a different way. This time it is very accurate, but
what is the problem with it?
The government should have more regulations about water. They should police the
rules strictly. In Western Australia people can only use water sometimes. They can't use
too much water. However, many people don't follow the rules. They don't care because
they don't think the police will catch them. The police might catch them, but the police will
only give them a minor fine. The government should be more strict. People will obey the
rules more.
This paragraph has no grammatical errors, but it still would not get a high score. Why not?
Because there is not enough range of grammar. The only tenses being used are
present simple or future 'will'. All of the sentences are very short and simple. There are no
conditionals, passives, relative clauses or any other complex grammatical structures.
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