None of these mistakes is advanced. Each one is small, frequent, and easy to fix — and together they are the most common reason strong learners stay at Band 6. Fix two a week and your Writing and Speaking both move.
- Missing articles: “I am student” → “I am a student.” Nouns usually need a, an, the, or a plural.
- Third-person -s: “She go to work” → “She goes to work.” He/she/it always takes -s in the present simple.
- Comma splices: “I was tired, I went home” → split it, or join with “so”: “I was tired, so I went home.”
- Wrong tense in stories: drifting between past and present in one answer. Pick the past and stay there.
- Countable/uncountable mix-ups: “many informations” → “much information.” Information, advice, and equipment have no plural.
- Missing subject: “Is very important” → “It is very important.” English sentences need a subject.
- Double subjects: “My brother he lives in Canada” → “My brother lives in Canada.”
- Word order in questions: “Where you went?” → “Where did you go?”
- Overusing “will”: for plans already decided, use “going to” or the present continuous: “I am meeting him tomorrow.”
- Agreement after “there is/are”: “There is many people” → “There are many people.”
How to use this list: check your last piece of writing against all ten. Count how many you find. That count, repeated weekly, is the most honest progress score you have. Then build range with the Band 7+ grammar toolkit →