The 4 Most Dangerous Grammar Errors in IELTS Essay Writing

For the Writing Task 2 test of IELTS, Grammatical Range and Accuracy forms 25% of your overall grade. As students devote hundreds of hours in the acquisition of advanced vocabulary, the most basic structural errors in their writing are often not taken into consideration at all. According to the Band descriptors for achieving Band 7.0 or above in Grammatical Accuracy, the candidate must produce an essay with a high proportion of grammatically correct sentences. 

Thus, making the same structural mistakes repeatedly in your 250 word long essay can act as a ballast that will drag your score down irrespective of how creative your vocabulary and ideas may be. It is therefore vital to know about the four most common grammar mistakes and how to rectify them. Well, if you want to crack your IELTS exam on your first attempt and get more help with this. Then you can seek some guidance from the top-notch Best IELTS institute, which has a strong reputation for its quality services. 

The 4 Most Dangerous Grammar Errors in IELTS Essay Writing 

Read the following pointers to learn about the 4 most dangerous grammar errors in IELTS essay writing:

1. Improper Tense Changes

Changing verb tenses between sentences or paragraphs without appropriate temporal transition words or phrases leads to the disruption of coherent development of your arguments. The applicants tend to begin their discussion of general facts using present tense and then jump into past or past continuous tenses abruptly.

• Incorrect Combination of General Truths with Past Events: Application of past tense verbs in conveying eternal facts or general social trends disrupts the temporal sequence of your writing (for instance, "When people go to cities, they faced higher expenses" should be "When people go to cities, they face higher expenses").

• Improper Usage of Perfect Tense Forms: Application of the present perfect form (has/have + past participle) in denoting the completion of some action at a definite point in the past instead of simple past tense (for example, "In 2010, many states have applied green policies" should be "In 2010, many states adopted green policies").

• Tense Uniformity: It is necessary to stick to simple present tenses in discussing eternal truths or facts; apply perfect tenses in conveying ongoing social tendencies without any definite date; utilize simple past tenses only in case of certain historical events or data points.

2. Over-Use of the Passive Voice Resulting in Unnatural Syntax

Despite the importance of objectivity in academic writing, the abuse of passive voice in trying to appear formal tends to create complicated, incorrect, and unnatural syntax.

• The Absence of the Logical Subject-Agent: Over-using the passive voice so as to make the actor who performs the action ambiguous or completely absent (e.g. “Solutions should be implemented immediately” – leaving no one to implement the solutions?).

• Errors with Double Passives: The use of unnecessarily complicated passive constructions resulting in awkward structure-building (e.g. “It is believed that measures are needed to be taken by authorities” instead of “It is believed that authorities must take measures”).

• Achieving the Right Proportion of Active and Passive Voices: Employ active voice where the actor or the subject is known and significant and vice versa.

3. Inconsistent Parallelism in List Items and Comparisons

Parallelism is a structural requirement whereby there is consistency in grammatical form among the items in a list or comparison since they perform the same function in a sentence. Failure to observe parallelism in a list of causes, effects, or solutions results in inconsistencies in your writing.

• Inconsistency of Parts of Speech in a Series: Mixing nouns, verbs, and adjectives in a series violates the flow of the sentence (for example, "Benefits of physical exercise are stress reduction, weight loss, and to improve sleep" should have "stress reduction, weight loss, and improving sleep").

• Inconsistent Usage of Correlative Conjunctions: Lack of consistency in the grammatical structure of the clauses separated by correlative conjunctions such as not only... but also, either... or, or both... and (for example, "Higher education not only increases earnings but also enhances upward social mobility" with both clauses having verbs).

• Structural Consistency: Consistency in grammar among all items linked with conjunctions is required; they can be either gerunds (ing forms), infinitives (to + verb), or abstract nouns.

4. Incorrect Preposition Collocations

Prepositions (in, on, at, with, to, for, by) are notoriously problematic because academic English utilizes very fixed collocations, not translation. The misuse of the preposition that follows a verb, an adjective, or a noun indicates a failure to be nativelike to the examiner.

• Incorrect Use of Dependent Prepositions Following Nouns and Verbs: Utilization of the incorrect preposition following standard academic vocabulary (e.g., using “The reason of this problem” instead of “The reason for this problem”, or “Invest on infrastructure” instead of “Invest in infrastructure”).

• Incorrect Use of Prepositions in Graph/Task 2 Data Language: Incorrect utilization of prepositions when describing trend or statistic language (e.g., “An increase of 10%” refers to the total amount of increase, while “An increase to 10%” refers to the endpoint of the increase).

• Learning Permanent Preposition Collocations: Consider the preposition as always connected to the accompanying verb or noun, never the stand-alone word.

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Conclusion

Scoring Band 7.0 or above in IELTS Writing Task 2 doesn’t entail the need for writing unnecessarily complicated sentences loaded with archaic terms. By recognizing areas where you have weak grammar, using consistent tenses, ensuring good balance between active and passive voice, using parallelism and collocations, you will significantly raise your ratio of correct sentences and thus earn a high band score from the marker.