E-portfolio 6

Looking through my 2 essays, I have identified 3 common mistakes in my writing. My three most common mistakes are subject verb agreement, wrong word/word form, and inconsistency in my grammar such as missing articles and pronouns.

Firstly, in my essays, there were many errors regarding to Subject verb agreement (SVA). In order to make sure no mistake is make for SVA, there is a need to identify the subject and to determine if it is a plural or singular, followed by a verb form that accompany it. The difficult part for me would be to identify if the sentence has a SVA and which is the subject. For example, one of the sentences taken from my draft 2 assignment paragraph 1, “Among the alternative technologies that offer any potential for further development and sustaining the economy, bio fuel technologies stands out and should be adopted by countries.” The word “stands” should be plural because the subject is “technologies” and it is plural.

Secondly, many notations of word form (WF) and wrong word (WW) appeared in my essays. Though they may be minor mistakes, accumulating all these minor mistakes does not look good in my essays. For example, taken from writing assignment 1paragraph 4, “It can combat global warming in a global scale in an innovative way.” The wrong word is bolded. It should be replaced with the word “on” instead. Why I made this mistake was because the word “in” appeared in the later part of the sentence and therefore I decided to use “in” in the first part of the sentence.

Thirdly, there were many careless mistakes in my essays; most of them can be avoided. Some mistakes made were missing articles, pronouns and verb tense. For example, taken from assignment 1 paragraph 1, “The cause of global warming is due to increase in greenhouse gases mainly carbon dioxide in the Earth’s upper atmosphere …”. The missing article should come in at “due to the increase…”.

In conclusion, in order to reduce the percentage of making mistakes, after completion of an essay, it is advised to read through the essay at least twice to find any mistakes and to correct them.