Common Errors (Error Spotting)
Every ASO paper has error-spotting questions. Read the whole sentence, find the subject and the verb, then check each part against this checklist. Detailed rules are in each grammar topic's notes.
Checklist (in this order)
- Subject–verb agreement: each/every/one of → singular; the number of → singular, a number of → plural; news/mathematics → is; cattle/police → are; as well as → first subject; neither…nor → nearer subject.
- Tense: yesterday/ago/last → simple past (not has/have); since/for → perfect; if/when/till clause → present for future; reported past → past.
- Verb form after a word: modal/did/let/make/had better + V1; avoid/enjoy/look forward to/be used to + -ing; want/decide/refuse + to-V1.
- Pronoun case: between you and me; let you and me; It is I who am; its (not it's) for possession; one … one's.
- Articles: an hour, a university, a European; no article with abstract nouns in general sense; the + river/superlative.
- Prepositions: senior to, prefer to, married to, good at, afraid of, die of; no preposition after discuss, enter, reach, describe, marry.
- Adjectives/adverbs: no double comparatives/superlatives; unique not compared; fewer (countable) vs less; elder (family) vs older; works hard (not hardly); speaks well (not good).
- Conjunction pairs: although … (no but); no sooner … than; hardly/scarcely … when; both … and; neither … nor; the reason … is that; unless (no not).
- Nouns: advice, information, furniture — no plural, no "an"; sisters-in-law; a ten-year-old boy; ten years' experience.
- Redundancy: return back, repeat again, cooperate together, the most cleverest.
- Word confusion: lay (put) – laid; lie (rest) – lay – lain; hanged (person) vs hung (thing); each other (two) vs one another (more).
- Dangling participle: Walking on the road, a dog bit him ✗ → While he was walking…, a dog bit him ✓.
Choose "No error" only after checking every part.