How to avoid native speaker mistakes and get a better job

Avoiding typical native speaker mistakes is easier than you think. If you can do this, you're already ahead of many job applicants in the UK.

A recent report in the UK criticises the lack of basic literacy and numeracy skills among school leavers. The report was based on a survey of 140 companies with a total of more than 900,000 full-time employees. The report shows that one in three businesses has to send staff for remedial lessons in basic literacy and numeracy skills.

In almost every company surveyed for the report, managers complain that many employees find it difficult or impossible to write well in English. Some companies need to use standard letters as staff are unable to write a letter to a customer. One senior manager commented that even university graduates cannot write without making grammatical and spelling errors. Complaints include the growing use of 'text speak' and employees having difficulty in writing in a style appropriate to a business situation.

Here are a couple of examples of typical native speaker mistakes. Can you spot the errors?

Mistake 1 (from an email)

Dear Teacher,
At Pearson Longman we really value the feedback we get from teachers. We would really like to hear your views on what are the most important factors that you think about when choosing to adopt a coursebook. We would be greatful if you could take 5 minutes to complete our online Course Adoption Survey…..

Mistake 2 (from a post on a forum)

Yesterday I saw a pair of shoes on a girl that I loved and hadn't seen in shops.

The first mistake is a spelling mistake: "greatful" should be spelled "grateful". A spell check would have found this error.

The second mistake is a grammatical mistake. The relative pronoun "that" refers to the girl, not to the shoes. The author means to say she loved the shoes and she hadn't seen them in shops. Instead, her sentence means she loves the girl, and hadn't seen her in shops. She could have written "Yesterday I saw a pair of shoes that/which I loved and hadn't seen in shops". Or she could have written "Yesterday I saw a pair of shoes on a girl which I loved and hadn't seen in shops." (Because We often use "that" instead of "who" to refer to people, using "which" to refer to objects would make it clear that the writer is talking about the shoes and not the girl.)

So how do you avoid making native speaker errors?

Firstly, check your spelling. A spell check will often pick up the most glaring mistakes, but because some words that sound the same are written differently, you should also check for meaning. Many native speakers would write "their" instead of "there", or "to" instead of "too". A spell check won't pick up these errors for you.

Be careful of spelling / grammatical mistakes that are caused by pronunciation. Auxiliary verbs are often not stressed when we speak, and "have" in the sentence "We would have informed you" would be pronounced as "of". Some native speakers write "we would of informed you" as this is what the sentence sounds like.

Secondly, check punctuation. Apostrophes tend to cause the biggest headache for native speakers, and confusion between "it's" (it is or it has) instead of "its" (possessive adjective) is common.

Thirdly, keep your grammar simple to avoid mistakes such as in the second example. If you use a simple word order (such as subject - verb - object - manner - place - time), you can avoid many potential problems. Make sure that relative pronouns such as "that" refer to the correct subject, and if necessary, limit the number of subjects that you have in a sentence.