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I've finally thought of a story I could use for a sequel for my Becca series... If anyone is still interested.

I hope you can help me. I'm searching for common mistakes children make when learning to write English. Wrong spelling or grammar mistakes or whatever you can think of that would be subject of an excercise. It should be something pretty boring to do.

Any ideas?

When he was a boy, my dad had difficulties saying his R's, and he was taught to spell how it sounded. Poor guy got laughed at by the other students for spelling it 'wadio!'

My son had HUGE issues with plain old common words. He would spell them phonetically. So 'was' became 'wuz' or 'waz'; 'were' = 'wer', 'would, could, should' were 'wod, cod, shod', 'please' was 'plez' and so on.

Does that help?

I remember I had a heck of a time learning how to spell "friends." In fact I vividly remember sitting in my chair in the 1st grade and crying because that word was so gosh darned hard! Finally my mom went "say it fast -- FR---IE--NDS" and the nds was my favorite part because you said it really fast... Wow... Totally didn't mean to just relate all of that unnecessary personal history right there. But that might be too long of a word for the age you're thinking of...

Thanks a lot for your examples, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind.

German kids have a lot of trouble knowing if a word ends with k or g, d or t.

like Zwerg (which means dwarf) you don't hear it's a g. It could as well be a k. The plural gives the g away. Zwerge has an obvious g in it. So that's what you're doing. You've got a list of words and write the plural form. That's darn boring.

Is there anything similar in English?

Hmm. You could try learning to form contractions - that's one of the activities my kids do quite a few of at a time and tend to get bored with.

cannot - can't
would not - wouldn't
I am - I'm
will not - won't
etc., etc.

And most children, at first, have trouble remembering where to put the apostrophe.

Also, your example from German works in English. Some plurals are easy - just add an 's' - but others are harder. If the word ends in ch, sh, z, s, ss, or x, you add 'es' to form the plural. If the word ends in a vowel plus y, you add an 's' (keys). If the word ends in a consonant plus y, you change the y to i and add 'es' (babies). There are more, but you get the idea .

Another potentially tricky spelling exercise could be practicing adding prefixes and suffixes to root words. For instance:

change - changing - changeable

You drop the e to add the '-ing' suffix, but don't to add the '-able' suffix, because the g needs either an i or an e to make its soft sound. Things like that drive my kids bananas!

Is this more the kind of thing you're looking for? I can expand on something here if you want me to, but I don't want to bore you if I'm on the wrong track

Best,

Caroline

Thanks, Caroline, that's perfect. There are several things that can bore you to no end. Hehe! Thanks!

One more question... do english kids always remember the s after he, she, it? Or is that a mistake they would make when learning to write English?

You're very welcome . Glad something there helped!

I'm not completely sure I understand your question. By "the s after" do you mean he's, she's, and it's? If so, those are contractions of he is, she is, and it is. Many Americans (and not just children) do confuse its (the possessive pronoun) and it's (a contraction of it and is). But maybe that's not what you mean?

Caroline

I can't tell you how confused I was when I was told that more than one ox was oxen! And that plural for box and fox wasn't boxen or foxen, but boxes and foxes. Confused my little brain!

And Laura, I ALWAYS had problems with friend. I think someone told me that the end of friend was end. Or something. That or the whole 'i before e' thing.

Hmmm, I think I understand what Barbara means. Do English-speaking kids always remember to put an 's' at the end of the verb when they talk about him/her/it doing something? Do the kids remember to say "I smile, you smile, he smiles, she smiles"? Do they remember to always use "does" instead of "do" for the third person, present tense? Do they always remember to say "Do you live here, and does your neighbour live over there?"? (And do they remember to say, "No, the neighbour I usually talk about doesn't live in that house, he lives across the road"?)

I know that I must have missed a fair number of the s's that should have been there at the end of some of the innumerable verbs in all the sentences I've posted here. I've probably put a few s's there which shouldn't have been there, too. Because even though I know where there should be an 's', and why, I often find it darn hard to remember to put it there, except on those occasions when I can't remember not to put it there! Today, for example, I saw an article about Harry Potter, and there was a sentence that went something like this: As Harry grows older, do his powers also grow? Boy, did I do a double-take at that "do his powers also grow". I would automatically have written "does his powers also grow". But of course, in this clause we need "do" instead of "does". Because it's the powers (note the plural form of "power"), not the boy, that grow in this clause. I still find it darn hard not to put that rascal of an 's' there!!!

Ann

Ah, I get it now!

My experience, both personally and teaching my children, is that growing up in a home where standard English is spoken helps children to internalize verb conjugations as they're learning to speak. So by the time they're learning formal grammar in school, remembering to put the s on regular present tense verbs after the third person pronouns really isn't very difficult. They might not be able to articulate the rule, but they can usually choose the right form of the verb. There are certainly grammar exercises, however, where the children have to circle or otherwise identify the correct form of different verbs based on the subject of the sentence, so if you particularly want to use that in your story, there's no reason you couldn't do it .

Best,

Caroline

*Brain goes 'splodey at all the grammar talkin', especially with all them thar big words*

I totally should have paid more attention in ninth grade english, which was the last time we studied grammar.

Come to think of it, I shouldn't have failed the class, either. :p

(Yes yes, I failed ninth grade English.)

Hmmm,
Caroline my experience is more that even when children grow up with parents speaking "proper" English (using correct grammar etc.) those simple grammatical errors such as plurals and verb tenses are not really ironed out fully until at least 2nd grade, so that kindergarteners still spell really badly with extremely poor grammar.

I remember something from uni where they said this was a neurological phenomenon due to the children applying commonly used syntax rules to all situations, unless specifically told otherwise...

but I cannot remember the exact age at which this stops, and it is quite normal, for example, for children to say add the "-ed" (past perfect) suffix for all words where they do not know the correct form:
eg. GROW--GROWING--GROWED (instead of grew)

or RUN--RUNNING--RUNNED (or "runed")

in this case children may also forget to DOUBLE the final consonant before adding "ING" or "ED"-even though "ED" is wrong, in cases where ED is correct they still forget to double the consonant...


OH and in my experience they NEVER use apostrophes correctly to show ownership, and the most common mistake ever (even amongst adult writers of English) is:

IT'S (it is)
vs. ITS (belonging to It-its colour was red...)

All the spelling rules we learned as kids were hard because there are always exceptions. Some of the RULES:

1. i before e except after c rule - but then there are expections to that rule. Like receive but there is beige.
2. Then there is the rule about doubling the last consonant before adding ing unless it has 2 vowels before it like barring and bearing.

And I remember having problems with dessert and desert.

Then there are the words that sound alike but are spelled differently such as:
pole or poll
steak or stake
stare or stair
hear or here
bare or bear
hair or heir
there or their
the or thee
as some examples.

No wonder people think English is hard.

I have seen young children who used the letter "z" a lot in place of "s," for example, "wuz" instead of was. Another error is leaving out the c in words spelled with a ck, like back. A third is failing to change a y to an ie for a plural. (One puppy, two puppies.)

Among older children, I think one of the most common problems is the "i before e except after c."

There are also a lot of words that are commonly mispronounced, with extra syllables inserted, so they get misspelled too. It drives me nuts when people say "mis-chee-vee-us" when they mean mischievous. (And did I get the i and e in the right order?)

And I would echo what other people have said about misuse of apostrophes--most adults don't use them correctly, either. I don't know how many times I have seen plurals spelled with an apostrophe that did not belong there. (Antiques's for sale, anyone?)

Hope this helps.

hmmm
KMAR
I don't know how common it would be for a 6-8yr old to mistake THEE instead of THE
unless they may perhaps be rewriting the entire works of Shakespeare.

but then again, who knows?


another common thing is MUM Vs MOM
although this may not come up in the states as much... but Aussie children watching way too much American TV tend to get confused quite a bit... but probably not what you were looking for, however the cross-atlantic spelling differences may be of interest......


I remember reading an analysis that said in that particular case, (I think it was Webster, or whoever wrote your first dictionary) the MUM from Britain was replaced with MOM because it was easier to read when written in cursive script... something to do with the number of vertical strokes placed next to each other on the page....