Top Five Reasons Students Commit the Same Grammar Mistakes
 Students who commit the same grammar mistakes despite incessant drills,
review, and usage of grammar rules in examples often leave language teachers
wondering. Despite the multitude of activities, repetition of lessons, or even
the use of tutorials, there are always students who would eventually say or
write something like “She have a fever”. Upon reading or hearing this, the
teacher might be startled and even start to reflect on the effectiveness of his
or her teaching strategy. There absolutely is no exact solution to this as
students learn differently from each other. Fortunately, looking at underlying
reasons might help students stay on track and stop making mistakes.
Here are the top five reasons students commit the same grammar mistake:
1) Over-generalizations of Rules
 When students learn the rules of grammar, they might think one rule would apply
to many different situations. Learners tend to miss the exceptions of usage in
language. In the process of learning grammar, there seems to be a point when
students, both native and non-native, would overextend usage. When studying
tenses of the verbs, for example, students would most likely use, over extended
period of time, a certain tense in any given context. This would probably
continue until the day a new tense is introduced. It is then the role of the
teacher to provide practice of the points learned weeks or even months after
they were discussed. Doing this, the teacher can concentrate on correcting
mistakes that caused the confusion, and thus help decrease the amount of grammar
mistakes students are making.
2) Considering Grammar as Less Important
Many learners put lesser priority in using grammatically correct sentences
thinking that the ability to convey meaning and to be understood should come
first. When a student uttered an idea and received the kind of feedback sought
despite the grammar mistake, it might be concluded that the message was
correctly organized. This gives them the feeling that learning and following
correct grammar rules can be postponed and should not be given much effort for
the moment. For many, perfect grammar is not necessary for successful
communication. To be more effective, the teacher has to correct the mistakes by
comparing the messages conveyed when the sentence is grammatically correct or
not.
3) Grammar Lessons do not Match Language Levels
 In many language classes, students may appear to be equal in their understanding
of a language, but actually vary in their abilities This means that some may be
good at speaking but challenged in writing, or excellent at reading yet are
having difficulty with listening exercises. In most cases, many class members
might find grammar the most difficult, no matter how good they are at the macro
skills. There is evidence that says language learners pick-up grammar and
eventually halt making mistakes in usage at different periods given different
exposure levels. For example, there are students who are quick at getting the
concept of using “s” in the third person, always understanding the rules and the
exceptions. This does not apply to all class members though. Some rules, no
matter how simple, might be misinterpreted by students.
4) Confusion with L1 and L2 Grammar
Students who are speakers of languages with a similar structure to the target
language often learn faster than those whose first language exhibits no
likeness. When students are not proficient enough, they tend to find equivalents
in their native tongue to convey a message in the target language. Learning
grammar is especially challenging if students speak a particular dialect at
home. When the learner’s L1 is not widely understood by educators, students are
most likely unable to find help promptly and learn grammar as quickly as others.
Consequently, students who are caught in the middle of having to learn the
target language by force do not find any relevance in the learning process. This
causes them to stay away from learning the second language.
5) Having to Negotiate for Understanding
With the diversity of the classroom and the effort to get understood when using
the target language, students are most likely to alter structure and negotiate
meanings. In most cases, the learners attempt to communicate informally to a
classmate or a friend whose native tongue differs from his own. This results in
using sentences that are not grammatically correct to achieve communication.
When done regularly, the student might get used to the structures and ultimately
consider it correct and acceptable. When left unsupervised and uncorrected, the
student’s preference to make sentences without following the rules of grammar
gets fossilized and becomes even more difficult to change.
Summing Up
Teachers are often challenged in making students learn language successfully.
Despite their efforts, however, there seems to be a good number of students who
continue to commit the same grammar mistakes no matter how often they get
corrected. In this age of modernity, we tend to communicate via keyboards more
than verbally. Computers have auto corrections available. With many underlying
reasons affecting the ability to apply linguistic structures, it is quite
difficult to point specific reasons students commit mistakes in grammar.
Language is considered to be mainly for communicative purposes and straying from
standard usage leads to a poor ability to comprehend and difficulty developing
writing skills. Proper use of grammar ensures that we interpret the information
correctly the way the communicators intended.
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