Error Spotting

Growing up, we’re taught to check our spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. The ability to spot such mistakes is essential to writing properly.

Error spotting involves checking whether the provided sentence is grammatically correct or not. A candidate has to be familiar with different parts of grammar such as Nouns, Pronouns and Verbs to spot the error in sentences. It requires mastery over language to consider both the given and sample sentences to spot the error. For example, the word “while” is incorrect since it should be “where”.

List of common errors

1. Nouns

-When a number of living or non-living beings is denoted by a singular noun, the combination is considered a single entity. E.g. police, clergy, people, cattle, peasantry etc.

-When a noun denotes money, weight or measurement that comes after a number of living or non-living beings. E.g. million, pair, year, dozen, meter

-When a noun is of the plural form, it takes a plural verb. For example – Clothes, Scissors, trousers, amends, spectacles etc.

For example: The clothes are lying on the bed.

2. Pronoun

A Pronoun is a word that displaces a Noun. It is used to avoid unnecessary repetition of words.

– A Pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number, gender and person.

-A pronoun may refer to nouns that precede or follow it.

-The Relative Pronouns are who, which, whose, whom and that.

-An Adjective may be used as a pronoun when it conveys the idea of all, none, some etc.

3. Adjective

Adjectives are words used to describe the qualities and characteristics of nouns and pronouns. Adjectives are words that give us information about nouns. They tell us what kind, which one, how many or how much about the nouns.

Adjectives with two or more syllables:

When an adjective has two or more syllables, we usually use ‘more’ before the adjective and ‘most’ in its superlative degree.

We also use ‘less’ before the adjective and ‘least’ before the adjective in its superlative degree.

Without using ‘more’, ‘less’ and ‘most’, adjectives with two or more syllables can be used in their comparative and superlative degrees by adding –er and –est after them, respectively.

If an adjective ends in a consonant plus y, we change y into I before adding -er/-est to form comparatives/superlatives.

4. Adverb

An adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of an adjective or verb. Some adverbs create confusion in mind because of their same meaning. Two of these words include less and fewer. ‘Fewer’ denotes number while ‘Less’ denotes quantity. Adverbs such as little, a little, the little are used in various other sentences.

1) I have less money than you.

2) There were fewer people at the party than we had expected.

3) She gave me a little advice, but it was useful all the same.

4) The weather has been very dry for a little while now.

5) She wrote to him once or twice, but he answered her only once or twice in return; she received few letters from him in all. 

Direction(1. & 2.) :

The following passage has not been edited. There is one error in each line. Write the incorrect word and the correction in your answer sheet against the correct question number. Remember to underline the word you have supplied. The first one has been done as an example.

1.

The giant whale are very harmless animals.                             a

Their head is about one-third the size of a huge                      b

body and in it sweep great quantities of tiny fish                     c

 and sea-weed. Inside the mouth there is not teeth.                d

 But a arrangement of thin bones which                                   e

catch the food; so the whale sucks                                            f

down an endless meal as it move.                                             g

These food is stored in the whale’s body                                   h

 as a layer in fat.                                                                           i

2.

 Rama was a naughty boy that lived                                          a

in the village of Tenali. Her mother                                             b

 did not know what to do at him                                                 c

 since he refused to study or did any                                          d

work. One day she take him to see                                             e

a guru. She told an holy man                                                       f

 that she were washing her hands                                               g 

 off her son since he should                                                          h

make something about him.                                                         i                     

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that the error spot plays an important role not only in scoring well but also to become a good writer and editor. It is needed in the English section of IBPS & SBI exams. Candidates preparing for these exams can practice this part to score high.

So the main points to be considered while attempting an error spotting are: (i) Exact repetition of signal words, (ii) Wrong spelling, (iii) Punctuation Errors, (iv) Verb Tenses, (v) Article Errors. Apart from these, the other important point is that sentences are not formed in letter writing/email form as it may create a wrong understanding of the sentence. Error spotting is the backbone of effective reading.