Common Grammar Errors Junior Cycle Examiners Flag

Junior Cycle English · Grammar & Language

A handful of grammar slips turn up in answer after answer. They are small. They are quiet. And they quietly cost you marks. The good news is that there are only a few of them, and once you know what they look like, you can catch them when you check your work. Here are the ones examiners flag most often, with a wrong version and a right version of each.

Why these matter

Examiners are not hunting for tiny mistakes so they can take marks off you. But clear, controlled writing reads better, and writing that reads better scores better. When your sentences hold together, your ideas come through. When they wobble, the examiner has to work harder to follow you, and your point gets lost.

The errors below are not rare or tricky. They are the everyday slips that creep in when you write fast. Learn the shape of each one. Then you will spot them in your own work before anyone else does.

Tense slips

This is when you jump between past and present without meaning to. You start a story in the past, then drift into the present halfway through, then back again. The reader feels the jolt even if they cannot name it.

Wrong: She walked into the room and sees her brother sitting there.

Right: She walked into the room and saw her brother sitting there.

Pick a tense and hold it. Most stories work fine in the past tense. Decide before you start, and keep your verbs in line with that choice all the way through.

Subject-verb agreement

The verb has to match the subject. A singular subject takes a singular verb. A plural subject takes a plural verb. The trouble comes when a long phrase sits between the two and pulls your ear the wrong way.

Wrong: The group of students were late.

Right: The group of students was late.

The subject is group, not students. One group. One was. When a sentence gets long, find the real subject and check the verb against that, not against the nearest noun.

Run-ons and comma splices

These two are cousins. Both happen when you push two full sentences together without the right join.

A run-on has no join at all. Two complete sentences crash into each other with nothing between them.

Wrong: The match was over we walked home in the rain.

A comma splice uses only a comma, which is not strong enough to hold two sentences together.

Wrong: The match was over, we walked home in the rain.

You have three easy fixes. Use a full stop. Use a joining word like and, but or so. Or use a semicolon if the two parts are closely linked.

The match was over, so we walked home in the rain. One corrected version, using a joining word

Sentence fragments

A fragment is a piece pretending to be a sentence. It has no main verb, or no subject, so it cannot stand on its own.

Wrong: Because she was tired.

Right: She went to bed early because she was tired.

Now, a word of fairness. Skilled writers use fragments on purpose, for punch. Silence. Then a knock. That is a choice, and it can work. But an accidental fragment, the kind that slips in when you lose your thread, just reads as a mistake. If you use one, use it on purpose. If you are not sure, give it a subject and a verb.

Its vs it’s

This one trips up nearly everyone, so it is worth a clear rule.

It’s with an apostrophe is short for it is or it has. Its with no apostrophe shows belonging.

Wrong: The dog wagged it’s tail.

Right: The dog wagged its tail.

The test is quick. Read it as it is. If that makes sense, use the apostrophe. The dog wagged it is tail is nonsense, so you want its. For more on apostrophes, see our punctuation page.

How to catch them

You do not need to memorise grammar rules to fix these. You need a method. When you check your work, read it back slowly, one sentence at a time. Do not skim. Read each sentence as a sentence and ask one question of it: does this stand on its own and say what I meant?

Most errors give themselves away when you slow down. A run-on will run out of breath. A tense slip will sound odd in your head. A fragment will feel unfinished. Your ear knows more than you think. You just have to give it time to listen.

Using This in the Exam

You will not have long to check, so use the time well. Spend your last few minutes reading back, not rewriting. Hunt for these few errors rather than trying to fix everything at once.

How to use it: In the final five minutes, read your answer one sentence at a time, under your breath if you can. Watch for the big four: a verb that switches tense, a verb that does not match its subject, two sentences joined by only a comma, and a fragment with no main verb. Fix the ones you find. You will not catch every slip, but catching three or four clean mistakes lifts the whole answer.

In short

A handful of grammar errors do most of the damage, and they are all fixable. Hold one tense. Match your verb to its real subject. Join full sentences with a full stop or a joining word, never a lone comma. Keep a subject and a verb in every sentence unless you are dropping a fragment on purpose. And let it’s mean it is, nothing else. Learn the shape of these five, read back slowly, and you will fix them before they ever cost you a mark.