Some common mistakes when speaking or writing English happen when people don't know the rules, and native speakers initially learn the language from people around them. So, if someone is exposed to less-than-perfect grammar when he is growing up, chances are he'll speak it that way until someone corrects him.
Most native English speakers recognize poor grammar when they hear it. Sentences like "He don't know" and "I did good on the test" just don't sound right to a majority of us, and so we know those sentences are using the wrong words in the wrong context.
Sometimes, though, when a student is learning, she'll make mistakes when she's trying to say something correctly, and the concept is still foreign to her. Instructors will sometimes see these kinds of mistakes in academic writing, and - unless they're English instructors - they don't always know how to correct them. If a student learns what the overcorrections are, though, they have a chance to improve. Without further ado, then, here are some examples of overcorrection mistakes.
Bad Versus Badly: Does a Person Feel Badly?
Students usually learn several times throughout the course of their early academic careers what adverbs are and how they work. An adverb modifies another word in a sentence, and it basically intensifies the word it is modifying. An adverb gives more details; it can tell how or when something happened, for example, or to what degree and more. The adverb "badly," however, is one that tells readers the manner in which something occurred. For example, in the sentence "I passed the test easily," the word "easily" is an adverb telling "to what degree" or "how much."
A correct way to use the adverb "badly" would be in this sentence: "She wanted the Corvette so badly she was willing to cheat her friends out of their money." This sentence tells readers how much she wanted the car.
So why is "badly" incorrect in the sentence "I feel badly"? It might seem to students that it indicates "to what degree." It does, but in a completely different manner. "Feel" in the sentence "I feel" indicates a state of emotion, but when the adverb "badly" is added to the sentence, the meaning of "feel" changes to the physical sense, indicating that, perhaps, there is something wrong with the person's fingers or hands. In other words, "badly" tells readers that the action of feeling is performed poorly.
Therefore, if a person is speaking about his emotions, he should always state that he feels "bad." "Feel" in this sense is a state of emotion, not an action, so the person will feel good or bad, unless he's talking about his technique.
I Versus Me: Can the Dog Go With Sally and I?
This is another area where students are trying hard to correct what they think is their poor grammar. Many students can remember mom or a teacher piping up in the middle of their sentence, "Sally and I." That, however, is when the student is beginning his sentence and "Sally and I" are the subjects. So, "Sally and me went to the park" is incorrect and should instead read, "Sally and I went to the park."
However, when these two people are moved from the subject of the sentence (what is performing the action) to the object (what the action is being performed upon), the way we read them should change. Students sometimes overcorrect because they hear that teacher or mom in the back of their head saying, "and I," but it's not always right. Here's why "Can the dog go with Sally and I to the park?" is not correct. The word "I" is always a subject and never an object. That same speaker wouldn't ask, "Can the dog go with I to the park?" No, she would instead say, "Can the dog go with me to the park?" Removing the other "person" out of the equation usually makes it easy for the writer to understand that the sentence should read this way: "Can the dog go with Sally and me to the park?"
Overcorrection Mistakes Can Usually be Fixed With a Little More Attention
Fortunately, these kind of errors are usually made by people who are trying to do well and are working from what they think are the correct rules. When they understand what the rules really are and why what these students have been doing isn't quite right, they can usually fix it!
Cynthia Jones-Shoeman - Cynthia (“Cindy”) Jones-Shoeman earned her MA in English from Colorado State University in 2007; her thesis was "Toni ...
