Wild Rose Learning

Here’s how to teach your kids correct writing.

Many kids learn speech by hearing their peers and by consuming media.

This isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes what they adopt as normal speech is incorrect.

For example, I had a student who was constantly on social media and talked like the people she watched. She used a lot of slang, and frequently left out verbs or subjects in her sentences.

The sentences she said and wrote were understandable, but they were grammatically incorrect, which makes them wrong.

Being her tutor, I was constantly fixing her writing and explaining to her why she couldn’t use a certain term or why she had to rewrite her sentences.

After teaching her (and other students) for months, I noticed there were certain mistakes a lot of kids make.

So, here are 3 common writing mistakes kids make and how to correct them.

1) Missing Verbs

I had a student who frequently didn’t add verbs to her sentences.

She would say, “My mom here,” whenever she saw her mom come in to pick her up.

She also wrote her sentences this way, too. So, I had to tell her that some of her sentences were incomplete and that she had to add verbs to them.

At first, she told me she forgot what a verb was. I told her a verb is a showing word and there are action (ie. jump, work, eat) and non-action (ie. is, are, was, were, will) verbs.

“So, you can’t write, ‘My mom here.’ The correct way to write this is, ‘My mom is here.”

She struggled with this for a while, but I kept reminding her.

In her writing, I underlined all of the sentences that were missing verbs and double-underlined where the verbs would go. And when she told me something, I corrected her when her sentences were incomplete.

It took a long time and a lot of reminders, but she eventually understood the rule and applied it.

2) Forgetting Commas

A lot of kids don’t know how to use commas. They also don’t think commas are important.

There was this kid I tutored who never used commas in his writing. I kept reminding him to use them, but he didn’t care to add them.

So in one of our sessions, I gave him a worksheet with an example that explained the importance of commas.

It had two sentences on it. The first one said:

Let’s go eat grandma.

The second one said:

Let’s go eat, Grandma.

“This is why commas are important,” I said. “If you don’t add them, readers will misinterpret what you’re trying to say; they won’t understand you.”

“Okay, I see why commas are important now.,” he replied.

He started adding more commas to his writing, but he was using them incorrectly. He added them as spacers for when he felt the reader needed a breather.

So, to teach him the rules, I had him do more comma worksheets. I also forced him to proofread his work doublefold. And if I found any comma mistakes in his writing, I underlined them and made him fix them himself.

He didn’t get all of the rules down immediately (which he shouldn’t because he’s just started learning them), but he was understanding a few of them.

3) Using “Am” Incorrectly

I’ve noticed that the verb “am” is confusing for many new English speakers.

They’ll often replace it with “is” or vice versa. For example, they’ll say, “He am here” or “I is there.”

(Correct use: “He is here.” | “I am there.”)

You can understand what they’re saying, but similar to sentences without verbs, it’s incorrect.

I’ve had many newcomer students whose first language isn’t English. So, to teach them this rule, I had to constantly remind them and correct their word use in their writing and speech.

I also gave them grammar and reading comprehension worksheets, so they could learn and practice the rules.

Over time and after a lot of repetition, they picked up the rules and applied them correctly.

Final Thoughts

These sentence mistakes are easy to correct if the student works on understanding and applying the rules.

One of the best ways to understand the rules is to practice them with workbooks because they are great for teaching and drilling grammar rules to kids.

After they learn the lesson, they can immediately practice what they just learned.

If this sounds like it can help your kid, check out my English grammar workbooks here.