This introduction is a little longer than usual, so if you want to skip to the free worksheets below, feel free! If you want to learn more about this activity and how it evolved, please read on…

• This is an activity that I devised to help my students recognise, learn, and eventually (hopefully) avoid their most common errors in English classes.
• The students were all adults working individually or in small groups; they are professional business people working for a large corporation. They need to write and speak English every day to communicate with colleagues from around the world.
• During each class I made notes of their errors in use of English and pronunciation. I also noted new words. After about a month I was able to compile the first Bingo Board, featuring 20 errors that they were making the most often. It wasn’t a scientific process, but they seemed to have a problem with these points. I gave a copy to each student and we went through each error, with them making notes. I tried to elicit the correction, e.g. not ‘Why you…?’ but ‘Why do you…?’ for example. Where I couldn’t elicit the correction I told them what was wrong. They had their notes and were supposed to learn the board at home in readiness for the next class.
• We met twice a week and we started with the Bingo Board for about 15-20 mins each lesson (90 mins). It became a routine and something they were expecting. I asked random students to give me the correction of, say, number 10. In this way, we focused on their specific errors at the beginning of each lesson for around a month – until I created the next board (there are more in the series). After a few lessons the students had to correct the errors without looking at their board. In this way they had to regularly focus on and  memorise their most common errors and the typical corrections.
• They were called bingo boards because the original intention was to cross off errors as I heard them during each class. If I got a vertical or horizontal line I would shout ‘Bingo!’ It did not become that prescriptive in the end, but often when students recognised an error from the board – whether they or a colleague had made the error – they would shout “Bingo!” The aim was to often and systematically present students with their errors so that when they made them ‘in the wild’ – in real spoken or written English – they would recognise them and immediately correct them.
• Over time students reported informally and unprompted that they had learned many of the errors and were able to use the structures correctly in spoken and written English. Other errors proved more difficult to eradicate and continued to pop up from time to time. We are working on them!
• While these boards were developed specifically to deal with the spoken errors of Polish students, there is plenty of universality to the errors made – e.g. problems with question forms – and I hope that other students will be able to use and benefit from these boards. There is also a blank bingo board where you can insert your or your students’ errors to personalise it.
• After three boards with tips I decided to make it harder for them and therefore stopped providing tips. I wanted them to learn the errors – cause and correction – without permanent tips. This also had the advantage of leaving more free space for them to write notes, which they had needed with the previous boards.

Below you can find each error along with a suggested correction in bold (answers may vary in some cases), the original tip, and a little commentary, where necessary. You can also download Bingo Board #1 and a blank bingo board. I hope you find this material helpful. If you do, why not get in touch and let me know. You can also leave a comment or review below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Error Correction – Bingo Board #1:

Direct download: https://purlandtraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/error-correction-bingo-board-1.pdf

Error Correction – Bingo Board (Blank):

Direct download: https://purlandtraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/error-correction-bingo-board-blank.pdf

Error Correction – Bingo Board #1

1. why you … ?    wh + aux + subject + verb

Why do you …?

2. I need go …    need + noun / need to + infinitive

I need to go

3. my friend are …    singular / plural confusion

my friend is  or  my friends are

4. all people    sounds like ‘old people’; we have a single word for this

everybody  or  everyone

5. I must to go …    modal verb + infinitive; must / have to

I must go    after modal verb: bare infinitive

6. people  /i/    wrong vowel sound

Pee pl – people has a long  ee  sound on the first (stressed) syllable, not a short  i  sound

7. how to say … ?    wh + aux + subject + verb

how can I say …?  or  how should I say …?  (various answers are possible)

8. if I will go …    1st conditional: present simple + future simple

if I go …    we never use will in the if-clause

9. he told that …    tell + object pronoun

he told me / her that …    we need an object pronoun after tell

10. he want …    present simple: s form for third person

he wants …

11. she said me …    no object pronoun after say

she said …  or  she said x to me    see also #9 above

12. we have much time    much in negative + question forms

we have a lot of / plenty of time

13. I think yes    direct translation from L1

I think so

14. two persons    wrong word – too formal

two people

15. she goes also …    mid-position adverbs go before the main verb (after BE)

she also goes …  or  she goes … as well / too

16. how it look like?    how + aux + subject + look? / what + aux + subj + look like?

how does it look?  or  what does it look like?

17. hospital  /a/    schwa sound (unstressed) in suffix

Ho spi tl – the letter ‘a’ in hospital is pronounced with a schwa sound, not  /a/ 

18. go to home    in this sentence ‘home’ is an adverb, not a place with ‘to’

go home

19. she didn’t saw …    use infinitive in past simple negative

she didn’t see

20. it’s somebody here    there’s + noun = existence / place; it’s + adj = describe sth

there’s somebody here

– – – –

With thanks to the students involved, who consented to the publication of this Bingo Board.

This material is completely free to use, so please feel free to share it widely!

If you have any feedback about these free resources, we’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment or review below or on Facebook or Twitter.