English Language

Spotting Errors

4,734 Questions
All Noun, Article, and Determiner Usage 629 Subject-Verb Agreement 529 Preposition and Phrasal Verb Choice 510 Tense and Time Sequence 429 Pronoun Agreement and Case 415 Adjective and Adverb Form 372 Idiom and Confusable Word Choice 367 Verb Complement and Mood 347 Sentence Structure and Modifier Placement 296 Conjunction and Connector Choice 228 Parallel Structure 220 Redundancy and Negation 148

Spotting Errors Questions

Multiple choice

Directions: Identify the part having an error.

  1. Even though he was over ninety

  2. he still enjoyed reading novels

  3. and sometimes spend

  4. an evening at the cinema.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The sentence uses the past tense 'enjoyed' in the second clause, so the verb in the third clause must also be in the past tense to maintain parallel structure. 'Spend' should be 'spent'.

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) At the party, (b) Sania ate pasta, drank coke (c) and was dancing salsa. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (c) is incorrect. The sentence lists the activities, which Sania did at the party – ate pasta, drank coke and was dancing salsa, which are all verbs and all verbs in a sentence must agree in tense and number. Here, the sentence contains two singular simple past tense (ate and drank), but one singular past progressive verb (was dancing). But, the verbs should all match. So, the correct should be, ‘danced’, instead of ‘was dancing’.

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) If one decides to over-speed for fun, (b) they must be willing (c) to pay the penalty. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (b) is incorrect. This sentence uses two pronouns – one and they. Here, when using ‘one’ as a pronoun referring to an unspecified person, the only acceptable match is ‘one’, and not ‘they’. So, the correct sentence should be, “ If one decides to over-speed for fun, one must be willing to pay the penalty”.

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) During the visit to Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (b) visited the store, the museum (c) and the church. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (d) is the correct option as the sentence has no error. Here, there is a list of places – like the store, the museum and the church, which are all singular nouns. Whatever grammatical form is applied to one item is applied to all items. There is grammatical consistency in the sentence. Thus, it is a correct sentence.

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) Either the union members or their leader (b) are going to talk (c) to the managing director. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (b) is incorrect.  Here, the correlative conjunction joining the subjects is "either/or". The verb must therefore agree with the subject closest to it, which is "leader", a singular noun. But, here the singular noun is not in agreement with the plural verb, ”are”. Thus, the proper verb form is the singular "is".

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) Being a youngster, he likes to (b) race cars, swim and (c) to ride fast motorcycles. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (c) is incorrect. In this sentence, there are a list of infinitive verbs – race cars, swim and fast motorcycles. With infinitives, the word ‘to’ must either go only before the first verb in the list or before every verb in the list. So, accordingly the correct sentence should be, “Being a youngster, he likes to race, swim and ride fast motorcycles.

Multiple choice

Directions: The sentence is underlined in four separate parts and is labelled a, b, c and d. Read the sentence and find the error. (d) signifies no error.

(a) On the school trip (b) to the mountains, the boys did (c) running, biking and hiked. (d) No error.

  1. (a)

  2. (b)

  3. (c)

  4. (d)
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Here, (c) is incorrect. Here, any list of activities (which the boys did) must be written in the same grammatical form. Whatever grammatical form is applied to one item is applied to all items. But, here running and biking end with “ing”, but hiked ends with “ed”. So, the correct would be,” running, biking and hiking”.