Under the patronage of the Dean of the College of Science for Women, Dr. Sameera Naji Khdim, the Continuing Education Unit at our college held a workshop entitled “Common Errors in the English Language.” The session was delivered by Dr. Asmaa Mahdi Saleh and Dr. Busuad Maher, and was attended by a number of faculty members, staff, and students.
The workshop aimed to acquaint attendees with the most common linguistic errors made by researchers or postgraduate students, exploring the causes behind these mistakes and methods for avoiding them.
The errors were classified into grammatical errors, such as subject-verb disagreement, incorrect use of articles (a, an, the), and misuse of verb tenses—particularly confusion in tense usage when describing previous studies. A frequently encountered error highlighted in the session was the confusion between similar-sounding words (Confusing Similar Words), as many English words share similar pronunciations but differ significantly in meaning.
The workshop presented several solutions to help avoid such errors, most notably the importance of reading a number of academic papers to enhance linguistic understanding and the necessity of having research papers reviewed by language specialists prior to submission.
The session included multiple questions and interventions from the audience, which were addressed through illustrative presentations and detailed examples to maximize benefit.
