Last year I vibe coded an app called “WriteRight” ostensibly to help students improve their writing skills. The app also produces a report for students that includes information on their errors and how to correct them. This year, I have started using the app to collect intelligence (conduct research) on the errors my students and others at my university make. I collected initial essays this week and used Google Gemini to analyze the results. The prompt was based on a typical IELTs writing test prompt. I have included the initial report here. This is an ongoing project, so there is still much to learn, but so far, the results are very interesting. Enjoy. Write me at walley@up.edu.mx, or wademexico@gmail.com if you have comments or questions.
Summary of Errors
Wade P.Alley, MA CLUP Guadalajara inquiries to: walley@up.edu.mx
Prompt: Many parents put a lot of pressure on their children to succeed. To what extent do you agree?
Students were given 20 minutes to write about the prompt above. Average response was approximately 123 words. The writing was analyzed by Google Gemini and herein are listed the most common errors found in the twenty-eight responses by students at the Advanced 1 and Advanced 3 level. By most common errors, Gemini analyzed all the documents to identify the most common errors and listed them by category according to the most common items found. Gemini had to be asked to look for more specific things like comma usage errors. Anyway, here are the results. Take a look.
The document contains various grammatical and mechanical errors. The primary categories of issues are:
- Spelling Errors:
- Misspellings of common words like “succeed,” “extent,” “successful,” “achieve,” “resources,” and “pressure.”
- Typos and incorrect word choices in phrases like “Many Parentes,” “i agree,” “its succesfull,” and “Te¡hey things.”
- Specific fragments containing errors: “succed,” “wxtend,” “succesfull,” “achive,” “succes,” “profeccional,” “sourcess,” “Parentes,” “i agree,” “its succesfull,” “Te¡hey things,” “becuse,” “emotonial,” “encourge,” “preassure,” and “si.”
“The spelling errors found in these documents share a few key characteristics, indicating a pattern of mechanical rather than conceptual confusion:
- Missing or Incorrect Suffixes: Many errors occur at the end of a word, where a required letter or syllable is missing, such as in knowledg (knowledge), responsability (responsibility), and implicates (implies).
- Incorrect Vowel/Consonant Doubling: A large number of errors involve using a single letter when a double letter is required, or vice versa. Examples include profeccional (professional), pusshing (pushing), borring (boring), and succes (success).
- Vowel/Consonant Swaps: Errors where adjacent letters are transposed or substituted, leading to phonetic but incorrect spellings, such as preasure (pressure) and problably (probably).
- High-Frequency, Non-Technical Vocabulary: Nearly all misspelled words are common, everyday vocabulary (e.g., because, believe, enough, children), suggesting a need for careful proofreading rather than an issue with specialized terminology.” Google Gemini
- Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA) Errors:
- Incorrect verb forms used with singular or plural subjects.
- Phrases with SVA issues include: “this kind of sport have,” “No one teach,” “the parent put,” and “My friend recibes.”
“Commonality Among SVA Errors
The most common structural problem among the Subject-Verb Agreement errors is the omission of the third-person singular ‘-s’ from the verb.
In English, when the subject is a singular noun or the pronoun he, she, or it, the verb in the simple present tense must end in an -s (e.g., she runs). Students frequently used the plural or base form of the verb when the subject was singular, as shown in the highlighted examples:
- Singular Subject + Plural Verb Form:
- “this kind of sport have” (Should be has)
- “No one teach” (Should be teaches)
- “the child make” (Should be makes)
- “My friend recibes” (Should be receives)
This indicates a systemic difficulty in applying the correct conjugation for third-person singular subjects in the simple present tense.” Google Gemini
- Preposition Errors:
- Incorrect prepositions used in common phrases.
- Examples: “putting pressure to children” and “put pressure in him.”
“Based on a review of all the preposition errors, the commonalities point to difficulties with standard English collocations (words that frequently go together) and fixed phrases.The errors fall into three main common categories:1. Errors in Collocation with the Word “Pressure” (Most Common)This is the most frequent specific error, where the correct preposition “on” is incorrectly substituted when discussing the concept of parental pressure
.2. Errors with Verb and Adjective Collocations: 3. Errors in Fixed Idiomatic PhrasesSeveral errors involved misremembering or misusing established English phrases, indicating a need to practice common idiomatic expressions.
3. Errors in Fixed Idiomatic Phrases: Several errors involved misremembering or misusing established English phrases, indicating a need to practice common idiomatic expressions..” Google Gemini
- Tense Errors:
- Inconsistent or incorrect verb tenses for actions that started in the past and continue to the present.
- Examples: “I practice” and “they had too much pressure.”
“The tense errors identified across the documents share a common issue: a failure to consistently use the appropriate Present Tense forms to describe actions or states that relate to the present moment.This commonality can be broken down into two main types of confusion:1. Confusion Between Simple Present and Present Perfect
The most prominent error is the use of the Simple Present tense to describe an action that started in the past and continues to the present. The correct choice for this is the Present Perfect or Present Perfect Continuous tense.
- Error Example: “All my life since i was 7, I practice ice skating…”
- Commonality: The writer fails to use the have/has + past participle structure required to show a connection between a past starting point and the current time.
2. Inconsistent Tense within an Argument
The second commonality is a general inconsistency or mix of tenses when presenting a single argument or describing an ongoing state.
- Error Example (Ongoing State): “…children suffering since they had too much pressure.”
- The use of the simple past tense (“had”) incorrectly suggests the pressure is entirely over, when the context requires a present tense form (“have” or “have had”) to imply the suffering is ongoing or the effects are still present.
- Error Example (Inconsistency): The analysis noted a mix of present and future tenses or switches between present and past tense without a clear reason or logical shift in time frame.
The pattern suggests a lack of awareness regarding how English tenses, particularly the various forms of the Present Tense, are used to maintain consistency and correctly convey the duration and timing of an event.” Google Gemini
- Word Order Errors:
- Misplaced adverbs or generally ungrammatical sentence structure.
- Examples: “affect negatively the children” and “i not import in general the consequese.”
- Apostrophe/Contraction Errors:
- Incorrect use of apostrophes in contractions.
- Examples: “they`re,” “there`s,” “that`s,” “doesn`t,” and “I`m.”
- Capitalization Errors:
- Failure to capitalize the personal pronoun “I” and the first letter of a sentence.
- Examples: lowercase “i” for the personal pronoun and lowercase starting words like “many” and “but.”