What is the purpose of this book?
This book helps readers recognize and eliminate common English errors made by Chinese speakers of English. It is not a grammar book. It has more modest goals. The authors hope that by going through examples, explanations, and exercises, readers will be able to stop making some of the most common and persistent English errors among Chinese speakers of English.
How is this book organized?
The errors are listed in an alphabetical order, as in a dictionary. When alphabetizing the list, only the articles (a, an, the) were ignored; all other words, including prepositions (of, on, etc.), were considered. However, when the error was a fixed expression, the whole expression was taken into account, including articles and prepositions.
The entries are made on actual errors, not the corresponding correct expressions. The book is targeted at Chinese speakers of English, and therefore, the authors do not assume that its users already know the correct English expressions. (If you are an English teacher, the list may be disorienting for you at first, but we hope that realizing its benefit for the target students, you will overlook the inconvenience.)
The easiest way to locate an error is to search for it as you would search for a word or a phrase in a dictionary. That failing, you should look for it in the index. The index has a complete entry of all errors and their related expressions whose usage often leads to errors.
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