Perhaps it will help to know you're not alone.
Research shows that nationwide, students commonly commit similar kinds of errors in their essays.
We hope the partial list we offer below will help both you and your students identify and correct the problems. Two large studies of student essays yielded lists of similar kinds of errors in student papers. John C. Hodges, editor of the Harbrace College Handbook, analyzed 20,000 essays. In 1986, Connors and Lunsford studied 3,000 essays. See below for examples of common errors identified in these studies.