This week’s mistake is not really about exams at all. But since I’ve used exams as the example, why not get another quick mistake out the way first. In English, we pass or fail exams. When talking about getting the right result, you cannot simply say ‘I did it’. That just means you actually sat and wrote the exam – it doesn’t provide any information as to whether it was a success or a failure. So pass or fail. Got it? Ok, let’s move on…
I actually want to briefly talk about the word ‘main’. In English, it is an adjective, you cannot use it as a noun. To say, ‘I don’t care what exam score I get. The main is that I pass’ is wrong. You need to add a noun after the word main. Here, the word could be ‘priority’ or ‘factor’ – or most commonly, the word ‘thing’.
So the correct sentence is – ‘I don’t care what exam score I get. The main thing is that I pass.’
