Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Crisi]

Please, would you help me find the 1 mistake that should be hidden somewhere in the following text.

I'm writing in case you will ever decide to go to Ireland. Despite the bad weather, I had a wonderful time. Although I didn' have much money, it was still easy to find places to stay, and in spite of having been to Ireland twice before, I still found plenty of new things to see. Due to being an island, the weather can be quite changeable. It' a pity that because of not having much free time I couldn't stay longer ..

Thank you very much in advance for your assistance.

[Yinglish]

Are you counting spelling errors like "didn't" and "it's"?

Someone else can comment on sentence structure and so on...

[CP]

I spot two or three errors.

1. Instead of, "I'm writing in case you will ever decide to go to Ireland," I think it should be, "I'm writing in case you ever decide to go to Ireland." Native speakers never use the future tense in this construction.

2. Instead of, "Due to being an island," I think it should be, "Due to its being an island." Here, "being" is a gerund, a noun, so it needs the "its."

3. "It's a pity that because of not having much free time I couldn't stay longer" is awkward, but I'm not sure it's exactly erroneous. It would be better as, "It's a pity that, not having much free time, I couldn't stay longer," but I would have said (or written), "It's a pity that I didn't have time to stay longer."
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[Crisi]

Thank you very much, CP!