diff --git a/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py b/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
index 9d68cb3ae58e7f..d868dd00adddc1 100644
--- a/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
+++ b/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
@@ -2858,13 +2858,13 @@ def _is_valid_text_input(t):
 
         if not _is_valid_text_input(text):
             raise ValueError(
-                "text input must of type `str` (single example), `List[str]` (batch or single pretokenized example) "
+                "text input must be of type `str` (single example), `List[str]` (batch or single pretokenized example) "
                 "or `List[List[str]]` (batch of pretokenized examples)."
             )
 
         if text_pair is not None and not _is_valid_text_input(text_pair):
             raise ValueError(
-                "text input must of type `str` (single example), `List[str]` (batch or single pretokenized example) "
+                "text input must be of type `str` (single example), `List[str]` (batch or single pretokenized example) "
                 "or `List[List[str]]` (batch of pretokenized examples)."
             )