How can beginners improve their understanding of PHP functions and avoid common pitfalls when working with them?

Beginners can improve their understanding of PHP functions by practicing writing functions regularly and familiarizing themselves with common built-in functions. To avoid common pitfalls, beginners should pay attention to function naming conventions, parameter handling, and return values. They should also make sure to properly scope their functions and avoid reusing function names.

// Example of a properly named and scoped function
function calculateSum($num1, $num2) {
    return $num1 + $num2;
}