O-Level English
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:thankyou: teacher aaron.
The answers given by the assessment books used the past perfect tense for the following questions. Are the answers correct? Thanks.
1.Mark ________ (lock) the door before he went to school.
2. After we _________ (eat) dinner, we went home.
3.After she ________ (speak) to the principal, she went back to class.
4. Before her father came home, jenny ______(cook) dinner.
5. Before the fireman arrived, the fire _______ (gut)
the row of houses. -
PiggyLalala:
It appears that the word \"before\" is being used as a conjunction connecting two clauses of the same structure, so the correct answer should be \"locked\".:thankyou: teacher aaron.
One last question.
Mark (had locked/locked) the door before he went to school. Which is the answer? -
Thank you slmkhoo and Teacher Aaron for your sharings.
I feel like I'm learning English again. LOL.
:thankyou: -
PiggyLalala:
Hi PiggyLalala,:thankyou: teacher aaron.
The answers given by the assessment books used the past perfect tense for the following questions. Are the answers correct? Thanks.
1.Mark ________ (lock) the door before he went to school.
2. After we _________ (eat) dinner, we went home.
3.After she ________ (speak) to the principal, she went back to class.
4. Before her father came home, jenny ______(cook) dinner.
5. Before the fireman arrived, the fire _______ (gut)
the row of houses.
I didn't realise you posted a few more questions, and I think I need to explain the correct answer(s) a little more than what I have previously answered.
You said the assessment books have given the answers to all these questions in the past perfect tense. The answers are correct from a technical standpoint, but the past perfect tense is not the only answer for some of them if we factor in meaning, and meaning should be the basis of choosing a tense.
Tenses are the hardest to master in English precisely because they are all about meaning, and the correct tense is the one that reflects exactly what you intend to mean.
Take question 1 for example. Both the following are correct, but their meanings are different:
[list]- [*]Mark locked the door before he went to school. (No suggestion of a relationship between locking and going to school; one just so happened before the other)
- [*]Mark had locked the door before he went to school. (Suggests that Mark intentionally locked the door before going to school)
[/list]The same logic can be applied to question 4.
[list]- [*]Before her father came home, Jenny cooked dinner. (No suggestion that the cooking was related to the father coming home; one just so happened before the other)
- [*]Before her father came home, Jenny had cooked dinner. (Suggests that Jenny intentionally cooked before her father came home)
[/list]So for questions 1 and 4, both the past perfect and the simple past are possible if we look at the questions from the standpoint of being grammatically correct. However, from the standpoint of meaning, only one of them can be correct since we cannot intend to mean two different things in the same sentence.
For questions 2, 3 and 5, it appears that both parts of each sentence should be logically related to each other such that one must happen before the other, so the past perfect tense is likely the only correct option.
[list]- [*]After we had eaten dinner, we went home. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"After we ate dinner, we stopped by a petrol station.\")
- [*]After she had spoken to the principal, she went back to class. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"After she spoke to the principal, the fire alarm rang.\")
- [*]Before the fireman arrived, the fire had gutted the row of houses. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"Before the fire died down, it gutted the row of houses.\")
[/list]For each of the variations listed above, if you examine their meanings, the thing that happened first isn't logically related to the second, so it isn't appropriate to use the past perfect tense to indicate that one of the two actions occurred before the other in the past.
As for the quality of questions in assessment books, standards can vary greatly. Many people who are proficient in English think that as long as one action happened before the other and both actions happened in the past, the past perfect tense must be correct. Unfortunately, it is NOT the case. One has to consider if first action is logically connected to the second action the past perfect tense can be used.
Therefore, questions 1 and 4 are poor questions in my opinion as they are ambiguous in meaning and not sufficiently clear that the past perfect tense is clearly warranted. -
SAHM_TAN:
Feel free to ask. English, especially grammar, can be very pesky, but we need to know grammar well because it are essential to meaning and comprehension. Even I have to teach myself English sometimes by sitting down, breaking apart sentences and doing a grammatical analysis of a sentence that is not of the usual variety.Thank you slmkhoo and Teacher Aaron for your sharings.
I feel like I'm learning English again. LOL.
:thankyou: -
:thankyou: teacher aaron.
Your explanation is very clear. Thank you for taking yr time to answer all the questions. -
One last question, what do you think is a better advice? To tell my child to pick the answer that sounds grammatically correct or to choose the answer based on the limited grammar rules that he may know.
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PiggyLalala:
One last question, what do you think is a better advice? To tell my child to pick the answer that sounds grammatically correct or to choose the answer based on the limited grammar rules that he may know.
Haha! I am biased in this regard. I won't eat something that looks edible; I must be sure it is edible. In the same vein, I will never pick an answer based on whether the answer sounds grammatically correct or wrong.
However, I am prepared to be flexible because it is very unfortunate that most English teachers nowadays are weak in grammar themselves. Try to get your child to analyse the sentence or question using the grammar rules that he or she knows for sure are correct, and if that fails, then go for the \"sounds right\" option.
Here are some examples of sentences that sound right but are wrong:
[list]- [*]The committee will consist of Bob, Mr. Parsons, and myself. (\"myself\" is incorrect; the correct word is \"me\")
- [*]The water in my cup is lesser than yours. (it's either fewer than or less than, depending on whether the noun is countable)
- [*]We will go ahead with our plan irregardless of what they say. (there's no such word as irregardless; the correct word is regardless)
- [*]This has been a great year for my wife and I. (\"I\" is incorrect; the correct word is \"me\")
[/list]And these sentences sound strange but are correct:[list]- [*]One morning, I shot an elephant in my pyjamas.
- [*]Yesterday, we went hopefully to the bank to seek a loan.
- [*]The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.
[/list]** By the way, I don't mean to be picky, but \"advice\" is not countable. You need to use a partitive (means divided into parts) structure to make advice countable, such as a piece of advice (you divide advice into parts called pieces, which are then countable). -
Thank you teacher Aaron.
I think I should not keep writing 'one last question' because I believe I will have more questions to ask.
:thankyou: -
PiggyLalala:
Feel free to ask. I'll try my best to explain grammar in as simple terms as possible so that you can understand and then guide your own children.Thank you teacher Aaron.
I think I should not keep writing 'one last question' because I believe I will have more questions to ask.
:thankyou:
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