Q&A - PSLE English

[beauty queen]

1. Mandy _______ on her comfortable bed and restes after completing her project.


1) Lie
2) Lay
3) Lain
4) Laid

My son knows lie and lain has the meaning of lie and laid and lay has the same meaning as lay. But he does not know when to put lay and laid. If he puts lay the answer is laid if he puts laid the answer is lay :stupid:

Please help!!!!!!!!!!



2. However hard Tony tries, he will not be able to break the high jump record.

(a) Even if Tony tries very hard, he will not be able to break the high jump record. (sons answer)

(b) Even if Tony tries very hard, he would not be able to break the high jump record. (answer sheet answer)

Which is correct please explain :?:

[snowman.022851697]

Forgive me if i’m wrong, but my best in english for this year’s Preliminary exams don’t mean anything.


1- According to my knowledge LAY is the present tense and LAID is the past tense while lain is the participle. Lie is a different story altogether.However due to a typo error i’ll have to assume that you meant ‘rested’. In that case Answer will be (4) laid because ‘rested’ is past tense therefore answer has to be past tense.

2. I seriously dont know what the answer key is talking about. How can one confuse will with would? Will is present tense while would is past tense.

If the question says will, give the answer as will, although there are some exceptions, most notably being the direct to indirect speech.

[snowman.022851697]

meimeitan:

Hi TAS,


May i know which one should be the anwer for the following T & S?

Bala was very disappointed. He lost to Ali in tennis.
(a) Much to Bala’s disappointment, he lost to Ali in tennis.
(b) Much to his disappointment, Bals lost to Ali in tennis.

Thanks.

meimeitan

Apologies for double posting but my edit button isn't working.

Answer is (b). The 'bala lost to ali etc etc' is the main clause. If you seperate the 'much to ....' and 'bala lost to ...', you will notice that 'bala lost to...' forms a complete sentence. Although 'he lost to...' forms a complete sentence too, by writing this, you will not know WHO lost to Ali.

If you use (a), you will mean that BALA was disappointed that SOMEONE (which is not necessarily Bala) lost to Ali, which is wrong therefore answer is (b).

However if you put 'Much to bala's disappointmnt, bala did...', it will be wrong as this is a fundamental mistake, 'bala' is repeated, and when spoken verbally, it sounds strange and sort of dumb.

[The Alternative Story]

meimeitan:

Hi TAS,


May i know which one should be the anwer for the following T & S?

Bala was very disappointed. He lost to Ali in tennis.
(a) Much to Bala’s disappointment, he lost to Ali in tennis.
(b) Much to his disappointment, Bals lost to Ali in tennis.

Thanks.

meimeitan

Hi meimeitan,

Answer (a) is clearer, just as what Sun_2010 mentioned,
for answer (b), it is not very clear who the 'his' in the
answer is. It could be referring to someone else,
meaning that that particular person was disappointed
when Bala lost to Ali.

In answer (a), it is clearer that it was Bala who was
disappointed and the reason was that he had lost
the match.

TAS

[The Alternative Story]

peggy:

Hi ! For PSLE comp writing, is there a compulsory section for letter writing?

Hi Peggy,

Yes, there is, it is called Situational Writing and the total marks for
that section is 15.

TAS

[meimeitan]

Hi TAS and Sun_2010


Thks a lot.

meimeitan

[The Alternative Story]

[quote]1. Mandy _______ on her comfortable bed and restes after completing her project.


1) Lie
2) Lay
3) Lain
4) Laid

My son knows lie and lain has the meaning of lie and laid and lay has the same meaning as lay. But he does not know when to put lay and laid. If he puts lay the answer is laid if he puts laid the answer is lay :stupid:

Please help!!!!!!!!!![/quote]Hi beauty queen,

He needs to find an easy way to remember this:

Human beings: Lie (present tense), Lay (past tense), Lain (past
participle)

Chickens: Lay(present tense), Laid (past tense),
Laid (past participle)

Human beings NEVER 'laid' down.

Easy way to remember:

-laid, the 'd' in 'laid' looks like an egg- the rounded bit
at the end of the straight line of 'd'.
You can tell your child that therefore 'laid' is only used for chickens
as chickens lay eggs but a human being does not lay eggs when he
lies down.

[quote]2. However hard Tony tries, he will not be able to break the high jump record.

(a) Even if Tony tries very hard, he will not be able to break the high jump record. (sons answer)

(b) Even if Tony tries very hard, he would not be able to break the high jump record. (answer sheet answer)

Which is correct please explain :?[/quote]The correct answer is your son's answer as the question also uses
'will' and as such, there is no need to change the 'will'
to 'would'

TAS

[rains]

[quote]1. Mandy _______ on her comfortable bed and restes after completing her project.


1) Lie
2) Lay
3) Lain
4) Laid

My son knows lie and lain has the meaning of lie and laid and lay has the same meaning as lay. But he does not know when to put lay and laid. If he puts lay the answer is laid if he puts laid the answer is lay :stupid:

Please help!!!!!!!!!![/quote]I used to be confused over 'lay' and 'lie' too until I devised a way to remember them:
'Lay' = lay eggs
'Lie' = lie on the bed

At the same time, I tell myself that this 'lie on the bed' is different from the 'lie' in 'telling a lie':

'Lie on the bed' - lie, lay, lain
'Telling a lie' - lie, lied, lied
[quote]2. However hard Tony tries, he will not be able to break the high jump record.

(a) Even if Tony tries very hard, he will not be able to break the high jump record. (sons answer)

(b) Even if Tony tries very hard, he would not be able to break the high jump record. (answer sheet answer)

Which is correct please explain :?[/quote](b) doesn't need to be wrong.

At P5, the kids learn about the conditional 'if' - for events likely and unlikely to happen.

'Would' is used when you are talking about something imaginary eg. If I were him, I would ...

'If' in your statement has an imaginary element in it, so 'would' can be an answer.

'Would' is not necessarily a past tense of 'will' although we often use it that way.

[HelloKiasu]

He arrived exactly at 11am, (bang /straight) on time.

I thought it was straight on time but the answer turned out to be bang on time. Can anyone explain why?

[meiah]

Hi,


It’s not so much the ‘bang’ but rather ‘bang on’. It’s adjective describing accuracy or correct. So when used with ‘time’, it describes time.