Q&A - PSLE English

[ridcully]

Kloggy:

To thank us for recommending students to her, Mrs Lee has decided to invite _____ and ______ for lunch.


(1) he .... me
(2) him .... me

Should answer be (1) or (2) ? Answer (2) sounds right to me, but answer given was (1). Why ?

Thanks in advance.

The answer is (2) because both those are object pronouns. 'Him' and 'me' are receiving the action of being invited. In the first answer, 'he' is a subject pronoun.

I often beat the drum about assessment book and school answers being riddled with mistakes...

[jamestancx997]

If you keep beating the drum, I’ll join in with the cymbals


what do parents expect, from assessment books where the material is written by part-time undergraduates paid 50cents to $1 for each question/answer…

[ridcully]

jamestancx997:

If you keep beating the drum, I'll join in with the cymbals


what do parents expect, from assessment books where the material is written by part-time undergraduates paid 50cents to $1 for each question/answer...

In due course, we should be able to form an orchestra. :laugh:

However, I disagree that the assessment books are written by lowly-paid part-time undergraduates. Most of the assessment books I see in Popular and elsewhere proudly display the authors' names with degrees awarded and often have a blurb about 'former MOE ... [blah blah]', unless you have a special insight that the books are actually ghost-written. :shock:

In addition, parents regularly present me with worksheets wrongly marked by school teachers. I used to write notes for the parents explaining what the correct answers are and why (rather like I do at this forum) but it became too dispiriting when parents fed back to me that the school teachers refused to be corrected. For me, teachers should role-model intellectual honesty - everyone makes mistakes and we are all learning. Nevertheless, there is a certain critical mass of knowledge one would expect a teacher to know if that teacher professes to teach a subject properly.

Rgds
R

[jamestancx997]

re the special insight… i do. it’s not every book that’s like that but… enough of them.


And yes, teachers are… seriously, I know the good teachers in there right now because they’re my friends, and I know they are FAR outnumbered by the random nonsense people who can become MOE teachers.

I once heard this on the MRT, a conversation between a group of fresh A level graduates from some JC in the west:

Boy 1: [in chinese] what did you score?

Girl 1: Mi Feng

Boy 1 and 2: Huh??

Girl 2: rolls eyes

Girl 1: MI FENG!!!

[after some unsuccessful guess attempts]

Girl 2: she mean BEE lah! B E E

Boys: ohhhhhhhhh

Girl 2: [chinese] so what do you want to do

Girl 1: go straight to NIE lor… be teacher… [in chinese] because the most important thing hor, you know, is that you have [in english] PASSION



Ladies and Gentlemen, Moms and Dads… this is the kind of person that MOE has teaching your children in schools.

[Mum1113]

Just one qn on SnT, kindly help thanks !


Qn: Only after he spoke, I realised he was not Chinese.
Is ds's answer acceptable and correct ? Until he spoke, I did not realise he was not Chinese.
Given answer : Until he spoke, I had not realised he was not Chinese.

[jamestancx997]

Short answer: yes. in most situations, no one can gainsay your daughter’s version and say it’s wrong. In a simple SnT question, divorced from context, either version is acceptable.


Long answer: they mean different things. It’s to do with where your voice is positioned, and what time frame you are talking about.

Your daughter’s version: if she is narrating, then the meaning is that at that very moment, the narrative "now", it is happening.

The given answer: if she is narrating, then the meaning is that at the moment she is speaking, in the narrative "now", the incident of the other guy speaking is substantially further back in the past.

For the Past Perfect, imagine how the sentence might continue.

* Until he spoke, I had not realized he was not Chinese. But then after that, I realized he was born in America.

Compare with:

* Until he spoke, I did not realize he was not Chinese. But now I realized he was born in America.

[ridcully]

Mum1113:

Qn: Only after he spoke, I realised he was not Chinese.

Is ds's answer acceptable and correct ? Until he spoke, I did not realise he was not Chinese.
Given answer : Until he spoke, I had not realised he was not Chinese.

Your ds's answer is informal English. However, in the PSLE you need to use formal Standard English. In formal Standard English, one of the uses of the past perfect to indicate a prior state; 'realise' is a state verb.

How far back in time the man was speaking is irrelevant - perfect tenses are often used when the time is unknown. What is relevant is that the mistaken belief that the man was Chinese was corrected when he spoke. The time conjunction 'until', not the perfect tense, tells us this.

Rgds
R

[Mum1113]

Thanks to both jamestancx997 and Ridcully for the explanation .

[jamestancx997]

Hey there Mustrum,


I’m going to have to disagree there. Tenses is not about formality at all, but about time. Time is the entire basis for the existence of tenses. The only context in which using different tenses adjusts the degree of formality/courtesy is with specific modals such as could/would. The linking "have" is not subject to this change.

Witness some translations of the bible:

1 Samuel 15:35: Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again

1 Kings 10:7: But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes

Formality is not really an issue – it’s to do with the context and usage.

Oh and from the koran as well:

Shura 42:14: And they did not become divided until after knowledge had come to them - out of jealous animosity between themselves…

[ridcully]

jamestancx997:

I'm going to have to disagree there. Tenses is not about formality at all, but about time. Time is the entire basis for the existence of tenses. The only context in which using different tenses adjusts the degree of formality/courtesy is with specific modals such as could/would. The linking \"have\" is not subject to this change.


Witness some translations of the bible:

1 Samuel 15:35: Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again

1 Kings 10:7: But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes

Formality is not really an issue -- it's to do with the context and usage.

Oh and from the koran as well:

Shura 42:14: And they did not become divided until after knowledge had come to them - out of jealous animosity between themselves...

I leave it to others to decide which was the more helpful reply to the original poster.