Don't discard today's Sunday Times yet! There is a "How good is your English?" quiz in the Lifestyle section, on page 8. The prizes to be won are a pair of tickets to London (I suppose they are air tickets!), an iPad and a MacBook Air. Best of all, the answers are provided!
This means the organiser -- the Speak Good English Movement -- is, really, giving out the prizes as lucky draw items, and that the quiz is not a true test of skill. But try it first without cheating, hor.
The test was created by the British Council. But, looking at the quiz questions and the answers, I found a couple of slip-shod instances. Question 3 is:
At the end of the lesson as the student was clearing his desk, he asked his teacher, "Can I ______ my file in my bag now?" While there are multiple choices here, the correct answer (put) is given. But my quibble is on the quiz setter's use of "can" and not "may". The question-within-question should begin with "May I...".
[See my posting on my tribute to Mr Earnest Lau on this point.]
Question 15 requires you to pick the correct answer from three given options:
a. This one finish already.
b. I have finished already.
c. I have already finished.
The answer, as provided, is (c) and an explanation for this choice is given. But, in fact, all three options are poor examples of Standard English, including (c) because it is incomplete... I have already finished (doing what???).
Yes, I am being a spoil-sport but someone should have gone over the quiz with a fine toothcomb before it is approved for release.
To wrap up today's posting, here's a fun YouTube video in which one Grammar Nazi hunts for a fugitive Jew and eventually shoots himself because he found himself committing the sin of using a dangling participle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM
No comments:
Post a Comment