Job Discussion Forums

[pokey2658]

The Chinese teachers in my school are very confused because they administered an exam last week and it had the following sentence:

There.................................. two classes next week

The only options for answers that were viable were:

is going to be / are going to be.

According to the exam answers the correct answer is:
...is going to be
and they all think it should be:
...are going to be.
I agree with them, subject verb agreement would indicate that a plural subject requires a plural verb.
Is there something I'm missing?

[Yu]

I think it should be are.

[tirelesstravelerasia]

The more experience you have with 'English exams' written by 'Chinese English teachers', the more you'll marvel. Even the national exams like CET-4 and 6 are riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and non-sequitors. The most common problem is the lack of context, which to the native speaker, makes it appear that there are a number of correct answers; in China, of course, there is always only one correct answer.

Your example looks like the test writers simply screwed up - of course it's 'there are'.

[Super Frank]

Off subject a tad but I notice Yahoo talking about english football, they say

Chelsea is top of the league, Man United is second etc.

This is grammatically correct as Chelsea is a single noun but personnally I would say Chelsea are top of the league.

[lollercauster]

Ditto.

[Henry_Cowell]

For its news reports, Yahoo probably uses U.S. style for sports teams: singular verbs.

British style typically uses plural verbs for sports teams (and governments, among other "collective" nouns).

[ymmv]

Pokey,

What type of school do you teach at? Middle School or College/Uni?

Would you mind asking your Chinese colleagues which "test they administered" and report back here? A Practice test? TEM-4? Gao Kao?

Thanks for any additional info you can provide.

[latefordinner]

Does CET stand for Can't do English Tests, or what?
Of the answers provided, I would use "There are...", not "There is". But then in real life, I'd probably say "There will be" or "There shall be", and the negatives, There won't be/There shall not be. (Hmm, in my family we said "Shan't be any". Seems it's just a very local idiom. Ungrammatical?) As our tireless friend correctly notes, context is missing. Until they get native (or even near native) speakers to set the exams, you'll always get stupid questions and worse answer selections.

(edited to add the negatives)

[KarenB]

CET stands for College English Test. There's one for English majors and one for non-English majors. University students have to pass Band 4 to be able to graduate. There's also a Band 6, which is a higher level.

PET stands for Public English Test. With this test, there is a separate oral test that students may take. TEM stands for Test of English majors.

All these tests supposedly evaluate a student's ability in English reading, listening, grammar, and writing.

As has been noted, the fallacy of these tests is that they are written by Chinese teachers, and apparently are not proofed by a native speaker with a clear understanding of grammar. I have also found multiple mistakes in the questions on these tests. Furthermore, these tests tend to focus on obscure grammatical nuances of which most native speakers are unaware.

The tests do not validly assess the student's communicative ability. In fact, I've had students who passed the test whose communicative ability was intermediate (at best), and other students with excellent communicative ability who failed the exam. I think it would be an interesting exercise to administer one of these exams to a group of FTs, and see how we score! Most likely, our scores would be mediocre because of 1) stupid (and often incorrect) questions, and 2) crappy sound systems for the listening part.