Job Discussion Forums

[fluffhead]

I posted this also in the Adult Ed. forum, but that was before I remembered that this board has the more interesting personalities!
Anway, here it is:

This is a bit of a weird problem, so I should give you a little background: I teach an FCE course that uses "First Certificate Gold" (Longman Press) as the course book. One of my more eager students went out and got herself a supplementary coursebook called "Mission: FCE" (Express Publishing).
Last week she handed me this extra book and asked me to take the book home to grade a few pages of exercises she'd done. I said "sure". Well, yesterday I was checking her work when I ran across a grammatical construction I'd never seen in 5 years of teaching this type of course.
It's one of those things where the student is given a sentence, followed by a key word, and is asked to use that word to make a new sentence that means the same as the first sentence. Pretty standard Cambridge exam stuff.
Here it is and I'd like some feedback if you can:

Mark ought to post the letter immediately.

Now rewite using 'sooner' in this sentence:

I___________________the letter immediately.

WTF? According to the examples in the book, the correct answer is:

I'd sooner Mark post the letter immediately.

Can that possibly be right? I know in America, when we use 'sooner' in place of 'rather', we say something like "I'd sooner do A than B". When I first saw this I thought maybe it's just an AmE vs BrE thing, but now I'm not so sure. I can't find any similar examples in the coursebook we use in class (only examples with 'rather'), nor in any of my grammar books or dictionaries. Plus, like I said, I've been doing this for 5 years and have never come across it before, nor heard it uttered by one of my British friends. In fact, one linguistically inclined Brit that posts in another forum saw this and thought it must be wrong.

Can someone set me straight here?

[shmooj]

While I think the answer given is acceptable, it wasn't obvious to me what on earth the answer was until I read it. In any case the answer would only be acceptable if the context provided an alternative that the speaker would sooner NOT do so the answer is really not very helpful.

As this is a book published by someone other than UCLES who do the FCE, I wouldn't dwell on it too long with the student. In fact, I probably wouldn't comment on it but let it slide. Ironically, focussing on an obscure example is the surest way of helping the student actually acquire it - which is the last thing you want to do!

It is bizarre indeed.

[scot47]

The question is badly designed. When I saw it I could not figure out what answer was expected either. Why not "I think he should post the letter." or "I consider it would be expedient for him to post the letter." or.....or....... a hundred other possibilities.

The structure
"I'd sooner you do this." does certainly exist. I would not use it in my own speech or writing.

Maybe the point they are trying to make is about MODALS and what they indicate - ie the attitude of the speaker to an action.

What it does illustrate that testing Grammar is not as simple as some people might think.

[cimarch]

I'd sooner Mark posted the letter immediately
or
I'd sooner have Mark post the letter immediately

That's how I'd write it anyway.

[Eijse]

...

[Justapirate]

The modal structure 'ought to' was replaced by another modal structure 'I'd sooner'(I would sooner)..meaning 'I would prefer'.

Changing the adverb changes the meaning of the original sentence.

[Teacher Lindsay]

Cimarch wrote:-

[kev7161]

I've usually seen something like this in the form of a negative action or sarcasm, such as:

I'd sooner jump off a bridge.

or - -

I'd sooner kiss my dog.

The above implying that whatever you are asking this person to do, he'd never do it in a million years and would RATHER (better choice of word) do something so extreme as to avoid it.