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[SpiralStaircase]

Question number 22, Second year high school Jongro National exam

Several students have brought this to my attention.

Question:
Which is grammatically incorrect?

Imagine you have had a hard day at work. On the way home you get stuck in traffic. When you reach home, you find the phone ringing off the hook. 1)Thinking it might be an emergency, you run and grab the phone, only to find it is a telemarketer 2) sells insurance products. Your mood gets 3) bad for the rest of the evening. But now you are listening to a radio channel full of jokes or 4)that uplifts your mood. The time passes very fast.

The answer of course if number 2. But students believe and I tend to agree that 4 is incorrect too. Whether it relates to the clause is uncertain. Should one not write, �Or a channel that uplifts your mood.� Or one could omit the or completely. But the �or� seems out of place.

Thoughts?

[Underwaterbob]

That capitalized "but" drives me bonkers. The whole thing is awkward.

[CentralCali]

It's a parallel construction and is grammatical. 2, of course, is incorrect because it's missing a word.

If one were to omit the or in 4, the meaning would change to jokes that uplift your mood. (There would be an error with agreement, though.) The way the test is written, the radio station is either full of jokes or it uplifts your mood.

[genezorm]

Tell the students if they got it wrong because of that, to go to the education office, complain, have a protest or throw some molotovs.

I have been told at my school I must provide copies of all my performance tests, accompanied by the correct answers. Which is all fine and good in Korea where all tests are multiple choice. But if you are teaching English conversation, and your tests contain questions like "What do you usally do on your birthday?" or "How often do you go to restaurants?" or "What musical instrument(s) can you play?" having a clear cut correct answer is a joke.

They want all this, and they can't even make an error-free National exam? Tell them to lick a sack.

[Justin Kimberlake]

2 & 4 are wrong.

I like the above idea. Tell your students to hold daily candle-light vigils for a month and burn stacks of Standardized tests.

[JustJohn]

Flame alert:


Are you guys on crack? There is nothing wrong with 4 except that it doesn't flow well. Three is more wrong than 4 is. Starting a sentence with a conjunction? Ick.

At any rate, 2 is drastically more wrong than any of the others. Given that it's so obvious what the answer is I wouldn't worry about it. Just let it slide.

[Kimchi Cowboy]

fast is an adjective. It should not be used to modify the speed with which time passes.

Time passes quickly.

4 is incorrect.


To be frank, though, the whole thing stinks. "Your mood gets bad..."? Ugh.

[Drew345]

I think the "or" before the "4" is part of the question, not the text. As in:
1, 2, 3, "or" 4.

Agreed that 2 is just plain wrong. Although
You mood gets bad is pretty awkward. "turns bad" maybe better; but that wasn't even listed as possibly being wrong.

[SpiralStaircase]

[CentralCali]

[rsmm0224]