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sokocanuck21
Joined: 16 Mar 2009
Location: Ansan
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 Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:06 pm Post subject: Past Participle |
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Hey, a quick question.
I need to explain the reason the adjective is between the past participle, as opposed to the others, which are before or after.
1. "The movie had already begun" <----- on the midterm, this is the correct answer.
2. "The movie already had begun" <------ "wrong answer"
3. "The movie had begun already" <------ "wrong answer"
Aside from #2 +3 sounding more akward, I can't give a viable reason for why they are wrong. Are they maybe "less right"?
this may be really dumb, so in my defense, I'm not a real English teacher! |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:14 pm Post subject: Re: Past Participle |
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| sokocanuck21 wrote: |
Hey, a quick question.
I need to explain the reason the adjective is between the past participle, as opposed to the others, which are before or after.
1. "The movie had already begun" <----- on the midterm, this is the correct answer.
2. "The movie already had begun" <------ "wrong answer"
3. "The movie had begun already" <------ "wrong answer"
Aside from #2 +3 sounding more akward, I can't give a viable reason for why they are wrong. Are they maybe "less right"?
this may be really dumb, so in my defense, I'm not a real English teacher! |
You mean adverb, not adjective. All three are grammatically correct, but the first is more idiomatic. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Oh, you also mean past perfect tense, which employs the past participle with 'had'. |
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sokocanuck21
Joined: 16 Mar 2009
Location: Ansan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks Yu_Bum_suk, this is why I come here. |
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sokocanuck21
Joined: 16 Mar 2009
Location: Ansan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| and even funnier, that was a multiple choice question on an exam. |
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ArizonaBill
Joined: 24 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:18 pm Post subject: Re: Past Participle |
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| sokocanuck21 wrote: |
Hey, a quick question.
I need to explain the reason the adjective is between the past participle, as opposed to the others, which are before or after.
1. "The movie had already begun" <----- on the midterm, this is the correct answer.
2. "The movie already had begun" <------ "wrong answer"
3. "The movie had begun already" <------ "wrong answer"
Aside from #2 +3 sounding more akward, I can't give a viable reason for why they are wrong. Are they maybe "less right"?
this may be really dumb, so in my defense, I'm not a real English teacher! |
Sentences #2 and #3 aren't wrong. Both of them make perfect sense and hold the same meaning as sentence #1. As for explaining why sentence #1 is the more common form, I'd look at some other examples of adverbs splitting the past perfect tense. Here's one:
a) I had hardly finished. b) I hardly had finished. c) I had finished, hardly.
-All these sound very natural, although (c) seems to require a comma between the participle and the adverb. At least, it would have comma intonation in speech. (a) and (b) both could be used very naturally in a longer sentence (i.e. I [had hardly finished/hardly had finished] when it started raining), but doing this to (c) would give the implication that the adverb is meant as an aside (i.e. I had finished, hardly, when it started raining).
Not surprisingly, the first result of a Google search on this subject yields a website aimed at teaching English to Japanese-speakers. It seems they like to teach this subject in their school curricula!
I would tell your students not to stress about this subject, since there's not a whole lot of adverbs that are commonly used to modify the past perfect tense. Just emphasize that the preferred form is to have the adverb between the auxiliary verb (had) and the participle. I would NOT forbid them from using the other two forms, since both are permissible under the right conditions. Not all sentences allow all three forms, but forbidding your students from using two of them will just handicap them later in life if they ever try for fluency. |
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samcheokguy
Joined: 02 Nov 2008
Location: Samcheok G-do
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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| -Once again a retarded english test that 'teaches' nothing. Will they EVER learn? |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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| samcheokguy wrote: |
| -Once again a retarded english test that 'teaches' nothing. Will they EVER learn? |
When their teacher tells them that 'The movie already had begun' is incorrect, it's rather difficult for students to venture anything they hope might be right. Mind you, the same teacher who's teaching this, if put on the spot at the cinema, would like say something like 'Already movie is begin' to a foreigner, as the Koreans around him all look very impressed by his English abilities. |
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Tokki1
Joined: 14 May 2007
Location: The gap between the Korean superiority and inferiority complex
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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This question is a joke.
Present/past perfect involving 'have/had' + the past participle?
I'm lost. No clue.
If the question involves the present perfect tense...or whatever...perhaps....:
a. I have gone to Europe.
b. I kissed a snowman.
c. I will go to Africa.
Come on. WTF kind of question is this, really? I'm a native English speaker and I want to pull my hair out reading that garbage, lol. |
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DCJames
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 10:48 pm Post subject: Re: Past Participle |
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| sokocanuck21 wrote: |
Hey, a quick question.
I need to explain the reason the adjective is between the past participle, as opposed to the others, which are before or after.
1. "The movie had already begun" <----- on the midterm, this is the correct answer.
2. "The movie already had begun" <------ "wrong answer"
3. "The movie had begun already" <------ "wrong answer"
Aside from #2 +3 sounding more akward, I can't give a viable reason for why they are wrong. Are they maybe "less right"?
this may be really dumb, so in my defense, I'm not a real English teacher! |
You are teaching "Conversational English" right?
#1 and #3 are normally what you hear in normal conversations, so you should mark both of them right.
And the person that said grammar is not relevant in teaching English is ignorant. Grammar is the backbone of language and without grammar you have nothing. Me thinks the person who made that statement has no idea of the grammar of has own native language, yet he calls himself a "teacher".  |
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Tokki1
Joined: 14 May 2007
Location: The gap between the Korean superiority and inferiority complex
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:00 pm Post subject: Re: Past Participle |
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| DCJames wrote: |
| sokocanuck21 wrote: |
Hey, a quick question.
I need to explain the reason the adjective is between the past participle, as opposed to the others, which are before or after.
1. "The movie had already begun" <----- on the midterm, this is the correct answer.
2. "The movie already had begun" <------ "wrong answer"
3. "The movie had begun already" <------ "wrong answer"
Aside from #2 +3 sounding more akward, I can't give a viable reason for why they are wrong. Are they maybe "less right"?
this may be really dumb, so in my defense, I'm not a real English teacher! |
You are teaching "Conversational English" right?
#1 and #3 are normally what you hear in normal conversations, so you should mark both of them right.
And the person that said grammar is not relevant in teaching English is ignorant. Grammar is the backbone of language and without grammar you have nothing. Me thinks the person who made that statement has no idea of the grammar of has own native language, yet he calls himself a "teacher". |
They're all correct.
So put one of the possible answers into present/past perfect and the others into different tenses and let the poor ESL student have a chance at learning English grammar.
Could you wade through that question on a test with a fighting chance? It's arbitrary and ambiguous. Pick the 'best' answer? I'd use any of the three in conversational English, as you stated.
lol@Korean tests |
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