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nobbyken
Joined: 07 Jun 2006
Location: Yongin ^^
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 Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:08 am Post subject: |
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| I waiting for you all night, where you has been? |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:15 am Post subject: |
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Typical Korean misunderstanding of the word 'expect' due to lazy incompetent mistranslation. It's obvious from the context Koreans think it means 'wait for' or 'anticipate' - anxiously in this case. I most often hear it misused to mean 'look forward to'. Please explain to whoever gave you this asinine test that none of the answers are correct and suggest an alternative like 'we've been waiting anxiously all night long for your arrival'.
In real life, if you arrived somewhere and people greeted you with the words 'We've been expecting you', then the clear implication is that you arrived at the expected time. Alternatively, if it's a Bond movie then it means you're in trouble. |
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T-dot
Joined: 16 May 2004
Location: bundang
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| stopped reading after I read "anxious about you". |
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beercanman
Joined: 16 May 2009
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:03 am Post subject: |
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| Oh well, in the end I just told the person to kill the question and create another one. She agreed to that. |
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tfunk
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| Privateer wrote: |
Typical Korean misunderstanding of the word 'expect' due to lazy incompetent mistranslation.
obvious It's from the context Koreans think it means 'wait for' or 'anticipate' - anxiously in this case. I most often hear it misused to mean 'look forward to'. Please explain to whoever gave you this asinine test that none of the answers are correct and suggest an alternative like 'we've been waiting anxiously all night long for your arrival'.
In real life, if you arrived somewhere and people greeted you with the words 'We've been expecting you', then the clear implication is that you arrived at the expected time. Alternatively, if it's a Bond movie then it means you're in trouble. |
Teach people much? Care to explain the technical reasons or should we all rely upon your own experience? If I sound narky and you can explain the answer, then chalk it down to me being a poor teacher. |
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aboxofchocolates
Joined: 21 Mar 2008
Location: on your mind
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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I'm pretty sure 'We were expecting you' is the correct answer. That's past progressive, which is used (according to this handy book I am reading) to "show that a state or action was in progress in the past i.e. continued for a temporary period, but not up to the present. Often, this also means the action is not complete (i.e. was still in progress) at the time we are thinking about."
All tenses and aspects have pretty definite meanings. Colloquially we mess them up all the time, but there are correct and incorrect ways to teach stuff that students need for their uni entrance exams. Invest in a simple grammar book and look up the form and aspect if you want an easier way to help your kids pass. I'm using "An A-Z of English Grammar and Usage" by Geoffrey Leech and some other people. I took a CELTA course (which kicked ass when all was said and done) and that's the book they recommend.
Or you can keep posting the questions on the board and I can look them up for you- I need the practice. |
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AmericanExile
Joined: 04 May 2009
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| Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Joe666 wrote: |
| No one has a problem with "throughout" at the end of the sentence. I would only use that term to describe an event that took place THROUGHOUT the night!! |
They may very well have waited throughout the night, but I agree with you no native English speaker would use the term this way. The construction is awkward. I doesn't seem so much as a sentence in English as a sentence badly translated from another language. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 5:02 am Post subject: |
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| tfunk wrote: |
| Privateer wrote: |
Typical Korean misunderstanding of the word 'expect' due to lazy incompetent mistranslation.
obvious It's from the context Koreans think it means 'wait for' or 'anticipate' - anxiously in this case. I most often hear it misused to mean 'look forward to'. Please explain to whoever gave you this asinine test that none of the answers are correct and suggest an alternative like 'we've been waiting anxiously all night long for your arrival'.
In real life, if you arrived somewhere and people greeted you with the words 'We've been expecting you', then the clear implication is that you arrived at the expected time. Alternatively, if it's a Bond movie then it means you're in trouble. |
Teach people much? Care to explain the technical reasons or should we all rely upon your own experience? If I sound narky and you can explain the answer, then chalk it down to me being a poor teacher. |
Sorry, I was in a bad mood and it showed, but I think the explanation for why the multiple choice question is wrong is fairly straightforward. 'Expect' is the wrong word in this context, so the first thing to do is suggest a better word, and the second thing is to explain which tense should be used. I suggested using 'wait for' rather than 'expect' and I put it in present perfect progressive ('We've been waiting anxiously for your arrival') because that's the tense we use for an activity that continues from a point in the recent past up until the present. Is the latter what you meant by explaining the 'technical reasons'?
'Expect' is one of those words that Koreans don't quite use right: they say things like 'I expect your arrival' meaning 'I look forward to your arrival'. (Another example of slightly odd Korean usage would be 'understand' as in 'Please understand me'). I wouldn't really call that just my experience and I don't ask anyone to rely on my word: you can observe it for yourself. |
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nathanrutledge
Joined: 01 May 2008
Location: Marakesh
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| Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Did you ask your co teacher what the instructions said? Perhaps there is more than one right answer, depending on the context, but the instructions say to pick a specific verb tense. That's my big problem with proofreading tests; often the sentences are wrong because they have to choose the right sentence, or there are multiple correct answers, but it has to be a certain tense, etc. |
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