Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[puzzle]

Dear teacher,
I'm puzzled at the following exercise ,can you help me?
The young man, when questioned why he ___ the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing.
A. had broken B. broke C. breaks D. was breaking
I think the answer should be B, but the answer given is A, is it right?
Thank you

[Anuradha Chepur]

Actually all four choices can be correct, by imagining a partially varying context for each.
I will call it a badly framed question and move on.

[2006]

Maybe it's just a bad question, but maybe it is designed to make you choose the best of the offered answers. If so, I would also choose B as the best answer, because it is the most likely answer and also uses simple past tense instead of perfect tense. We have no reason to choose past perfect tense over simple past tense.
Use the simplest language that clearly expresses your meaning.

[Anuradha Chepur]

I was still researching this question, thinking about the tense-change angle in reported speech., and that is what the designer of this question seems to have had in mind.

Why did you break the law? (direct speech)
will change to
why he had broken the law (indirect speech)

It is in this sense, then, that A is the answer, because the sentence is in indirect speech.

[2006]

I don't agree. Indirect speech is not the issue, and that's a very bad page for 'learning' English.

[Lorikeet]

I happen to prefer "The young man, when questioned why he had broken the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing." to the alternative, "The young man, when questioned why he broke the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing."

I understand that in current usage, the past perfect is disappearing. However, I still use it to show that something happened in the past before something else happened in the past. I don't think it has completely disappeared from the language yet, although maybe when we old fogeys are gone it will.

[Philo Kevetch]

Alas and alack.

[CP]

I agree with Lorikeet. I hope the past perfect will outlive me, though, because it is a very useful tense.

A. The young man, when questioned why he had broken the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing. The questioning in the past was about something even further in the past, a crime that the young man had committed earler. This is the best choice.

B. The young man, when questioned why he broke the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing. If the policeman was asking about his career as a criminal, about why he broke the law all the time, then this sentence would probably be all right.

C. The young man, when questioned why he breaks the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing. Not a good sentence, because of the present tense. If it were from a newspaper article about a very recent event, and the policeman was asking about his criminal career, then maybe it would be all right.

D. The young man, when questioned why he was breaking the law, just looked at the policeman and said nothing. If the policeman was asking him while the young man was in the midst of committing a crime, then this sentence would be fine. "Why are you breaking into that house, my good fellow?"
_________________
You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[2006]

I don't want to belabor the point, but I am not convinced. Obviously the breaking of the law occurred before the questioning; using perfect tense in this situation adds nothing to the understanding of the meaning, in my opinion.
I think C is a good sentence and can be used when asking about a pattern of criminal behavior.

[CP]

[2006]

Yes, we can.