Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[puzzle]

Dear teachers,
Can you help me with this question?
A sheep ____ on this kind of special grass usually grows faster than___ on ordinary.
A. fed, one B. fed , that C. feeding, it
which is the best answer? What's the difference between "one" and "that"?
thank you!

[rice07]

Hi

I verified this question you raised in my grammar book and supposed the correct answer might be B.

Here in the following quoted from that book as saying:

In a formal style, that and those can be used with a following description to mean 'the one(s)'.

A dog's intelligence is much greater than that of a cat.

A sheep fed on this kind of special grass usually grows faster than that(=the one) on ordinary.

I hope it helps.

If wrong , please correct me!

[lotus]

Hi,

I would choose A.

A sheep fed on this kind of special grass usually grows faster than one on ordinary grass.

The word in bold help clarify the sentence.


--lotus
_________________
War does not make one great --Yoda

[puzzle]

I also prefer "one". (Although the answer given is "that").Just look at this sentence:
A cake made of wheat costs less than one made of rice.
Here "one" means " a cake" (any cake).

[rice07]

Hi

To tell you the truth, we had the same opinion to this question even after I'd verified the answer to it might be B. Let's take a look at this question again.

A sheep fed on this kind of special grass usually grows faster than ? on ordinary.

The objects compared in this case were 'A sheep fed on this kind of special grass' and 'a sheep(although it might be the sheep) fed on ordinary grass'. So I also prefer answer A.

Here I've got a narrative from a book talking about article the as follows:

It is sometimes difficult to know whether or not to use the. For example, we use no article to generalise with uncountable and plural words; but we use the to show that the listener/reader know which people or things we are talking about. Sometimes both these meanings come together, and it is difficult to know which form is correct. The grammatical distinctions in this area are not very clear; often the same idea can be expressed both with the and with no article.