Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Tony 1963]

Hi,

1. They felt the powder in the blue ________ the best powder.
A. to be;
B. was;
I think both of them are correct. What do you think?

2. __________ the hunters are very careful, they can fall into their deaths.
A. Provided that;
B. Unless;
I think both of them are correct. What do you think?

3. They were exploring a ___________ cave.
A. dark deep Spanish;
B. deep dark Spanish;
I don�t know which one is better.

Thanks.

Tony

[redset]

1. I don't know the specifics behind this, so maybe someone else can weigh in, but I think they're both fine. To be is more formal and possibly more 'correct'.

2. 'Provided that something' means 'as long as something is true'. 'Unless something' means 'as long as something is not true'.

A is basically saying 'as long as the hunters are careful, they can fall to their deaths' - meaning that if they weren't careful they probably wouldn't fall to their deaths. They probably don't want to die, so why would they be careful to try and do so?

B is saying 'the hunters can fall to their deaths if they're not careful', which is more likely. So it's B.

(It's fall to their deaths by the way, not fall into their deaths.)

3. B sounds better. There's an order that adjectives usually appear in, this explains it. Basically deep describes the size, and that usually comes before dark which is similar to describing the colour.

[Tony 1963]

Thanks a lot. Redset! And have a nice day!