Teacher Discussion Forums

She coped with her problem very well

Is anything wrong (or odd or unusual) here?

Jose

Only if she's really got a lot of psychological problems and you figure she can't cope with anything well. Otherwise the English seemed fine to me.

Lori's comments made me wonder if the 'problem' is simply a 'fun' puzzle or task she had to complete as part of a competition, or a more serious (and long-term) thing; my intuition tells me that it is probably more usual to ask 'How are you coping' (progressive) in relation to the latter kind of problem, and to ask 'Did you manage OK last night?' (re. "little" problems that need and can be overcome and quickly dealt with with just a bit of ingenuity and improvisation).

I'm not saying that 'Did you cope?' wouldn't be a possiblity rather than 'Did you manage?', just saying that there might be a possible choice to be had here, and following on from that a hierachy in terms of frequency among those choices (there will also be different patterns of complementation?).

How do these two grab you? How did you manage vs. How did you cope? (I think the latter sounds much more incredulous).

Blah blah blah...this is so obviously off the top of my head: "thinking" aloud here, guys!