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Yesterday it _____ all day | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 29 11 June 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged |
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One of my friends is preparing for an English language proficiency test. I looked for a
minute at one of the preparation papers, and saw this question: Fill in the blank: "Yesterday it ..... all day." The choices were: a) had rained b) rained c) was raining d) had been raining I had no idea which answer they expected. They all seem acceptable to me. So, I asked several other native speakers, and each was equally puzzled, although most chose one or two answers saying they "felt" more appropriate. General "feelings" can't be the basis for working out test answers, can they? Surely there is some grammatical basis for the one correct answer (whichever one it is). My questions is: is any one of the answers clearly correct, and the others incorrect, based on something other than feelings? Edited by Splog on 11 June 2011 at 7:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| arturs Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 5272 days ago 278 posts - 408 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English | Message 2 of 29 11 June 2011 at 7:15am | IP Logged |
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I hate test questions like these, because it takes a sentence without a context. As in this example, you just can't figure it out! Though I have a feeling that B and C answers could be more correct.
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| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 29 11 June 2011 at 7:37am | IP Logged |
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I'm not a native speaker. I "feel" that only B and C are correct. I have a "feeling" that 'yesterday' can't be used with
the pluperfect or the pluperfect progressive, at least not without some additional context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 29 11 June 2011 at 7:57am | IP Logged |
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Based purely on my native speaker instincts, I think B is the answer that they're looking for here because it sounds the best to me. However, C is also acceptable and even A and D would work if used in the correct context. I think it's one of those questions where it could be argued that any of the possible choices are correct, but it's a matter of which is "most correct." Since B is the one which sounds best to my ears independent of any other context, I think it's safe to say that it's "more correct" than any of the other options.
EDIT: Wait, I take that back. C sounds just as good as B on its own so I'm back to being confused like everyone else. Edited by ellasevia on 11 June 2011 at 8:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 5 of 29 11 June 2011 at 8:06am | IP Logged |
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I think they wanted the signal word yesterday indicate the past tense and all day the continuous. The desert of formalised grammatical interrogations works in another way than the rain forest of real writing or speech.
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| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5052 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 6 of 29 11 June 2011 at 8:16am | IP Logged |
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I think it's B. There's not enough info for C to be correct..
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 29 11 June 2011 at 9:45am | IP Logged |
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Reading the thread title, I involuntarily filled in the blank with B.
Of course, I'm not a native speaker so I can't be sure that my ideas about the language are correct, but I can't find an obvious source of interference so I would guess that is the sentence pattern I've heard most frequently. I think maybe the verb form in this sentence pattern is used to state a simple fact about something that happened in the past. Using the continuous would emphasize that yesterday's rain caused something to happen (or to not happen). In the same vein, using a perfect tense would indicate that knowing about the rain or that it had stopped is crucial to understanding the next bit of information. "Didn't you want to go to the beach with your friends?" "Yes, but it was raining all day yesterday." Does that sound alright to you? Can you come up with examples for using the perfect tense? Edited by Bao on 11 June 2011 at 9:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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