Most vs Most of

[Stephan Wilhelm]

Hello,

In the context of exams my students often have to answer multiple choice questions. But this time I was extremely puzzled to find the following answer choices (only one answer is allowed) :

... students in her school learn 3 languages.

A) Most of ...
B) Most ...
C) The most of ...
D) Most of the ...

I suppose answer D) is expected. I cannot bring myself to think that B) is unacceptable, though. May I ask you what you think ?

With many thanks in advance.

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Stephan Wilhelm

Hello,
In the context of exams my students often have to answer multiple choice questions. But this time I was extremely puzzled to find the following answer choices (only one answer is allowed) :
... students in her school learn 3 languages.
A) Most of ...
B) Most ...
C) The most of ...
D) Most of the ...
I suppose answer D) is expected. I cannot bring myself to think that B) is unacceptable, though. May I ask you what you think ?
With many thanks in advance.

I think that it's a bad question because both answers, B & D, are possible. D might be chosen more often because a "most of the" phrasing is used when it becomes more specified, in this case by, "in her school".

[Stephan Wilhelm]

Thanks a lot, Riverkid. That is just what I thought. Very puzzling for the students though.

[Belly T]

B,D are alright

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by Stephan Wilhelm

I suppose answer D) is expected. I cannot bring myself to think that B) is unacceptable, though. May I ask you what you think?

I agree. Mind you, exam questions often have what appear to be two perfectly good choices. The rule of thumb is to choose the best answer. With that said, there's a clue here (as riverkid mentions):

Definite: Most of the students in the school.
=> Use "the" when the noun it modifies is defined.

Ex: Most students learn 3 languages.
Ex: Most of the students in the school learn 3 languages.

All the best.

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Casiopea

I agree. Mind you, exam questions often have what appear to be two perfectly good choices. The rule of thumb is to choose the best answer. With that said, there's a clue here (as riverkid mentions):

Definite: Most of the students in the school.
=> Use "the" when the noun it modifies is defined.

Ex: Most students learn 3 languages.
Ex: Most of the students in the school learn 3 languages.

All the best.

From a cursory test run at Google, it seems that I may have been too hasty, ie. wrong, in my belief. I think that this is simply an unfair question that should have been deleted from the test.

Results 1 - 10 of about 81,400 English pages for "most students in the ".

Results 1 - 10 of about 36,600 English pages for "most of the students in the "

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by riverkid

Results 1 - 10 of about 81,400 English pages for "most students in the".

Not 'unfair'. Just a matter of ellipsis.

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Casiopea

Not 'unfair'. Just a matter of ellipsis.

Ellipsis, I don't necessarily think so, Casi. If it were simply a matter of ellipsis then the distinction between general and specific wouldn't exist.

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by riverkid

Ellipsis, I don't necessarily think so, Casi. If it were simply a matter of ellipsis then the distinction between general and specific wouldn't exist.

On the contrary. Ellipsis is about redundancy. There are two markers that express definiteness here,

Ex: Most of the students in school study.

Omit one or the other and specificity still exists,

Ex: Most students in the school study.
Ex: Most of the students study. <implied 'in the school'>

All the best.