big drops

[keannu]

What does this "big drops" refer to ? candies?
15)One day I traveled to Mr. Wigden's all alone. I looked around slowly among the sweets and chose some chocolate beans, big drops, and colorful jelly babies.

I knew nothing of money at that time. ①[I would watch my mother hand something to people, who would then hand her a bag.] Slowly the idea of exchange entered my mind. Those days I collected cherry stones for a hobby and I thought I could pay for sweets with them.
One day I went to Mr. Wigden's sweet shop alone. ②[I chose a lot of colorful sweets and proudly put half a dozen cherry stones into his open hand.]


"What's that in your hand?" asked Mr. Smith.
"Cherry stones. Today something interesting happened in my shop," said Mr. Wigden.
"What happened?" asked his friend.
"There was a little boy who often dropped by my shop with his mother. Today he came alone and chose a lot of sweets. I asked him if he had money. He said yes and gave me these cherry stones."
"What did you do then?"
"I didn't know what to do at first, but his eyes said he really believed they were money. So I gave him the sweets."
"Why didn't you tell him they were not real money?"
"I didn't want to disappoint him."

 

[Rover_KE]

Probably. The sentence was clearly written by a non-native speaker.

 

[keannu]

Really? It's a lesson content of a middle school English textbook in Korea, and the protagonist in the pictures seems all native spekers. I added more context for you to judge more.

 

[Gillnetter]

What does this "big drops" refer to ? candies?
15)One day I traveled to Mr. Wigden's all alone. I looked around slowly among the sweets and chose some chocolate beans, big drops, and colorful jelly babies.

I knew nothing of money at that time. ①[I would watch my mother hand something to people, who would then hand her a bag.] Slowly the idea of exchange entered my mind. Those days I collected cherry stones for a hobby and I thought I could pay for sweets with them.
One day I went to Mr. Wigden's sweet shop alone. ②[I chose a lot of colorful sweets and proudly put half a dozen cherry stones into his open hand.]


"What's that in your hand?" asked Mr. Smith.
"Cherry stones. Today something interesting happened in my shop," said Mr. Wigden.
"What happened?" asked his friend.
"There was a little boy who often dropped by my shop with his mother. Today he came alone and chose a lot of sweets. I asked him if he had money. He said yes and gave me these cherry stones."
"What did you do then?"
"I didn't know what to do at first, but his eyes said he really believed they were money. So I gave him the sweets."
"Why didn't you tell him they were not real money?"
"I didn't want to disappoint him."

In the US, "drops" are a form of hard candy. These are not so popular as they once were. Cough drops (a somewhat sweet drop with certain medicinal proprieties) are still sold here.

 

[Grumpy]

"Drops" are also sweets in the UK. They are mostly hard boiled sugar sweets with various flavours [pear drops, pan drops, lemon drops etc], but may also be soft: as in chocolate drops.

 

[probus]

I can't detect the note of non-nativeness in the passage, only the type of bad writing the South Korean government seems to be so very enamoured of.

 

[keannu]

What do you mean by this? You'd better explain what it means.
only the type of bad writing the South Korean government seems to be so very enamoured of.

 

[Rover_KE]

probus was pointing out that a lot of your questions are related to texts sanctioned by your authorities which we first have to correct.

Be careful how you use 'You'd better explain what it means'. There's an implied threat in that construction which I'm sure you didn't intend.

Rover

 

[keannu]

What kind of "bad writing" is in there? I can't understand what it is. Does he mean the bad writing is a fault of the Korean government's Education Department like poor selecting ability? When I saw the expression, I felt it to be a kind of sarcasm, which I hope is not true. If he points out what kind of bad writing it is, I will be able to understand. Before, he mentioned similar opinions in other threads.

Did he mean that most texts were written by native speakers, but some of them could be bad writing and they were adopted by the Korean government? So it's the Korean government's falut? I also partially agree with his opinion, but if he had ascribed the bad writing to both the original writer and the Korean government, there would have been less misunderstanding between us.

 

[emsr2d2]

I would say that the suggestion is that the Korean government does not seem to have very high standards when it comes to choosing texts in English. It is possible that the people who choose the texts are unable to differentiate between high-quality and low-quality writing. If the people who are choosing the texts are not native speakers, then that is perfectly understandable.

 

[probus]

What I was getting at, keannu, is that the passage is somewhat unnaturally phrased, so much so that at least one of our teachers suspected that it had been written by a non-native speaker.

 

[5jj]

It is not easy to to add a comment here without running the risk of being accused of being racist or condescending, but I am going to give it a try.

There are people in what I'll loosely call the 'Far East' (China, Japan, Korea) who have spent many years diligently studying English and, understandably, gaining positions of authority in the academic world in their countries. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems to be assumed that, because they have written a few 'authoritative' books about English and become professors in respected universities, that what they write must be sound. That is not always the case.

I concede without reservation that many native speakers write sloppy English - we don't have an 'Academy' to dictate what is acceptable. What is 'good English' is a matter of ongoing discussion. However, some of the 'Far East' authorities come up with English that may be justifiable by some book they once read, but is simply not natural to most native speakers.

Some writers of course books and grammars (not just in the 'Far East') construct dialogues to illustrate certain points of grammar, and produce something that is , frankly, artificial. In my early days as a teacher, I (a native speaker of BrE) did the same, and I now cringe when I look at some of the materials I produced then.

Unless we can find several examples of constructions in such objective sources as COCA or BNC, then anything we construct has little or no value.