[General] Did you do the homework?

[beachboy]

Before starting to correct the homework, I'd say a teacher would ask the students: "Have you done the homework, guys", rather than "Did you do the homework" (at least, in British English). What about after the correction - would a student tell the teacher "Sorry, Mr. Cooper, I haven't done the homework" or "sorry, Mr. Cooper, I didn't do the homework"?

 

[emsr2d2]

Before starting to correct [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] homework, I'd say a teacher would ask the students (no colon here) "Have you done [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] your homework? [STRIKE]guys[/STRIKE]", rather than "Did you do [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] your homework?" (at least, in British English). What about after the correction? Would a student tell the teacher "Sorry, Mr. Cooper, I haven't done [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] my homework" or "Sorry, Mr. Cooper, I didn't do [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] my homework"?

See my changes above.

Why would a student wait until after the teacher had completed the corrections to apologise for not having done their homework? They should answer the question straight away.

Whilst "the homework" isn't wrong, it's more common/natural to refer to "my/your/our/their" homework.

 

[jutfrank]

The student is likely to respond using the same grammar as used in the question. This is a basic principle of conversation analysis.

(I've assumed here that the student is speaking in response to the teacher's question. I have no idea why you think the student would respond after the correction. Such a delay would violate another principle of cooperative communication—that of answering a question more or less as soon as it is asked.)

 

[beachboy]

See my changes above.

Why would a student wait until after the teacher had completed the corrections to apologise for not having done their homework? They should answer the question straight away.

Whilst "the homework" isn't wrong, it's more common/natural to refer to "my/your/our/their" homework.

Maybe, after the correction, Mr. Cooper asked each student individually how many mistakes they had made.

 

[jutfrank]

Maybe, after the correction, Mr. Cooper asked each student individually how many mistakes they had made.

I see what you mean. In that case, the student is likely to reply in the past simple.

Teacher: Simkins—how many answers did you get right?
Simkins: Um, I didn't actually do it, Sir.
Teacher: And why are you only telling me this now, boy?

 

[Tarheel]

In all my time in school (as far as I know) the teacher never asked me how many mistakes I had made. Instead, the teacher told me how many mistakes I had made. (I usually found out when I got the corrected paper back.)

 

[beachboy]

In all my time in school (as far as I know) the teacher never asked me how many mistakes I had made. Instead, the teacher told me how many mistakes I had made. (I usually found out when I got the corrected paper back.)

The assignment is in the students' books. The teacher isn't supposed to know how many mistakes the students made.

 

[emsr2d2]

In that case, your opening words "Before starting to correct the homework, ... a teacher would say" doesn't make any sense. I thought (and so did other people, as far as I can tell) that the teacher was going to collect the homework papers in, look at them, correct them, mark them, and then give them back to the students.

 

[beachboy]

In that case, your opening words "Before starting to correct the homework, ... a teacher would say" doesn't make any sense. I thought (and so did other people, as far as I can tell) that the teacher was going to collect the homework papers in, look at them, correct them, mark them, and then give them back to the students.

It's not that the sentence didn't make any sense. I just didn't make myself clear. The situations were NOT connected. Reread the post and imagine that first I had in mind one class with a certain teacher, and then I had in mind another teacher, another class, another day. We know never when we will be misunderstood until we are misunderstood. But I don't know why most of you thought the homework was going to be handed in to the teacher and not an exercise in the students' books....

 

[emsr2d2]

Well, it looked as if the situations were connected because you put it all in one paragraph. I've re-read it and it doesn't look like it's two separate situations.

The reason we thought that the homework would be handed in was because that's normally how homework is done! Your teacher gives you an assignment, you do it, you hand it in on the due date, your teacher corrects it and then they give it back to you. I'm not saying we don't trust students, but if the students had their own homework in front of them on the desk while the teacher gave out the correct answers, how do we know the students won't change their answers or simply lie about how many mistakes they made?

 

[jutfrank]

if the students had their own homework in front of them on the desk while the teacher gave out the correct answers, how do we know the students won't change their answers or simply lie about how many mistakes they made?

In beachboy's defence here, I must admit that that's exactly how I myself and many other EFL teachers check a lot of a certain kind of homework we give.

As adults who are paying for their own education, they have very little motivation to be dishonest. Plus, it saves a hell of a lot of out-of-class time!

 

[beachboy]

Well, it looked as if the situations were connected because you put it all in one paragraph. I've re-read it and it doesn't look like it's two separate situations.

The reason we thought that the homework would be handed in was because that's normally how homework is done! Your teacher gives you an assignment, you do it, you hand it in on the due date, your teacher corrects it and then they give it back to you. I'm not saying we don't trust students, but if the students had their own homework in front of them on the desk while the teacher gave out the correct answers, how do we know the students won't change their answers or simply lie about how many mistakes they made?

It depends on hundreds of things. You probably had in mind a class with a number of high-school students in their teens. I had in mind a language course with adults who know the importance of studying a foreign language and won't lie to their teachers. Anyway, we know some of them do lie. But teachers just trust them.

 

[emsr2d2]

I wasn't thinking of any particular sort of class. However, I accept your explanation but I would say that you should have made it clearer in post #1 that the two situations were not connected.