Tullia
Senior Member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2010
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- England
- Current Location
- England
Hi guys,
I'm currently applying for a CELTA course and am working my way through the application form. Most of it's pretty easy [I speak four foreign languages and teach English Literature anyway] but there is one question that is just totally stumping me.
I've been asked to pick the "odd one out" from the following four phrases:
to talk
to shout
to speak
to whisper
I have a horrible feeling it's going to be a ridiculously easy answer that is staring me in the face as soon as someone says it, but I really can't figure this out with any degree of confidence.
All four verbs can be used transitively or intransitively, so it's not that.
I tried thinking along "meaning" lines rather than grammatically but I'm not really sure one could separate "speak" and "talk"; I'd be happy defining whisper and shout as subsets of speaking but I'm not sure talking is - or at least not at the level of teaching a foreign student anyway.
I did wonder if they are looking for me to say that "to speak" has an irregular perfect tense form? But the question was what was the odd one out of the items, so am I OK to mention that when they didn't present the perfect tenses, they gave the infinitive forms?
Anyway, that's my best guess at the moment so unless anyone has any other great ideas I'll go with that - but I'd love to see what other people think!
I'm currently applying for a CELTA course and am working my way through the application form. Most of it's pretty easy [I speak four foreign languages and teach English Literature anyway] but there is one question that is just totally stumping me.
I've been asked to pick the "odd one out" from the following four phrases:
to talk
to shout
to speak
to whisper
I have a horrible feeling it's going to be a ridiculously easy answer that is staring me in the face as soon as someone says it, but I really can't figure this out with any degree of confidence.
All four verbs can be used transitively or intransitively, so it's not that.
I tried thinking along "meaning" lines rather than grammatically but I'm not really sure one could separate "speak" and "talk"; I'd be happy defining whisper and shout as subsets of speaking but I'm not sure talking is - or at least not at the level of teaching a foreign student anyway.
I did wonder if they are looking for me to say that "to speak" has an irregular perfect tense form? But the question was what was the odd one out of the items, so am I OK to mention that when they didn't present the perfect tenses, they gave the infinitive forms?
Anyway, that's my best guess at the moment so unless anyone has any other great ideas I'll go with that - but I'd love to see what other people think!
