Which one is incorrect?

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emsr2d2

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It won't let you space those individual letters as you have been trying to do. It assumes that putting a large number of spaces between letters or words is an error and it automatically corrects it. I would try something like this:

(A) What (B) do you (C) look?
Which part of the sentence is wrong - A, B or C?

I agree with the others that this is a silly/pointless/impossible question. We can only know which part is incorrect if we know what the "correct" final sentence was meant to be. The sentence posted could be changed to:
How do you look?
How do you know?
What do you know?
What do you like?
... and more. There is not just one single correction to "What do you look?" which leads to a correct and natural English sentence.
 
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MikeNewYork

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That is my problem also. If the answer is substituting any of the three with anything, there is no point.
 

Anh Thu

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The sentence itself is grammatically incorrect, but each of the elements is fine.

Dear Raymott,

I'm glad to hear that you were finally happy, when you saw the whole 'silly' question and found nothing that could validate it.
However, please kindly allow me to present another argument, in the same way every teacher would welcome any question from his/her students after a lesson.

You said, "The sentence itself is grammatically incorrect, but each of the elements is fine". And my counter-argument is "When a sentence is grammatically incorrect, at least one of its elements is NOT fine". Let's take a look at the following three sentences:

(1) What do you look?*
(2) What do you see?
(3) What do you hear?

In (1), the sentence element "look" is NOT fine, because as an intransitive verb it cannot fit into that syntactic structure, while "see" in (2) and "hear" in (3) can fit well in the same pattern and thus can perform their syntactic function perfectly, since they are all transitive verbs.

Back to the original question, in the so-called sentence "What do you look?"* part C of the sentence (i.e., the verb "look") is grammatically incorrect, and this part should be replaced with a transitive verb.

Best regards,
Anh Thư :)
 

emsr2d2

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Why are you only considering C as potentially incorrect? If you change "What" to "How" then you end up with the perfectly grammatical sentence "How do you look?" That leads to the conclusion that in fact A is incorrect and C is correct. That makes your argument that C is incorrect ... incorrect! If you change "What" to "How" and "do you" to "do I", you get "How do I look?", another perfectly grammatical sentence leading to the conclusion that both A and B are wrong.

The simple fact is that "What do you look?" is a grammatically incorrect sentence. There are many ways of changing it into a grammatically correct sentence by changing A, B or C, or A and B, or A and C, or B and C or, finally, A, B and C.

I don't understand why you are only concentrating on the word "look".

If the original question was "What do you look?" and the corrected sentence was meant to be "How is your mother?" then all four words in the sentence are wrong and need to be changed.
 

5jj

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..If you .........really................. need to have white spaces in
your text,........you...................................can.........

Simply type in a number of full stops (.....) and then change the font colour to white.
 

tzfujimino

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I agree that it's not a good question, since there are a huge number of possibilities.
However, unfortunately, we give similar kinds of exercises to students (here in Japan) to see if they can construct grammatical English sentences.
If I were given that question and I had to answer it, I would choose C. It's because, as a non-native teacher of English, I can guess the question is about the usage of the verb. (I can think of several other possibilities, of course.)

"How(A) do you(B) call(C) the bird in English?"
In this example, I'd think of two possibilities to make it grammatical. One is to change 'How' for 'What', and the other is 'call' for 'say'.
I don't think these kinds of exercises are bad/silly at all. It is important for us non-native speakers to be able to make correct sentences by making full use of our knowledge about English grammar.
 

Tdol

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Back to the original question, in the so-called sentence "What do you look?"* part C of the sentence (i.e., the verb "look") is grammatically incorrect, and this part should be replaced with a transitive verb.

This is only one way of correcting the question, so it is not the correct answer or the correct argument, merely a correct answer and argument. To say that the learner who chose A as incorrect because they want to change what to how is wrong because we have to change look to a transitive verb is not logical. The learner who choose A for that reason is every bit as right as the person who chooses C). The problem is the original question, as any of the answers can be correct- the fact that the test writer is looking for C does not invalidate A as an answer. It's easy to overlook these things when writing tests.

A could also be a perfectly natural question in some contexts, but how natural it is not particularly relevant as the question is about what part is incorrect.
 

Anh Thu

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Dear Emsr2d2, Raymott, Tdol and others,

In some previous posts of this thread I had already discussed the option of changing part A (from "What" to "How") with exactly the same argument. During the discussion I also pointed out that the puzzle as a whole is a bit odd, when more than one option of possible answers can apply. Actually, this puzzle (as a language test item) was not written by myself. The test was designed & administered by an EFL Centre in HCM City, Vietnam. A friend of mine took the test and later asked for my comments on this particular test item.

As an EFL learner I learned a lot from your comments and suggestions. Also, I believe that the person who wrote the test will find these discussions interesting and helpful as well. Again, thank you very much for sharing your time and valuable comments.

Best regards,
Anh Thư :lol:
 
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englishhobby

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Ah. Well that's a silly question. Grammar doesn't come from individual words or phrases. It's about the way they are arranged. The sentence itself is grammatically incorrect, but each of the elements is fine. The question's invalid. If you assume that any two of the three parts are correct, then you can change the third to make a grammatically-correct sentence. I only asked for the whole question to see if there was something that validated it. But apparently not. Thanks, I'm happy now. :-D


How would a proper instruction sound? Perhaps, like this:
Which part of the following sentence makes it grammatically incorrect - A, B, or C? Change it to make the sentence grammatical.
:?:
 

emsr2d2

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How would a proper instruction sound? Perhaps, like this:
Which part of the following sentence makes it grammatically incorrect - A, B, or C? Change it to make the sentence grammatical.
:?:

No!

It's not the wording of the question that is the problem. It's the actual riddle/puzzle itself. You can only ask "Which is incorrect? A, B or C?" if there is just one single possible answer. As we have established, there are dozens of potential answers to that question.
 

Raymott

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In (1), the sentence element "look" is NOT fine, because as an intransitive verb it cannot fit into that syntactic structure, while "see" in (2) and "hear" in (3) can fit well in the same pattern and thus can perform their syntactic function perfectly, since they are all transitive verbs.
There's nothing at all wrong with 'look', if you assume that 'What' is incorrect.
Back to the original question, in the so-called sentence "What do you look?"* part C of the sentence (i.e., the verb "look") is grammatically incorrect, and this part should be replaced with a transitive verb.
There's nothing in the original question that mentions correcting a transitivity problem. A sensible question to ask would be "Change one of these items so that the sentence is grammatical." Even if transitivity was mentioned, as in "Change a word to solve the problem with transitivity", the word that is changed could still be "What". "What do you look?" "You look what". 'What' makes no sense - obviously (another person might say), because 'look' can't take a transitive object. Therefore, 'What' must be substituted with 'How'. "You look how?" - "How do you look".
Don't you find it even vaguely disturbing to your opinion that no native speaker agrees with you?
 
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Tdol

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How would a proper instruction sound? Perhaps, like this:
Which part of the following sentence makes it grammatically incorrect - A, B, or C? Change it to make the sentence grammatical.
:?:

Why not just ask them to correct the sentence and accept any correct answer? You cannot get a single answer out of this question as there are various ways to solve the problem. If the tester wants a single answer, then the sentence needs changing.
 

Anh Thu

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If the tester wants a single answer, then the sentence needs changing.

Can't agree more!
Thank you.

Anh Thu
 

Anh Thu

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'What' must be substituted with 'How'.

This idea had already been mentioned in my very first post of this thread, and later during the discussion it was also suggested as another alternative of possible answers. Let us NOT forget, however, that by substituting 'What' with 'How' we've consequently changed the syntactic setting from ['What' + Aux + Subj + Vt] to ['How' + Aux + Subj + Vi]. Thus, the sentence element "look", as an intransitive verb, will fit in quite well with this new syntactic environment. So, surely, there'll be nothing wrong with "look", as you've pointed out. I totally agree with you.


Anh Thư

:lol:
 

englishhobby

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The best solutioin (IMO) is:

Exercise. Is the following sentence grammatically correct? (choose A or B). If not, make it grammatically correct changing only one word (there are many possible answers).

What do you look?
A) Correct
B) Incorrect.

:cool:
 
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MikeNewYork

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Is it only me or do others also think this thread has turned into the endless flagellation of a deceased equine?
 

Anh Thu

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Dear All,

As the starter of this controversial topic, please allow me to wind up the discussion as follows:




  • [*=left]We all agreed that either part A or part C of the sentence should be revised in order to make the sentence grammatically correct.
    [*=left]Since more than one correct answer can be accepted, most participants agreed that the question should be revised.
    [*=left]Everyone agreed that if the test writer wants only one correct answer, then the sentence needs changing.

Thank you very much for your participation in the discussion & for all your valuable comments. Please allow me to close this thread now. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you again in the discussion of other topics in this Forum.


Best regards,
Anh Thư
 
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