
English Teacher
Dear teachers!
Is this sentence correct?
Q: What are the kinds of vitamins and what are their roles in the body?
Thanks a million!
Dawood
What are the kinds of vitamins
What is the correct answer you are hoping for in asking this question?![]()
Someone sent me a piece of paper asking this question but to me it's incorrect but as I'm not very good at English I posted this question on the forum in order to get the answer.
Well, I think it must be " How many kinds of vitamins are there and what are their functions in our body?"
Is my version correct?
Dawood
The original sentence is grammatical enough, but it contains ambiguities.
First, what is a "kind" of vitamin? I could say that there are two kinds - fat-soluble and water-soluble. I could say that there are A, B, C, D, E, H etc.
But then I'd have to expand B1, B2, B3, etc.
Secondly, is the question asking what the role of the "kinds" are, or the role of the individual vitamins in that kind? Vitamins C and B1 are both water-soluble. But they have totally different functions. So differentiating the roles of these two "kinds" is futile.
How to phrase the question depends on what you want to know.
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