I often see him sing/singing in the playground.

[joham]

Are both answerw right for each sentence? I thought both are, but not quite sure.

1 I often see him sing/singing in the playground.
2 I hope he will/can come to my birthday party.
3 Will you join/join in the football game against Class 3 tomorrow?
4 A: I'm sorry for being late today.
B: No problem/Never mind. The traffic is heavy and we just arrived a few minutes ago.

 

[emsr2d2]

Are both answers right for each sentence? I thought both are, but not quite sure.

Are both italic options possible below?

1. I often see him sing/singing in the playground.
2. I hope he will/can come to my birthday party.
3. Will you join/join in the football game against Class 3 tomorrow?
4. A: I'm sorry for being late today.
B: No problem/Never mind. The traffic is heavy and we just arrived a few minutes ago.

All of them are possible. What prompted you to ask? Who wrote those examples?

 

[Rover_KE]

Johan, you‘ll get quicker answers if you ask only one question per thread.

 

[joham]

All of them are possible. What prompted you to ask? Who wrote those examples?

Thanks so much, Moderator. I saw these from an 8-grade English exercise sheet, written by some Chinese English teacher. Each sentence is given three choices, but the key to the exercises gives only one choice for each. The setter clearly thinks there's only one choice but I suspected in these four problems there are two. But I was not quite sure. So I got here to get your sincere help. It's quite a long time since I last asked any questions here and forgot that I should only ask one question in each thread to get a quicker anser. Thank you and Rover KE again. (P.S. There are many many such exercises which have more than one choice that are possible but are thought to be wrong on exercise sheet or exam papers. That's why I have asked more than one thousand questions here in the past 15 years.)

 

[Tarheel]

Say: "I saw these on an English exercise sheet ...."

I think you mean there are three options given with each sentence.

test maker

more than one possible choice

The test maker is probably right that in each case one choice is the most likely one. However, that doesn't mean the others are wrong.

 

[joham]

Thank you so much, Tarheel. Yes, there are three options given with each sentence. But I thought there are two options that are right for the ones above, and didn't mention the one option that I thought was wrong. But I was not very sure.

 

[Tarheel]

But I thought there are two options that are right for the ones above, and didn't mention the one option that I thought was wrong. But I was not very sure.

I'm having a hard time figuring that out. Do you mean that out of the three options given two are right, and you are having trouble figuring out which is wrong?

 

[joham]

Thank you for your further question. In China's test paper, we are asked to choose only one correct answer. And I think the paper writer should not give two correct choices in one sentence so that the student will feel puzzled how to make the choice. Another example: Little Tom likes eating cakes, so now he has bad teeth/toothache. I think both are correct, but the teacher said only teeth was the correct option.

 

[Tarheel]

Only "toothache" is correct. Also, that sentence doesn't make sense. Perhaps: "Little Tom ate too much cake and now he has a toothache."

You might say somebody likes cake, but not cakes.

Little Ron likes chocolate cake,
But he ate too much, and how he has a stomach ache.

 

[Tarheel]

Only "toothache" is correct. Also, that sentence doesn't make sense. Perhaps: "Little Tom ate too much cake and now he has a toothache."

You might say somebody likes cake, but not cakes.

Little Ron likes chocolate cake,
But he ate too much, and how he has a stomach ache.

Note that "stomach ache" makes more sense there than "toothache".