Question 1 - Intermediary Test in China

This page is dedicated for Question 1 of this test. It would be too long to explain all the questions on the same page, so I split them one by one.

If I had the chance to explain Question 1 face-to-face with the student(s), it would probably take up to 15 minutes, no more. But in writing it looks like a long page. Nevertheless, you can always come back here for clarification.

Question:

1) This year has ______World Year of Physics______Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics.    

A. made; remember    

B. made; to remember    

C. been made; remember    

D. been made; to remember      

Can you explain why D is right answer?

Answer:

Yes, D is right answer. Let's take it one by one:

i) 1) This year has ______World Year of Physics.

For the first sentence here you have 2 choices:

a) made

b) been made

Try the first one in the sentence:

a) If you say "This year has made World Year of Physics" - the sentence is correct grammatically: we have a subject (this year), a verb in the present perfect tense (has made) and an object (World Year of Physics).

However, the sentence is incorrect, because of the logic element - it doesn't make sense... a year cannot "make" anything.

This is the downside of tests - people taking language tests only look at the mechanics of the sentence - they tend to treat those words like some kind of cubes, which need to be put in the correct place, but tend to forget to think of the meaning of those words, in order to combine them with the correct words around them.

However, people can "make" a year into a special kind of year, by dedicating that year to a particular cause or subject. Now, when people do this, they are the subjects and the year is the object in the sentence, like this:

"The government has made this year World Year of Physics."

It's similar to saying: "The author has written a book."

These sentences are in Active Voice: they tell us who has made/has written what. They actively did the action.

Now, if I want to turn it around and use 'this year'/'a book' as the subject then I need to turn the action as well. These things (the year/the book) do not perform the action - they receive it, therefore they are the passive agents, which is why we call this expression the Passive Voice.

But for this I need the verb 'is', which in present perfect is 'been'. It's a bit like this:

I read a book. (active voice - present)

A book is read by me. (passive voice - present)

"The author has written a book." (active voice - present perfect)

"A book has been written by the author." (passive voice - Pres. Perf.)

"The government has made this year World Year of Physics."
(active voice - present perfect)

"This year has been made World Year of Physics." (passive voice - Pres. Perf.)

... which is your other choice in your test - options C and D.

For you to be able to recognise and formulate sentences like this correctly, you need to master the Active/Passive Voice matter well.

ii) The second sentence: ___________ Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics.    

The choices we have here are two:

a) remember

b) to remember

They are both the 'infinitive' form of the verb (one with the 'to' particle and one without), but the difference between them is this:

a) if you say "remember" you are actually giving an instruction - we use the infinitive without 'to' for giving orders, instructions etc.

"Sit down." ; "Read the paragraph."; "Follow me, please." ; "Please, help yourself."

In our test sentence we don't have this situation. It doesn't make sense to write:

"This year has been made World Year of Physics remember Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics." - this is incorrect.

b) if you say "to remember", you are actually saying "in order to remember" and that would make sense in our sentence:

"This year has been made World Year of Physics to remember Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics." - this is correct.

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