Directions : Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow…
2019
Directions : Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options :
Learning a language under any circumstances requires hard work and concentration. However, the circumstances can make a difference in both quality and quantity. Most foreign language students learn in a classroom, from a text-book. In a classroom, language learning can be controlled so that all the necessary structures are taught. Highly motivated students can thus learn the language efficiently and quickly. Learning on the streets and in the markets from experience and need can be effective although the student learns only what he happens to need, in a haphazard way.
Some language students find this real-life situation more meaningful because the students’ success in fulfilling their needs depends on their language ability. However, shop-keepers are more likely to be tolerant of incorrect grammar than classroom teachers, so mispronunciations and errors will not matter much. Nevertheless, the rewards are different for the type of language learning situations. They are immediate (goods, bought in a store) in the real-life but delayed until a quiz or oral recital for the classroom learner.
The kind of language learnt in each setting differs too. In the classroom, the student is more likely to learn the grammatical language of educated people. The language learnt out of necessity often lacks the fine details of the classroom variety and might include informal expressions such as slang. The people learning on the street must be easily understood. Therefore, they might actually sound more like native speakers — although not necessarily educated people. So a combination of classroom instruction and the experience of using language in the street will result in the best language learning of all.
Study the following phrase. Which part of speech is the underlined word?
'but delayed until a quiz ...'
Answer: D. Preposition — Concept A few English words — until, till, before, after and since — belong to more than one word class. Which class a particular use belongs to is decided by…
- A.
Pronoun
- B.
Determiner
- C.
Conjunction
- D.
Preposition
Attempted by 15 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
A few English words — until, till, before, after and since — belong to more than one word class. Which class a particular use belongs to is decided by the kind of complement that follows the word: a noun phrase, that is a naming group carrying no verb of its own, makes it a preposition, while a finite clause, a group carrying its own subject and verb, makes it a subordinating conjunction. The spelling never changes; the grammar around it does.
Application
Restore the full sentence from the passage: "They are immediate (goods, bought in a store) in the real-life but delayed until a quiz or oral recital for the classroom learner."
Isolate what follows the underlined word: "a quiz or oral recital". It is built from the determiner "a" and the coordinated nouns "quiz" and "oral recital", and it carries no verb of its own, so it is a noun phrase and not a clause.
Apply the test stated above: a noun-phrase complement makes the word a preposition. "until a quiz or oral recital" is therefore a prepositional phrase telling us up to what point the reward is delayed.
The underlined word "until" is thus a preposition in this phrase.
Cross-check and contrast
Put a clause after it and the word class flips: in "delayed until the learner takes a quiz", the group "the learner takes a quiz" carries its own subject and verb, so that use of "until" would be a subordinating conjunction. Same word, different grammar around it.
A pronoun substitutes for a naming group already identified by the context, as he, it, they and which do; "until" substitutes for nothing here.
A determiner sits inside a naming group and fixes its reference; in this very phrase that job is already done by "a" in "a quiz".
The conjunction inside the quoted phrase is "but", which links the contrasting halves "immediate ... in the real-life" and "delayed until a quiz ...". It is not the underlined word.