TransWikia.com

Is there a correct answer to this 12th Grade English question, listed below?

English Language & Usage Asked on February 25, 2021

This was published on BuzzFeed as a supposedly 12th Grade English question

Should you change this sentence to make it grammatically correct?

  • "We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother Rob finds an inn called The Glosglore."

The 4 answers to the multi choice question were:

  1. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother, Rob, finds an inn called The Glosglore.
  2. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.
  3. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother Rob found an inn called The Glosglore.
  4. No change.

My question in this case is; should it not be After the Inn was found as opposed to when the Inn was found.

According to The Cambridge English Dictionary
When: We can use when to introduce a single completed event that takes place in the middle of a longer activity or event. In these cases, we usually use a continuous verb in the main clause to describe the background event.

However in the answers above I do not see the finding of the Inn as taking place in the middle of the event but before the event.
Am I correct? and are all these answers incorrect?

One Answer

We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother Rob found an inn called The Glosglore.

As a native speaker, it is very easy to read this without noticing the problem that you bring up. I can see it now. The way I first read it was to mentally fill in an implicit event, that of being without shelter.

In fact the sentence can be considered correct but relies on a very subtle distinction in the meaning of when.

In the following two sentences, the word when has slightly different meanings.

  1. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.

  2. We were struggling through the rain when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.

In 1, when means after which time. In 2, when means during which time.

Answered by chasly - supports Monica on February 25, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP