tells versus told

[CW Tan]

Hi teachers,

Question : My sister ___________ my mother that she has a bad stomachache.

A. tell B. tells C. told D. telling


My 9-year-old daughter chose C. told, but her teacher marked her wrong and said B. tells is the correct answer.

I personally think that both B and C are correct. Am I right? Please enlighten me.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Marius Hancu]

For stories/reports (and this is a very short one)
the English-speaking person first expects and prefers (look at the hits for a proof)
past (told) with past (had) (and you need to drill this into your mind, as it's very important)
but accepts
past (told) with present (has)
(I refer to the order in your sentence)
if the present indicates that the state is still currently valid (the sickness)

See the statistics and the examples here in published English-language books:

634 on "she told me she had a" [preferred
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22she+told+me+she+had+a%22&btnG=Search+Books

88 on "she told me she has a"
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22she+told+me+she+has+a%22&btnG=Search+Books

The
present and present
is used mainly for narratives/telling stories in present time, which is another possibility:

134 on "she tells me she has a"
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22she+tells+me+she+has+a%22&btnG=Search+Books

I'm not sure if that was the case in that exercise.

My preference here would be
past with past
which isn't one of the choices.

For the given choices, IMO both B and C are acceptable, and I'd prefer C. However, the exercise isn't fair, as it's ambiguous without further context, which would help defining when the telling has been done, in the past or right now. That's the main problem with it, the lack of context.

Learning and teaching sentences in a vacuum, without context, can be a major problem.

[Bridget]

For stories/reports (and this is a very short one)
the English-speaking person first expects and prefers (look at the hits for a proof)

But all your hits are examples of written English, Marius. Try checking out informal spoken English examples. It would be interesting to see if the results are the same as found in your hits.


634 on "she told me she had a" [preferred
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22s...G=Search+Books (http://books.google.com/books?q=%22she+told+me+she+had+a%22&btnG=Search+Books)

88 on "she told me she has a"
http://books.google.com/books?q=%22s...G=Search+Books (http://books.google.com/books?q=%22she+told+me+she+has+a%22&btnG=Search+Books)


I think those figures could be misleading, Marius:

Compare these and tell me why you think the speaker used each one:

1. She told me she has a cold.
2. She told me she had a cold.

With the #2 example, how can we know just how many of your '634 on "she told me she had a"' examples refer to the currently valid sickness?

[OddThomas]

Since this appears to be a test of very elementary concepts of aligning time in tenses of two verbs in one sentence, I believe we should accept the teacher's interpretation.

Choices A and D are plainly wrong.

The first verb cannot be in the past tense because that would mean she would have told something before it became a fact, so choice C is out.

That leaves only choice B. I admit, this is a present tense exercise--a very artificial classroom exercise. But this is how basic skills are taught and learned. We shouldn't over analyze it.

[Bridget]

That leaves only choice B. I admit, this is a present tense exercise--a very artificial classroom exercise. But this is how basic skills are taught and learned.

No, this is exactly how students are left confused. If one is going to set such exercises, at least one should tell the students that it is only to test the use of the present tense. If not that, the teacher should give more textual context. No mysteries in class, please.

Offering 4 opitions, 2 of which are perfectly grammatical, and then telling the student that only one option is possible, is poor teaching, IMO.

In fact, in the right context, "D" could also be used.

[Pete]

Hi teachers,

Question : My sister ___________ my mother that she has a bad stomachache.

A. tell B. tells C. told D. telling


My 9-year-old daughter chose C. told, but her teacher marked her wrong and said B. tells is the correct answer.

I personally think that both B and C are correct. Am I right? Please enlighten me.

Thank you very much in advance.
So far, we all seem to be in agreement that this is a terrible question. I'd say that answer A cannot be correct, since the agreement is wrong. I also can't see how D could be correct (could you say what you have in mind, Bridget?), since "telling" is not a finite verb.

B and C both could be correct depending on context, but each has problems. B is a present simple form, but since "tell" is generally a continuous verb, "tells" can't have the usual present meaning that the "telling" is going on at the present, the time the statement is being made. (And that wouldn't make much sense, anyway.) Without an adverb like "often" or "frequently" or "occasionally", it would take a lot of context that we don't have to make the sentence mean that the activity is habitual. That leaves the narrative or historic present, where the present tense is used to speak about something that happened in the past, and that is indeed possible; however, I think that it is unlikely that the person writing the quiz actually had that in mind unless that had been a topic recently studied; if it had been, that would be the obvious answer of choice.

Otherwise, I'd say that answer C, the past tense, is the best answer. In this case, we are seeing a classic example of "reported speech". In reported speech with the main verb in the past tense, we usually would expect that the reported verb would be "back-shifted" to the past also, and "has" is certainly in the present, so this isn't the simplest case of reported speech. But any discussion of reported speech should include the situation where the reported statement is still true, especially when the speech was recently made, in which case you often use the present in the reported statement; so I think this is the option that is most likely to be used in actual speech. Without any actual statistics, I'd imagine that this is more common than the use of the narrative present to speak of past happenings.

And to repeat my first statement, this is a terrible test question. None of the answers gives a sentence that makes sense without a good bit of additional context that the one answering shouldn't have to provide.

[Bridget]

I also can't see how D could be correct (could you say what you have in mind, Bridget?), since "telling" is not a finite verb.

Sure, no problem.

Two friends, Pete and Bridget, are upstairs at Bridget's family's house and listening to music. Suddenly, from downstairs. a loud argument is heard.

Pete: What on earth is that (noise)?

Bridget: (That's) My sister telling my mother that she has a bad stomachache. She's trying to get off going to school.

..

And, on "tells" how about:

Bridget: So how does your sister manage to get off school so much?

Pete: She tells my mother she has a migraine.

None of the answers gives a sentence that makes sense without a good bit of additional context that the one answering shouldn't have to provide.

Exactly.