Dear colleagues,

I have learned so much by your answers to other posts but now I also need to ask you for help.

The students had to fill in these sentences with correct forms of the verbs:

It...(be) a fine morning today. The birds...(sing) in the trees, and there...(be)not a cloud in the sky. 

Some students wrote in Present:

Some students wrote in Past:

I �ve done a lot of work today. 

What did you do today? I washed the car and cleaned the house. 

I think I �ll get a haircut today. 

I �m going to play golf today. 

Please don �t come and tell me the word today can only be used with a present tense. IMO without context it is difficult to know what tense to use. In your example, past tense can be used if it was said in the afternoon or evening of that day.

As I�ve said before, exam questions should be totally unambiguous and only have one clear and correct answer. Your questions don�t seem to fit that description.

I always tell my students to check for context before doing an exercise because the examiners / teachers /authors of the book are looking for a concrete answer to their questions.

 

The example with the present tenses is right, the example with the past tenses is right in "real life" where there is a context, for example, someone meeting a friend later in the day and telling him or her about his or her morning, but in an exercise in a book or an exam if no further context is given they have to choose the answers that do not need further explanation. Whenever we find one of these cases I always tell my students to take that into account because their answers could be marked as wrong.

 

I agree with Philip, exam questions should be totally unambiguous and only have one clear and correct answer, but that �s not always the case, that �s the reason why I tell my students that if they need further context to make their answer right, it could be considered wrong. It �s a small trick that has worked so far.

 

I hope that helps.

Examiners are quite strict.

If you find a time word such as "today", you are supposed to use present tenses since that �s what they expecto you to use.

We know that in real life, we are opened to other choices though.  I agree with Pilar that questions should be clear and unambiguous. Sadly, it �s not often the case.

I am really thankful to you for your support and wise advice. It �s really very helpful because I haven �t ever thought that we have to prepare students not only for using English in real life but also for such exams where only one answer of two or more is correct and the student must predict, guess or calculate which one. But I promise to be wiser in future, (Yeah, I like your advice about your small trick, Pilar.)

All your posts were extremly helpful (hoami0321, yours too!) because now I �m ready to meet my students on Monday and explain them why they lost the points for �It was a fine morning today �... And I will also tell them about you, so generous and helpful people all over the world, especially in Thailand and Spain!:))