A Vocab Question - Football

Question

2. Football owes many of its early innovations to just a few individual players and coaches who thought deeply about the ---- of the game.

A) experiments
B) results
C) fundamentals
D) possessions
E) associations

This question is from an official test in Turkey. The official answer is C, which I, too, think works really well; however, is there any problem with E? I daresay it is also possible. What do you think, dear natives?

Thanks in advance

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

.
I see no possibility in E. And don't call me 'dear', please.

Gencebay90 · Answer

Sorry for the word "dear". Is there a bad meaning in "dear"?

Thank you

BarbaraPA · Answer

I see many, many people using "dear" in chat and it's off-putting. It's an intimate term used for your spouse or other loved ones. When someone says to me in chat "And what is your name dear" I don't want to answer them.

Gencebay90 · Answer

Thank you Grammar Geek for the clarification, but in no way did I mean that; I meant "http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/precious" bby saying "dear"; anyway sorry again. By the way. What do you think about question sir? Do you think E can't work, as well? In a big Turkish language forum one of our precious native speakers of English insists on the fact that E also works.

The link: http://www.dilforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36942. Mister Micawber, too, explained some grammar points for us from time to time in this forum :)

BarbaraPA · Answer

I don't see how associations can work in this either. It has two basic meanings - one is similar to "league" or "union" and the other is "what comes to mind when you think about something."

The original is asking about the very basics of the game - the fundamentals.

(PS - I'm not male

)

Gencebay90 · Answer

Sorry again

Ms. Grammar Geek

Let me quote what Saposcat ( the user name of the native speaker in our forum) has been saying for a day

C is alright. "The fundamentals of the game" simply means "the basic elements and rules of the game of football", and the sentence is saying that innovations were made by players and coaches who considered those basic elements and rules at length

Those individual players and coaches thought about the associations (çagrisimlar) that the game of football brought about in people's minds, and made their innovations according to those associations.

After I said that some other native speakers think that only C works, he said that

Then I have to say that I disagree with all of them who think "associations" doesn't work. They're most likely thinking in terms of set phrases—"the fundamentals of the game" is a set phrase—and not thinking outside the box, looking at what could be possible in the sentence. I think "associations" could be possible in such a sentence, and—since the instructions on the test do not say "find the most appropriate answer" (which is what they should say), but merely "find the appropriate answer"—what could be possible must be accepted as possible, thus making "associations" work as an answer.

Clive · Answer

Hi,

(Although you haven't told us what the instructions were, I suspect that this is another one of those tests that needs better instructions.
eg Find any word that fits grammatically?
eg Find any word that fits semantically?
eg Find the most likely word?

I agree with the person you quoted who felt that E is possible although clearly much, much less likely than C.

Best wishes, Clive

BarbaraPA · Answer

Yes, Clive wrote was I was going to. In most cases on a test, the answer is not "anything that could possibly work" but the most likely choice. A test taker should not have to wrack his or her brains to think outside the box, as your other poster puts it, to come up with something that COULD be right. There will be (or SHOULD be) one answer that stands out as the mostly likely choice, and that's the correct answer for the purpose of the test.

A really clever test, which would be a nightmare to grade, would be "describe a situation in which each of the following could be the right choice" and then list choices that all COULD work if the situation were just so.

Gencebay90 · Answer

The instructions are like this: Find the suitable word or the expression for the sentences below (As Saposcat said, it doesn't want us to find the most suitable one

Thank you

A Vocab Question - Football

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