Six Underlined Choices in a Host-Family Email
Hana is writing an email to her Australian host family, the Wilsons, before she leaves Japan. She wants to sound friendly but correct, so she has underlined six places where she is unsure. Her draft reads: 'Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Thank you for (1) saying / telling me about your town. I have (2) been / gone to Australia once before, but only for three days. Could you (3) borrow / lend me a bicycle while I am there? I will return it (4) by / until the end of July. My English teacher says there are (5) a few / few questions I should ask you, so I will write again soon. I am looking forward to (6) meet / meeting you. Best wishes, Hana.' Her teacher warns her that two of the six mistakes are the kind that make a friendly email sound strange to a native reader, even though the grammar looks fine to a Japanese speaker.
1. Choose the correct word for (1), (3) and (4), and explain the rule behind each choice.
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(1) telling. 'Tell' takes a person as its object: tell someone about something. 'Say' does not take a person directly - you say something to someone. Here the object is 'me', so it must be 'telling me about your town'. Compare: 'She said that your town was lovely.'
(3) lend. The direction decides the verb. 'Lend' means to give something temporarily to another person; 'borrow' means to take something temporarily from another person. Hana is asking the Wilsons to give her a bicycle, so she asks them to lend it. If she wrote 'Could I borrow a bicycle?', that would also be correct - the subject changes, and so does the verb.
(4) by. 'By' marks a deadline: the action is finished at or before that point. 'Until' marks how long an action continues: 'I will keep it until the end of July' means she holds it right up to that date and then stops. Since the sentence is about returning, 'by the end of July' is the natural choice.
2. Explain (2): why is 'I have gone to Australia' wrong here, and what does each form actually mean?
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'Have gone to' describes someone who went and is not here now - the focus is on present location. So 'I have gone to Australia' would tell the Wilsons that Hana is currently in Australia, which contradicts the email she is writing from Japan.
'Have been to' describes experience - the person went, came back, and can talk about it. That is exactly Hana's meaning: 'I have been to Australia once before, but only for three days.'
The pair is a standard source of errors because in Japanese the same verb covers both ideas. A test for choosing: ask where the person is now. If the answer is 'here, with a memory', use 'have been'. If the answer is 'not here', use 'have gone'. Related trap: 'I have been in Australia for three days' is also possible, but it means she is there now, so it does not fit this email.
3. Explain (5) and (6). What is the difference between 'a few' and 'few', and why is 'looking forward to meeting' the only correct form?
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(5) a few. 'A few' means 'some, a small number' and is positive: there are questions, so she will write again. 'Few' without 'a' means 'not many, almost none' and is negative in feeling: 'There are few questions I should ask you' suggests there is almost nothing worth asking. Hana wants the Wilsons to expect another email, so 'a few' matches her meaning. The same pattern appears with 'little' and 'a little' for uncountable nouns.
(6) meeting. The phrase is 'look forward to', and here 'to' is a preposition, not part of an infinitive. A preposition is followed by a noun or a gerund, so the form is 'looking forward to meeting you'. The same rule explains 'I am used to getting up early' and 'Thank you for helping me'. The test is simple: if you can put a noun after the word ('looking forward to the trip'), then the '-ing' form is right when you use a verb.