a. regains b. retrieves c. recoups D. recovers
a. rip-offs B. bargains C. quality goods D. luxury items
My gf asked some of her friends who told her different answers than I gave.
What do you think? The answers seem clear to me.
[quote=“Lo Bo To”]1. The dentist charges half price for the treatment and then _______ the cost from the government.
a. regains b. retrieves c. recoups D. recovers
a. rip-offs B. bargains C. quality goods D. luxury items
My gf asked some of her friends who told her different answers than I gave.
What do you think? The answers seem clear to me.[/quote]
For the first, I’d say C or D (from a usage standpoint).
For the second, I’d say none (from a semantic standpoint). A and B don’t work at all, but how can a business be “accused” of charging high prices for C and D, which usually warrant high prices?
5 a. rip-offs (i.e. fakes / illegal copies)
[quote=“Lo Bo To”]1. The dentist charges half price for the treatment and then _______ the cost from the government.
a. regains b. retrieves c. recoups D. recovers[/quote]
The dentist charges whatever price he charges. The customer pays half and he recoups or possibly recovers the rest (or the difference) from the government. He doesn’t recoup the cost. It costs the costumer X and the gov’t Y. They split the cost between them.
You could say he only charges the customer half price, but if you don’t specify the customer then the sentence says that he only charges half price in total.
[quote]5. That boutique was accused of charging steep prices for _________.
a. rip-offs B. bargains C. quality goods D. luxury items[/quote]
Without going into details, the answer to the question is “get a fucking native speaker to write your tests for you” instead of teaching this Chinglish crap.
I’d say ‘recoups’ and ‘rip-offs’, but the latter in particular sounds a bit off.
I’d say the questions were written by native speakers, native speakers forced to try to use the words ‘recoup’ and ‘rip-off’ in a sentence, and under time pressure.
[quote=“bababa”]I’d say ‘recoups’ and ‘rip-offs’, but the latter in particular sounds a bit off.
I’d say the questions were written by native speakers, native speakers forced to try to use the words ‘recoup’ and ‘rip-off’ in a sentence, and under time pressure.[/quote]
I totally agree.
Re: 5. The boutique was accused of something, therefore the remainder of the sentence describes what they were doing wrong. It is not wrong to charge high prices for quality goods or luxury items. For answer b, we don’t charge prices for “bargains”; bargains refers to the prices themselves. Typically a boutique might claim that their prices are “bargains”, while actually the prices are quite steep, but it wouldn’t be accused of that.
The logical answer to 5 is “rip-offs”; however, there are some problems with this choice.
According to Wikipedia: Ripoff, a “rip-off” means a “knock-off”, or an imitation copy of a well known product. There is “usually no attempt to deceive the buyer or infringe upon brand names, patents, trademarks or copyrights.” Since a “ripoff” or “knockoff” doesn’t try to deceive the buyer, why would the boutique be accused of selling that type of product?
It makes me think that the writer of the test thought that a “ripoff” was the same thing as a “counterfeit”, or perhaps that the writer assumed that in Taiwan, all ripoffs are illegal, so a boutique might be accused of selling such merchandise. If that was a Prada boutique that was selling Prada ripoffs, that would be something to get excited about. I wonder how many ladies would be duped.
In the UK, ‘ripoff’ may mean something that’s not worth the money. It could also mean the act of overcharging someone, but it’s a pretty blatant thing and the victim should have known better or else was being taken advantage of. (eg the price of drinks at a concert.)
“You paid £500 for that? You got ripped-off mate!”
“Cor, 90p for a packet of crisps. What a rip-off.”
You wouldn’t accuse someone of charging steep-prices for rip-offs. You would get accused of ripping people off.
A couple of people disagreed with me about this
They could well be right. The Taiwanese education system is obsessed with learning idioms to show off how good your English is, at the expense of knowing how to use even the basic words properly, and the above is a symptom of that. I’ve worked for publications that required ridiculous numbers of fancy expressions to be ‘demonstrated’, and it was beyond the abilities of most of the staff to consistently turn out natural-sounding or gramatically correct English. (I gave up eventually.)
Lo Bo To, where did you see these questions?
[quote=“Loretta”]In the UK, ‘ripoff’ may mean something that’s not worth the money. It could also mean the act of overcharging someone, but it’s a pretty blatant thing and the victim should have known better or else was being taken advantage of. (eg the price of drinks at a concert.)
“You paid £500 for that? You got ripped-off mate!”
“Cor, 90p for a packet of crisps. What a rip-off.”
You wouldn’t accuse someone of charging steep-prices for rip-offs. You would get accused of ripping people off.[/quote]
Yeah, it is a little off, but it is the best of the choices.
Normally, calling something a “rip-off” is saying the price is too high. Saying they charged too much for a rip-off is redundant. But it is still less problematic than the other choices.