Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: "They seem to..." or "They appear to..."?

Here's the exercise:
It appears that they sent us the wrong information.
(or)
They .........................................................
Assuming that these kinds of exercises require that you preserve as much 
as possible the meaning and the wording of the original sentence, I went 
for "They appear to have sent us the wrong information", but the book 
suggests "The seem to have sent us the wrong information".
That "seem" doesn't look accidental at all, so I suspect my answer is 
wrong. What do you think?
Kiuhnm

 wrote in news:47ff81c3$0$40213
$
4faf...@reader5.news.tin.it
:

I assume you've mistyped the book's answer: "The*Y* seem to have...".
The book's answer isn't wrong, but neither is yours. I don't see the need 
to swap in "to seem" for "to appear" (unless there is something about the 
question that you've not mentioned).
Antonio

 question that you've not mentioned).
I agree that either would be commonly accepted usage, however I also see the
dilemma of "they appear" as opposed to "it appears" in these examples. When
the subject of 'to appear' is a person or people, there is a tendency to
think about some characteristic of physical appearance of the person, rather
than an appearance of condition or status of the occurance. Looking at the
subjects of the verbs in each example, one can say that in the first example
the situation has a certain appearance, while in the second example the
people have a certain appearance... if you get my drift. The portability of
usage makes more literal sense in sentences such as: 'It appears that they
are happy' and 'They appear to be happy'.

 question that you've not mentioned).
Ok, thanks.
Kiuhnm

 are happy' and 'They appear to be happy'.
And yet here's what I've found on another page of the very same book:
We use Perfect infinitives:
* after link verbs like seem and appear to refer to a
   previous time period (an ordinary to-infinitive will
   usually refer to the present or future):
   There seems to have been some sort of mistake.
   [...]
   They appear to have accepted most of your terms.
Perhaps the person who wrote the answer swapped the two terms without 
even realizing it.
Kiuhnm

 realizing it.
Può darsi. Writing test questions and answers is a problematic task, and 
although you are right to question a 'correct' answer, I think it's 
dangerous to expect it to always be exclusively correct. 

Kiuhnm wrote:

A parte le considerazioni di merito di Tony, aggiungo una mia osservazione
empirica. In genere, in questo tipo di esercizi dove c'è da trasformare una
frase, aspettati che sia richiesta una qualche variazione nei termini
utilizzati (in questo caso, da "appear" a "seem"). Altrimenti, se non fosse
stata necessaria una variazione (lasciando quindi "appear"), sarebbe stato
troppo facile, no? ;-)

 dangerous to expect it to always be exclusively correct. 
I don't study English the same way common people do.
I copy every exercise I deem suitable into a spaced-repetition software 
(e.g. Supermemo and mnemosyne) and I commit to memory every single 
sentence. I don't try to memorize the exercises, but that's exactly what 
happens. These applications allow you to memorize, say, 40000 sentences 
without effort. The memorizations of the single sentences is almost a 
collateral effect. That's why I *must* question answer I'm not perfectly 
sure about. In this case, for instance, I simply modified the answer of 
the exercise this way:
"They seem/appear to have accepted most of your terms."
As you see, I'm not obsessed with correct answers at all.
Many people ask: "How can I learn English the easy way?"
I don't know why, but every time I speak of spaced-repetition software 
no one takes what I say seriously.
But, after all, who cares? There are experiments which confirms the 
effectiveness of such methods 
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect
 and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
), but people won't listen 
because they think everything "uncommon" must be bullshit.
But like I said, who cares? I'm not a missionary...
Kiuhnm

 sure about.
or sure of?
Kiuhnm

 or sure of?
Either.
Some people find "of" a little awkard at the end of a sentence, so you 
might want to recast to avoid that. Personally, I rarely bother.
Antonio

 I don't study English the same way common people do.
I would suggest "other" rather than "common" might be a better way of 
getting your point across. Your use of "common" here implies that you think 
of yourself as being above the great unwashed plebian horde. Obviously if 
you do think that _and_ want the horde to know that you think that, then I 
congatulate you on your excellent choice of words :-) 
Antonio

 congatulate you on your excellent choice of words :-) 
No, of course not :-)
Thanks for pointing out this pitfall.
Kiuhnm

 effectiveness of such methods
Repetition has been recognized as a key to learning for a very long time. 
The reaction you get may not be because of unsuredness about the 
effectiveness of the technique, but rather because of lack of acceptance at 
it being an easy way. It is very time consuming. I am pleased for you that 
you have the time to devote yourself to your study. I often barely have an 
opportunity to peruse the shorter threads of this newsgroup. 

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
),
Da quello che leggo su wikipedia il metodo sembra interessante, ma mi chiedo che cosa intendi quando dici 
"without efforts". Ad esempio, due ore al giorno su un software del genere, escluse le altre attività di 
esercitazione linguistica (film, lettura etc), per me sarebbero già un 'effort' considerevole...

 it being an easy way. It is very time consuming.
15 minutes a day are enough to appreciate the effectiveness of this method.
Kiuhnm

 'effort' considerevole...
30 minutes are more than enough.
The time required is not proportional to the number of items you've 
already learned, but only to the number of *new* items you learn per 
day. If, for instance, you had 10000 items and you stopped learning new 
ones, after a year you'd probably need less than 5 minutes a day.
Kiuhnm

 ones, after a year you'd probably need less than 5 minutes a day.
Quando posso darņ uno sguardo ai software che hai consigliato... 

 method.
I'm sure you take more time per day to enter the data into your database. 
Repetition is important, but it is even more important to organize 
instruction so that it is easy to comprehend the pattern of the content, and 
to repeat the most important information rather than superfluous 
information. I'm not suggesting that you change your technique at all. It's 
apparent that the rigid structure is a good fit for your personality, and 
your dogged dedication to the task is admirable..