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This question is from a diagnostic test of one ESL school in Bangkok.

Ann wonders how much time she has to work on her assigned project. Her teacher says, “No need to hurry yet ________”

a) You hit the big team.
b) It’s night time.
c) Take your time.
d) In no time.

It's obvious that the best fit answer would be "Take your time." I felt the whole dialogue sounds odd, since Ann wonders "how much time," not "should I worry or hurry," thus it sounds as if Ann doesn't know the deadline yet.

I did the test since I was considering sending my niece to learn English there. But the test gave me a second thought. (And not to mention the missing of a period after the word "yet.")

My question here is, would a native find the dialogue unnatural?

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Personally, no. The implication is that the teacher feels that the student is worried about time, so the response is to not worry about it. This is quite common, especially with younger children (elementary/grammar school). – tjameson Sep 27 '11 at 16:02
Hmm, that's new to me. The dialogue might sound more natural to me if the question was about a 'task', not a 'project'. But given a elementary school scenario, I can relate to that. I usually take months or even years to handle each project in my real life. Thanks a lot. – Damkerng T. Sep 27 '11 at 16:16
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The second sentence is definitely missing a period after the word "yet". Personally I suspect the teacher (or more accurately, whoever dreamed up this ESL test question) isn't a native English speaker. I feel most native speakers simply wouldn't use "hurry" here (but they would use "worry"). – FumbleFingers Sep 27 '11 at 18:13
@FumbleFingers - I completely agree with that. The period isn't that big of an issue, it probably was just forgotten (I have loads of textbooks that have simple mistakes like this, and they're college level). – tjameson Sep 28 '11 at 0:55

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

It's certainly ambiguous. I had to read it several times before I understood it. Is "yet" a conjunction or an adverb?

You could say "no need to hurry, yet you shouldn't wait until the last minute", or you could say "no need to hurry yet; the need to hurry will arise at the last minute"

It sounds slightly odd to my ear, as well. It seems too casual and informal for a conversation between teacher and student. It would be more natural without the word "yet": "No need to hurry; take your time."

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Exactly what crossed my mind. I can't be sure whether the typo was missing a comma before "yet", or a period after it. But I'm sure that there was neither comma nor period. I guessed the period was missing since all the choices begin with capital letters. – Damkerng T. Sep 27 '11 at 16:21
I suppose you are correct about the capital letters implying a missing period. – phoog Sep 27 '11 at 16:23
I'd be inclined to read it as "no need to hurry yet, take your time" and discount the capitalized answers as a formatting issue. Do all the answers start with a capital? It's maybe ambiguous as to whether they should or not even if the whole sentence would never capitalize that way. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Oct 7 '11 at 14:09

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