Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

"make" is wrong, it should be made".

"study "should be studies.

wishes instead of wish.

The cheche entity posted thusly:

There can be no correct answer to this one, because the sentence
itself is flawed.

"She make her wish" is wrong in any context.

I'm with you, the best answer is B.

cheche <cfcflycfcf@fastmail.fm> had it:

Strange.  I prefer A.  Is this use of "should" pondian?

The sentence, which is confused and confusing, is probably intended to
test your command of sequence of tenses.  In simpler form, the
contrast would be between "She says that she will go," and "She said
that she would go."  All other questions aside, the "right" answer is
B because the main verb, being in the present tense, calls for the
simple future in the subordinate clause.

"Wish" to me forces "should go," not the others.

Marius Hancu

Read and learn:

She told her classmates that she would go to Hong Kong University to
continue her studies.

First: the key statement is in the subjunctive mood (which represents
something as "not actually belonging to the domain of fact or reality,
but as merely existent in the mind of the speaker as a desire, wish,
volition, plan, conception, thought"), and in particular the optative
subjunctive (which represents the utterance as "something desired or
planned").

Next: Clearly the word "make" is in error there.  The question is
whether it is supposed to be "made" or "makes", and the choice could be
significant.  If it is "made", then the sentence is supposedly bound by
the English rule "sequence of tenses", and a past tense would have to
follow.  Since the test-makers feel that C--a present tense--is the
correct choice, either the word was "makes" (an allowable but strange
construction) or it was "made" and they elected to disregard the rule
(which is sometimes done when the subjunctive with the effect or
present or future time follows).  I will *assume* (ever-dangerous word)
the latter case.

(The entire sentence is wretched.  Even a modest recasting--"She made
known to her classmates her wish that she _____ go on to Hong Kong
University to continue her studies"--is better.  Incidentally, whether
it is "study" or "studies" depends on unavailable context, but it is
dubious that as a student she is engaged in some one study.  The
available choices are poor, too.  And "Her study" is probably
"studies", but it might be that she is working on some single project,
a "study" of this or that.  The whole opening would be far more
idiomatic as: "She made known to her classmates her wish that she &.")

We can, for simplicity, recast the critical part this way:

 "It was her wish that she should/would/will go to Hong Kong
University."

It is my definite belief that choice C is not correct, and that the
test-makers were attracted by the apparent analogy to "I will go to
university", a simple statement of future-tense fact in the indicative
mood.  But when the statement is in the subjunctive mood, as this
(explicitly involving a "wish") is, the past tense is wanted, as the
conventional subjunctive way "to state an opinion or wish modestly,
politely, or cautiously".  The least-troublesome available choice is B,
"would" (why "shall" is inappropriate would further over-extent this
note):

 "She made her wish known to her classmates that she would go to Hong
Kong University to continue her study/ies."

But it's clunky and unidiomatic at best.  Better than any of those
choices would be "might", and possibly best of all is nothing (the
old-style subjunctive form): "She made known to her classmates her wish
that she go on to Hong Kong University to continue her study/ies."

(Unless her wish was not to go on but to _be able_ to go on--have the
money or the passport or the connections, or some requisite not then
available to her; in that case, it would be "She made known to her
classmates her wish that she could go on to Hong Kong University to
continue her study/ies."  But that seems not to be one of the available
senses in this example.)