18

Today I encountered this question in an English test:

Question: Select the answer that is closest in meaning to this sentence "It isn't necessary for you to complete this by Tuesday."

Answers:

  • a) You don't have to complete this by Tuesday.
  • b) You needn't complete this by Tuesday.
  • c) It is unimportant for you to complete this by Tuesday.
  • d) It is not essential that you complete this by Tuesday.

In my opinion, a) and b) should be both correct answers. So I think this question is wrong. Even worse, the teacher told me the right answer is c).

Community
  • 1
Ng.
  • 387
  • 2
  • 8
  • 30
    I’m voting to close this question because it's a stupid test. All 4 answers are semantically perfectly correct. Answer (c) isn't particularly idiomatic, but that's not what the test asks about. Find a different test-setter. And if the teacher thinks (c) is the answer, find a different teacher. – FumbleFingers Oct 06 '23 at 18:43
  • 2
    All the answers a to d are fine, and are equally 'close' in meaning to the one in the question. – Michael Harvey Oct 06 '23 at 18:53
  • 20
    +1. No need to downvote the learner's question because the test question they have asked about is a bad one. – TimR on some device Oct 06 '23 at 19:23
  • 11
    @MichaelHarvey "unimportant" is decidedly different from "not necessary". Both "you don't have to" and "you needn't" convey a lack of necessity. The answers are not equally close in meaning to the given sentence. – phoog Oct 07 '23 at 01:21
  • 14
    I'd say c is clearly and objectively wrong and all of the others are clearly and objectively correct. – BigMistake Oct 07 '23 at 03:35
  • 1
    Location tag might help in case idiom comes into play. – bob Oct 07 '23 at 15:17
  • 1
    The lesson here is that while education is of vital importance, sometimes teachers make mistakes. You may not win this argument with your teacher but at least you didn’t learn something incorrect as a result of your teacher’s unfortunate mistake here. – bob Oct 07 '23 at 15:52
  • 2
    If (a), (b), and (d) were uttered by a native speaker, I might choose to read into an imagined subtext encoded in the choice of wording. (a) is neutral and matter-of-fact, whereas (b) could be construed as a suggestion not to complete it by Tuesday, and (c) might be the opposite of that: a hint that it's still preferable that it be completed by Tuesday. But this is really splitting hairs, and would need to be accompanied by an appropriate tone of voice in speech. In any case, I wouldn't expect such nuance in any test for English learners. – Will Vousden Oct 07 '23 at 20:28
  • 1
    Definitely, (c) is further away than the other three, in terms of meaning. I assume your teacher speaks English poorly. – Dawood ibn Kareem Oct 09 '23 at 04:55
  • 1
    Can you Post a specific link showing where that test question came from? – Robbie Goodwin Oct 09 '23 at 18:55
  • Thank you. The test actually came from a test in my English class. An I argued with the teacher but she did not accept my reasoning. That why I had to come here to ask. – Ng. Oct 13 '23 at 14:37

4 Answers4

29

I would say A, B, and D all mean the same thing, but C has a minor semantic difference and is the only possibly wrong answer.

The prompt and other answers A,B,D all refer to the level of importance of the action as a binary: "needs to"/"has to"/"is necessary". C refers to it being "unimportant", which is a low degree of importance and not a binary.

JamesFaix
  • 391
  • 2
  • 6
25

This is a terrible test question. I'm a fluent, native English speaker. And I'd say all 4 choices mean essentially the same thing as the original sentence and all are correct. As JamesFaix says, (c) is arguably the WORST choice, as "important" is not really the same as "necessary". Something could be necessary but not particularly important.

Jay
  • 65,313
  • 1
  • 69
  • 142
  • 2
    Something could also be important but not necessary. – phoog Oct 07 '23 at 01:26
  • 1
    necessary "required to be done, achieved, or present; needed; essential" : "absolutely necessary; extremely important." - Something that's necessary is by definition extremely important. - Got an example? – Mazura Oct 07 '23 at 13:01
  • 1
    @Mazura Sure. “The form is used for anything, so it’s not important, but you’re required to fill it out, so it’s necessary.” – Davislor Oct 07 '23 at 16:38
  • 1
    Sounds important. it’s not important who wrote it or where it came from, but you filling it out is, by Tuesday. - It's not necessarily necessary, but if you want this apartment you'd better find a premade lease, sign it, and have it to me by tue or I'm renting it to someone else. - phoog's comment I don't disagree with, but it doesn't work in the reverse. – Mazura Oct 07 '23 at 16:48
  • 4
    @Mazura Lots of forms on the Internet contain fields that are mandatory, even though their value is completely irrelevant to the purpose of the form, and what you fill in will never be used for anything. Such fields are necessary, but unimportant. Old-school captchas (from before captchas were used for machine learning) were necessary, but entirely unimportant, since their values or your input was used for nothing – and in fact immediately discarded – once verification was complete. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 08 '23 at 02:18
  • Terms of Service button. Good one. Except lawyers think it's important for some reason. - Importance is in the eye of the beholder. Necessity is a social construct or a biological condition. – Mazura Oct 08 '23 at 02:33
  • I think people are mixing up the dichotomy of urgent/important with necessary/important. The first one is a real dichotomy. The second isn't as much so. – Nelson Oct 10 '23 at 00:42
14

Question: Select the answer that is closest in meaning to this sentence "It isn't necessary for you to complete this by Tuesday."

They say "closest," which gives them technical leeway to write poor questions.

Answers:

a) You don't have to complete this by Tuesday.

This means almost literally the same thing, as "have" / "has" maps to the concept of "necessary" / "necessity" / "must."

b) You needn't complete this by Tuesday.

Who says this? No one. However, the questions is the meaning, not if it's a good sentence. However, it is correct, and is exactly the same in meaning as the question sentence.

c) It is unimportant for you to complete this by Tuesday.

Unrelated to the question sentence, irrelevant. This is the only one on the list that is wrong.

d) It is not essential that you complete this by Tuesday.

This is the exact same as the question sentence.

What happened?

Your teacher pulled this question from a question bank without writing it. He or she forgot to read or misremembered the instructions or full title of the question. The corrected question is as follows:

Question: Select the answer that does not have the same meaning as this sentence "It isn't necessary for you to complete this by Tuesday."

This makes it a good question, which has the right answer c.

BigMistake
  • 1,122
  • 11
  • 2
    D is not the exact same as the question. Necessary and essential are different things. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 07 '23 at 12:36
  • 1
    @JanusBahsJacquet yeah that's completely right. I would not expect that much nuance on a test for English learners, though – BigMistake Oct 07 '23 at 17:30
  • 4
    @JanusBahsJacquet As a native speaker, "necessary" and "essential" are synonyms in this context. Yes, technically "essential" means "related to the essence of a thing", but an "essential" task is always a "necessary" one, precisely because the task is "related to the essence" of whatever the task is for. – No Name Oct 09 '23 at 00:54
  • 2
    @NoName I can’t think of a context where an essential task is not also necessary; but a necessary task is not necessarily(!) essential. As you say, an essential task is related to the essence of the purpose of the task, but something can be necessary even though it’s peripheral to that purpose. In this context they’re close enough to be roughly equivalent, but they’re not the exact same (the wording used in the answer, to which I objected). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 09 '23 at 01:11
  • 3
    +1 for explaining what happened. – A. I. Breveleri Oct 09 '23 at 01:31
  • Native speaker here, but not American. I'd definitely say (b) - it's perfectly correct and succinct. – Dawood ibn Kareem Oct 09 '23 at 04:57
1

My reaction was similar to most when I first read the question. Thanks to the discussion above, I see the problem differently.

At first glance, answers A-D are similar enough that, when one speaks casually, it is easy to use inflection to convey enough meaning to be understood. However, since this is a test question, we must assume that the point is to consider the problem in the context of the need for precision in writing where a reader does not have the luxury of tonal cues or the ability to ask for immediate clarification.

This question challenges students to consider the nuances of the information that is being conveyed. The amount of information that each sentence communicates contains different levels of precision.

My opinion, now, is that if either answer A or B were the source question, then the other would be the best answer among the five sentences. Both answers A and B convey basically the same information strait-forwardly with no implication about why there is no deadline on Tuesday.

Answers C and D add additional information to the statement that Tuesday is not a deadline. C labels it unimportant, while D classifies it as not essential. The sentence in question, also, provides a reason for Tuesday not being a deadline: It isn't necessary.

If proper deductions are made by the test takers, then A and B should be dismissed categorically. Students are left to decide between which of unimportant or not essential is the closer match to isn't necessary.

As has been stated above, not essential implies there is something whose essence is not affected by the task being completed by Tuesday. It would not be overreaching to infer that this task is a component of something else, and the deadline isn't necessary because it does not affect its essence.

On the other hand, unimportant does not convey any more information than isn't necessary. The two are closely matched in scale. Something can be inherently important or necessary without affecting the essence of a thing, even itself. We as the listener/reader do not know why a Tuesday deadline is unimportant or unnecessary, in both cases, we just know that it is. Therefore, for me, the answer is C and I hope for the sake of the students that this is an advanced course.

Glaadrial
  • 383
  • 1
  • 6