Alex felt ……… embarrassed when he had to stand up and make a speech.
a)some
b)much
c)a little ([color=green]Answer Key)
d)too
Hi,
Can “b” or “d” be correct as well? If not then why? Would you please clarify it to me that why “b” and “d” can not work there?
(I have posted this question in different
forums but everyone gave me different
responses and made me more confused.)
Source: School exam sheet
Thank you
No, b makes no sense at all and d would not work with ‘embarrassed’ as a feeling of embarrassment to any extent would be considered too much anyway.
[color=blue]You have to remember an important thing when facing multiple-choice questions.
And that is that sometimes there appear to be more than one at-least-somewhat acceptable choices. In those cases, you have to choose the best answer, which will be the only correct answer to the question.
The best answer, and therefore the only correct answer, is c.
‘a’ and ‘b’ are not used to modify embarrassed. We mostly use words like ‘a little’, ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’.
“too” can modify “embarrassed”, but it is somewhat awkward in that sentence and is not as good as “a little” and also not as good as words like ‘very’ and considerably’.
Thank you, Beeesneees and Canadian.
Embarrassed is an adjective and why we can’t use adverbs such as some, much to modify it? I think, maybe, there are some obvious reasons that I am not aware of.
[color=blue]“some” is just not used to modify “embarrassed”. “somewhat” can be used to modify “embarrassed”.