Is the test question correct?

[Ahmadov]

Dear teachers,

I recently ran across a test question for Azeri students learning English. The question looks like as follows:

Make up a sentence

1. is very popular
2. and in many other countries
3. the famous English playwright
4. the name of
5. in Great Britain
6. both
7. George Bernard Shaw

A) 4,7,3,1,6,5,2
B) 6,5,2,1,7,4,3
C) 7,3,1,6,5,2,4
D) 4,3,1,5,2,7,6
E) 4,7,1,6,5,2,3

It seems that the best option is point A, which reads: “The name of George Bernard Shaw the famous English playwright is very popular both in Great Britain and in many other countries”. However, even this option does not sound OK to my ear. Do you think that this sentence is fine? What can be the closest best way for expressing this idea using the expressions provided on the question?

Thanks in advance

Zahir
_________________
Learning is a sacred engagement.

[Yankee]

Hi Zahir

I agree with you on both counts: The best option is A, but the sentence is odd.

A couple of small changes would make it better:
“The works of George Bernard Shaw, the famous English playwright, are very popular both in Great Britain and in many other countries.”
.
_________________
Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Ahmadov]

Thanks Amy, you are very helpful as always...
_________________
Learning is a sacred engagement.

[Jamie (K)]

Personally, I think the people who made up the test were thinking of a word like знакомый and getting the ideas of "familiar" or "well-known" mixed up with the idea of "popular" in English. This is common.

Yesterday someone had me try a business English test on the German T-Mobile site. The word usages they were testing were all correct, but the example sentences were full of all kinds of other mistaken usages, so they were giving terrible sentences that no one would say, but which still accurately tested various idioms and prepositions.

[Yankee]

.
That's interesting, Jamie. I bet that's exactly what happened.
.
_________________
Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Ahmadov]

[lost_soul]

[Torsten]

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

[Jamie (K)]

[lost_soul]

[Jamie (K)]

"The cooperation" is a direct translation of the German "die Zusammenarbeit", but it sounds ridiculous in the English sentence. I'm not sure what we would say instead, because it's not really clear what the Germans meant to say.

Germans and Slavs often use the word "cooperation" wrongly, when they should use "collaboration" or some other word.