How often do you…? (Oddity one)
One thing I find very odd about a lot of teaching materials is how unnatural the grammar presented can be. The biggest example of this (for me) is “How often…?” used with adverbs of frequency:
A – How often do you listen to music?
B – I frequently listen to music.
A – How often are you late?
B – I’m sometimes late.
To me, and I could be very wrong, the responses to the questions sound odd and unnatural. I feel they don’t actually answer the questions.
I have never seen what I think are natural responses to “How often…?” questions:
A – How often do you listen to music?
B – I listen to music every day.
A – How often are you late?
B – I’m late once or twice a week.
I did a quick test with my colleagues and asked them several “How often…?” questions. None of them used an adverb of frequency in their answers. They all used the adverbs once, twice, three times, etc. a day / week / month… or “every day / week / month…”
Try this now to see if you get the same results. Ask your colleagues, friends, family these questions:
- How often do you clean your teeth?
- How often do you surf the Internet
- How often do you go to the cinema?
I doubt if they’ll reply with “always,” “rarely” or “sometimes”. It is, however, quite natural to reply “never”.
I wonder why so many materials present adverbs of frequency as responses to “How often…?” questions and not the more naturally sounding once, twice, three times… a day, week, month...?
Do you ever…? (Oddity two)
To me, and I could be very wrong (again), the most commonly used question to prompt adverbs of frequency as answers is “Do you ever…?” However, I have rarely seen this taught in textbooks or other teaching materials.
I wonder why this is (again)?
What do you think? Have I lost it grammatically?
Do you have any coursebook language oddities? It’d be great if you would share them here.
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