• Dictagloss Activity for ‘Jan Moor-Jankowski’
text 1
1: When his friends suggested that he inject monkey blood into prisoners, Jan was shocked.
2: He lay awake all night thinking about how he would feel if someone did experiments on him without asking his permission.
3: While he was thinking about all this, he also began thinking about whether it was all right to use monkeys and apes in research.
4: He knew they had feelings similar to humans.
text 2
1: One day, Jan got a phone call from an animal rights group in California.
2: They complained about his doing cruel experiments on monkeys.
3: When Jan heard what they said, he realized that they were confused.
4: They were talking about experiments that had been done at another laboratory at his university.
5: Jan decided to investigate, and he found that, in the experiments, the monkeys had been given a dangerous, illegal drug.
possible teaching points
1-1: ‘suggested that he inject monkey blood’ [n.b. no ‘s’ on ‘inject.’ This is the ‘mandative subjunctive’ required (at least in American English) because the ‘that-’ clause includes an expression of recommendation; mention British/American difference)]
1-2: ‘how he would feel if someone did experiments’ [present unreal conditional]
1-3: ‘thinking about whether it was all right’ [an (alternative) interrogative clause; in most contexts either ‘if’ or ‘whether’ can be used but ‘if’ is not possible here because it cannot be the complement of a preposition]
1-4: ‘feelings similar to humans’ [ellipsis (‘feelings similar to those of humans’)]
2-1:‘got a phone call’ [‘I got a phone call from X’ as an alternative to ‘X phoned me’]
2-2: ‘his doing cruel experiments’ [here, and in many ‘ing-‘clauses, the objective ‘him’ would be an acceptable alternative to the genitive ‘his.’]
2-3: ‘realized that they were confused’ [‘that‘ could be omitted (subject of a relative clause)]
2-4: ‘had been done’ [passive form of past perfect]
2-5: ‘he found that’ [‘find’ followed by ‘that-’clause has meaning of ‘discover’ (compare with ‘find out’)]
references: for the mandative subjunctive see, ”A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language” 3.58 ff (p 155); for alternative interrogative clauses: 15.6 (p 1053); for ‘ing-’clauses: 15.12 (p 1063)