English. Describing Habits

[tangleweeds]

Mary is spending hours in the bathroom getting ready. It drives me crazy.

That's just a present-tense description of what Mary is doing. There is no mention of repetition, no indication of habitual behavior. Women taking a long time to get ready is a stereotype, so we infer this is habitual behavior, but there is nothing in the example sentence to indicate habit.

This is absolutely true! Thank you for picking that up, I didn't. I hadn't realized it, but now I see the degree to which the idea of habit led me to think of idioms for a cultural stereotype.

Full disclosure: I'm a woman who has spent lots of time in the bathroom getting ready, say to go out dancing. "You can come in if you want to but I'm busy."

[Adrianslont]

A: How’s the family?
B: Well, Mary is running along the beach for half an hour most mornings so her fitness is going through the roof. It drives me crazy when she leaves her stinky running gear on the bathroom floor, though.

Answer C is fine. Using a continuous form is fine for a habitual action. And the verb tenses in the two sentences don’t have to be the same - they just to have agree logically.

This type of exam question or grammar exercise drives me crazy!

Edit: the two sentences need to “agree” logically with each other AND, more importantly, “agree” logically with their context / the world they reflect.

That’s what irritates me about this kind of exam question or exercise, no context. The student must invent the context.

And I didn’t say it before but B is fine, too.

In your example you add a repetition "most mornings", that is not present in the question.

Mary is spending hours in the bathroom getting ready. It drives me crazy.

That's just a present tense description of what Mary is doing. There is no mention of repetition, no indication of habitual behaviour. Women taking a long time to get ready is a stereotype, so we infer this is habitual behaviour, but there is nothing in the example sentence to indicate habit.

Yes, I added “most mornings” just to be clear and because some kind of expression like that rings true - but you can take it away and it still works.

“Mary is spending hours in the bathroom” is certainly present tense - whether that grammatical construct is being used to describe a current action or a habitual action depends on the context - it can do either.

And that’s why I’m saying I hate this kind of exam question, because there is no real context. In fact, we can’t even see the exam or exercise this comes from. The only reason we are even talking about describing habits is because aaleks has that as the title for this thread.

So many people learn/teach that in English we describe habitual action by using the Present Simple Tense that they lose sight of the fact that a continuous form is often used for habitual actions. I’m quite happy to have my point of view corrected or nuanced - but it will need to be more than “simple” for repeated actions and “continuous” for current actions.

Here’s another example. This time without adverbials.

A: How’s the family?
B: Well, Mary’s doing her running and working from home. Billy is still going to school and Maryjane is practising for her big piano exam.

This sounds like normal English to me and there is both a continuous AND repetitive/habitual meaning in it.

Alternative?
B: Mary does her run and works from home. Billy still goes to school. Mary Jane practises for her big piano exam.

Both approaches to describing the family’s habits work for me but I think the former sounds more natural and the latter more text book.

And back to the original example - I’ll add some context.

A: How’s life been since you two lovebirds moved in together?
B: Mary is spending hours in the bathroom getting ready. It drives me crazy!

And I don’t think I’m being obtuse. If you don’t provide a context, students will provide a variety of them for you.

[aaleks]

The only reason we are even talking about describing habits is because aaleks has that as the title for this thread.

I just quoted the title of the thread where this question was discussed. I can link that original thread https://efl-forum.ru/boards/viewtopic.php?t=5991 but the problem is it is almost entirely in Russian.

This is what the opening post of that thread looks like:

Вот такой вопросик в учебнике. Тема - Describing Habits in Present and Past. Уровень Advanced.

Mary ___________ hours in the bathroom getting ready. It drives me crazy.
A. tend to spend B. will spend C. is spending

Какой ответ вы бы выбрали?

(The first sentence might be roughly translated to English as "There is such a question in a textbook"
The last line - "What answer would you chose?")

It seems that according to the authors of the textbook the correct answer is B. Later in the discussion they call the textbook "Speakout". (I have never seen that book in my life ). As I undesrtand from the OP, it is an advanced level textbook. Since that is a textbook, I assume, there is no other context besides these two sentences. The textbook is aimed at advanced English students so the questions might be tricky. In case with this question all three answers seem to be correct but:

A isn't correct because it's "tend to spend", and the correct form for Mary (she) is tends
C might be correct if there was some time-hinting context like in your examples ("How’s the family?" now/lately/at the moment/ etc., "How’s life been since you two lovebirds moved in together?") or the like

So it seems like only B might work in this zero-context situation. Or, at least, this is how my thinking goes. But I'm bad at grammar rules in general, and the teachers in that thread seemed to be adamant about C being the correct answer, so I got curious and thought I might ask here. That's it

[Adrianslont]

Thanks for the clarification, aaleks. I did some googling too and found a couple of other discussions in English on this sentence in other forums. Maybe you asked elsewhere? Somebody did.

Anyway, I also hit the jackpot, a PDF of the original Pearson material at https://www.pearson.pl/fileadmin/user_u ... adv_wb.pdf

Yes, this sentence is from an exercise called “describing habits”. Interestingly it follows on from a grammar section on “the continuous aspect” where one of the
uses for the continuous aspect is given as “to emphasise repeated actions (that may be annoying)”.

This is exactly the situation with
Mary (Aaliyah in the original) and the bathroom and her partner.

It’s like the student is even being lead to choose C (which uses the continuous aspect with the verb spending) by the teaching materials.

So, I am in agreement with the adamant teachers in the other discussion - C is correct. And B is fine too. And you don’t need to mention any time - it’s totally understood by a native speaker and if not they would clarify it. It would sound super weird to always be clarifying the time - that is part of the job of the tense and aspect systems anyway. I’ll give some more examples below.

One more thing about the “continuous aspect” - a couple of people in this thread seem stuck on the idea that the “spending hours” is happening right now but that’s not necessarily true.

“Now” can equal right now eg 11.58am AEST and “now” can also equal “these days”. And when it equals these days it often involves a repeated action, a habit even.

Some more examples.
What’s Bill up to?
“He is cooking up a storm at the Steakhouse” (these days, 7 days a week)
“He is cooking up a storm in the kitchen” (right now, as I speak to you on my phone)
“He is cooking up a storm tonight on My Kitchen Rules on Channel 9. He might even win!”

All continuous aspect - 3 different meanings, timewise. Notice only the last one has a time expression - the first two don’t and they don’t need them.

I hope that helps.

[aaleks]

Thanks for the clarification, aaleks. I did some googling too and found a couple of other discussions in English on this sentence in other forums. Maybe you asked elsewhere? Somebody did.

No, it wasn't me . There are only two message boards I post on at all - this forum and efl.ru, but currently I'm taking a break from the latter, so at the moment it's just this forum.

It’s like the student is even being lead to choose C (which uses the continuous aspect with the verb spending) by the teaching materials.

That's why I don't like textbooks! Seriously. I guess if I'd seen the explanations I would've thought that C should be the right answer. I took a look at other questions - they made my head spin. I don't understand how someone can learn English from something like that. (And why??? Why not to read a normal book instead? I mean, this is a textbook for advanced students, their level of English is supposed to be good enough to move to materials meant for native speakers)

And thank you