Here’s the question my daughter got wrong on a test today. I am indignent because her answer is clearly right. However, not being Mr. Grammar Person, I wanted to double check my thoughts, and also have the reason the teacher’s answer is wrong given in grammar laden words. Here it is; choose the best definition:
Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics for the musical Camelot.
a. words to the songs
b. melody
c. script
d. story poems
My daughter answered a. words to the songs, the classic definition of lyrics.
The teacher (and her book of answers) says d. story poems.
Now if the sentence said he wrote the words to the lyrical songs I could go along with it, but it did not. So am I as right as I think I am, and if so, why is that answer correct and the teacher’s wrong.
Now, a “lyric” can be a “story poem”–but the best answer to that question is “A”, short and sweet.
Can you find out the author/publisher/editor of that test and answer sheet? There’s a screw loose there somewhere. Was this a “we’re learning about poetry” test, or a “grammar/parts of speech/vocabulary word” test?
The problem here is that there are two correct answers. Certainly, most dictionaries seem to list D. first (I just checked dictionary.com, as well), but that doesn’t invalidate A. as a correct answer. Bad teacher! BAD!
The second problem is that proper word here is libretto.
I had a teacher is high school who insisted that we memorize all definitions of a word. Then, to be tricky, she would sometimes put two definitions as choices on a multiple choice test, and the “correct” answer was the answer that appeared first in the Merriam Webster dictionary. Then that was not enough and she required we remember obscure and archaic definitions. On the final exam she had the word “recant” and I circled the choice “to say or sing again”, an archaic definition, thinking “that tricky vixen” to myself. She said I was wrong, saying the correct answer was “none of the above”. When I appealed she said that archaic definitions were allowed, but that one was too obscure.
It might be more accurate to say that the original use of the term was “story poem” or something like that, since it comes from the word “lyre,” and one can just imagine an age when Greek muses gayly frolicked around in their. . . frolicking robes, plucking their little lyres, and singing their hearts out.
However, since that’s an uncommon sight nowadays (at least in my area), the word has taken on the much more general meaning.
First of all, it’s not an issue of grammar; it’s an issue of vocabulary.
Second, A and D are both correct answers, and D is not any more correct than A. Ask the teacher why D should be chosen instead of A, and “that’s what the answer book says” is not an acceptable response.
I think that A is clearly the best answer. A lyric can be a story poem, but that’s clearly not what the word “lyric” means in the sentence “Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics for the musical Camelot.” Within that sentence, the only possible meaning is “words to the songs.”
I’m just taking a guess as to how the writers of the book could possibly choose D as the right answer over A, so I’m viewing the question in the most favorable light to support their answer.
In this case, context is everything. I’m thinking what the writers meant to write was something like, “Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics IN the musical Camelot,” meaning he wrote the story poems that were in the musical. Of course to write story poems, he must have also written the words to those songs, which makes A also a right answer. But D is more “complete.”
And yes, I agree with the notion that putting more than one right answer on a multiple choice question is confusing and oftentimes unfair. My professors do it all the time. They just explicitly tell us to choose the BEST (oftentimes most complete) answer, not only the right one.
D is not “more complete.” The songs in Camelot are not “lyric poems.” That is, they are not story poems. They do not tell a entire story. They are ordinary songs that express the emotions of the characters at that one point in the plot.
I think the answer choices as given are fundamentally flawed, as they could easily lead a student who knows the material to an answer choice that is considered “incorrect”.
However, I can see one rationale for considering D a better answer, but only if one assumes a little knowledge of both musical theater and the musical Camelot. Lerner didn’t write just the song lyrics, he wrote the entire book (the non-musical portion of a musical play), which includes, IIRC, some spoken verse. Thus, there are some lyrics in the play/film that are not words to a song. Even lacking that, a musical book consists of two portions, prose story portions, and lyric story portions.
This, however, would only work if the question were in the context of having studied the conventions of musical theater and the musical Camelot. Within that context only, I would consider D to be the better answer, though I still wouldn’t use it (I write all my own tests).
On a vocabulary test, however, the two answers are equally valid, and the teacher screwed up by not counting A right.