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This question here:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/305999/reserved-or-ashamed

The 1 rep OP asks a clearly-a-homework-question.

I have a sentence:" As a(n) .... girl, she found it difficult to socialize with other students in the class." Can one of these answers is the best correct to indicate?

A) reserved
B) ashamed
C) dynamic
D) industrious

I think the answer is B or A but I'm not sure. Can you help me?

Now, I downvoted it and vote to close and flagged it, but it did get me thinking. It's a question that has the potential for clear justifable answers, so is there anything wrong with it?

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    Currently, the culture at ELU is to not answer homework-like questions (or questions that are straight from standardized tests), with the reasoning that they are too specific (every such question would be fair game), presumably one could judge correctness with access to a (good) dictionary, and (usually) have prior research done on them. But of course one might make a good answer out of discussing the semantic nuances. We just need to decide if the change in culture is worth the trouble. We could also be a translation service or an alternate, more wordy dictionary.
    – Mitch
    Feb 12, 2016 at 13:22

1 Answer 1

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We could do it, but the question shows no research — the difference between reserved and ashamed should be elicited from a dictionary and only then asked about if it's not clear.

Previous Meta questions and answers (even as far back as 2011) have indicated that we're not here to do elementary research.

For example, if the question were worded "What is the difference between reserved and withdrawn" (for example; that's a feasible confusion, unlike reserved and ashamed) and written showing the research like my example from summer 2014 then it would be answerable.

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