[mesmark]

I teach part-time at a JHS and I team teach with a Japanese. I constantly tell him that we don't use the word 'enjoy' as often as we would use 'have a good time' or 'like to.' It has been three years now and I just haven't had a strong enough arguement to convince him.

I can understand his point. My usual response is, 'Well, it's grammatical but we wouldn't say it like that." To which he always says, 'Why?'

Here's the situation. What would you do?

A: What did you during your spring vacation?
B: I enjoyed watching TV.

[susan53]

Italians say this a lot too. All the more surprising as it's quite difficult to enjoy watching Italian television .....

It's odd. The general statement is fine in the present I enjoy watching TV, I enjoy watching documentaries but doesn't work in the past. Yet you can use enjoy in the past to talk about a specific event : I enjoyed watching the documentary but I didn't enjoy the film.

This one has me stumped I'm afraid.

[HUE]

Here's the fundamental problem with "enjoy," as used here: the listener's response doesn't really answer the question. Which would be a more natural Q & A construction?

A: What did you do during your spring break?
B: I enjoyed watching TV.

or

A: What did you *do* during your spring break?
B: I *watched* TV.
A: *How* was it?
B: I *enjoyed* it. I watched a program on...

Obviously, it's the second choice because it answers the question, as well as provides additional information. The dictionary defines "enjoy" as "take pleasure in." We could condense the second example above into a more natural conversation (but still using "enjoy"), assuming that B volunteers information, as in:

A: What did you do during spring break?
B: I watched TV. I enjoyed a program on...

[mesmark]

I guess like Chris said, I can see the difference as similar to 'like.'

I like watching TV.

but not 'I liked watching TV yesterday.'
(this would arguably mean that I don't like watching TV anymore, or that I don't like watching TV in general but I did yesterday, neither of which is the case for the usage in question.)

In the current situation of questions and answer, I like the arguement that 'I enjoyed watching TV.' doesn't answer the question. But, do you think that's a truth or a NS feeling about the exchange?

arguement for it answering the question but a NS feeling otherwise:
A: I really enjoyed cooking yesterday.
B: But, you hate cooking.
A: Yeah, but yesterday I had some good music on. I was dancing around and it was actually a lot of fun.

Question:
What did A do yesterday?
A enjoyed cooking.

I'm not arguing, just stumped and confused. Either way, can we agree that it's 'wrong' but grammatical?