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Hi guys I am seeking your help in these two sentences for choosing the correct answer from the brackets:

  1. Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting.........we are going to discuss women's role in society.
    (in which - at which)
  2. If you want to be healthy, you should try.........exercise.
    (to do - doing)

Help please with some explanation of why you chose this answer! I tried to figure it out from the dictionary but I didn't recognize the difference

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In your first example, either choice could be used. You can be either 'at' (the location of) a meeting or 'in' (part of) a meeting. 'At' indicates that you are at the physical location and time the meeting is occurring at. 'In' indicates you are inside (or taking part in) a meeting. Note that in either case the sentence should use the word 'roles' rather than 'role' (since roles is plural to match the plural women's.). Both of the following sentences are correct.

Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting in which we are going to discuss women's roles in society.
Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting at which we are going to discuss women's roles in society.

In your second example, once again both answers are correct. Either choice could be used. Using 'try to do' indicates a future tense (you try to exercise in the future), while using 'try doing' indicates a present tense (you are trying to exercising now).

If you want to be healthy, you should try to do exercise.
If you want to be healthy, you should try doing exercise.

Since both answers are valid for both examples, I am guessing whoever asked the questions are either posing trick questions or else they are not native English users.

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  • So, can't we use at which because women's roles will be discussed in the physical time and location of the meeting?
    – Anas Alaa
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 11:29
  • I read a difference between try to aand try + ving. Try to used for expressing exerting some energy to do something and you can fail or not. Try +ving is used to express an experiment that you want to find the result of
    – Anas Alaa
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 11:31
  • @AnasAlaa: 'At which' and 'in which' both imply that you will be taking part in the meeting so they are both valid; they just do it in slightly different ways. And both 'try to' and 'trying' imply you may either fail or succeed at doing something; they are both just different tenses of the verb 'to try'.
    – Mark Ripley
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 11:41
  • I read different definitions of all of these, so what can i trust :D
    – Anas Alaa
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 11:52
  • @AnasAlaa: you might want to ask a new question about meanings of specific word usages; since that is a different question than your question here, which was about which usage was correct.
    – Mark Ripley
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 12:02

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