Confusing Verbs #6: To Be Keen vs To Appeal

The expressions «to be keen on something/someone» and «to appeal to someone» appear more and more frequently as we move up from Preliminary (B1) level to First (B2) and Advanced (C1), and some students seem to struggle with them. So we’re going to see how they work.
First of all, let’s look at these expressions in context:

Sue is very keen on sci-fi literature. In fact, her favourite novel is «The Foundation» by Asimov.

Video games don’t really appeal to Sue; she’s more of a bookworm. 

Looking at the examples above, we can see that the structure that these verbs adopt is the following:

– someone is keen on (doing) something

– (doing) something appeals to someone

However, the meaning is virtually the same for both, and it is «to be interested in (doing) something» or «to like (doing) something«. The problem is that the object and subject are switched. Let’s see the same sentence with both verbs. Note how there is a switch between object and subject:

Rob is keen on water sports. (in Spanish: «A Rob le interesan los deportes de agua.«)

Water sports appeal to Rob. (in Spanish: «Los deportes de agua le interesan a Rob.«)

In Spanish, there is only a change in the order of the sentence. In English, the subject (i.e. Rob) of «to be keen on» becomes the object of «to appeal to», and vice versa, the object (i.e. water sports) of «to be keen on» becomes the subject of «to appeal to».

A typical case in which you’d find it necessary to make this change could be in Use of English part 4, i.e. sentence transformation. Let’s take a look at this example:

The idea of quitting smoking did not appeal to John. 
UP
John was not  __________________________ smoking. 

In this case, we are combining two processes:
1. we have switched the position of the object and subject (John & quitting smoking)
2. we are forcing you to use a phrasal verb with «up» that means «quit».

Therefore, the SOLUTION is «keen on giving up».


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