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I am trying to understand the sentence for Wanikani:

二十一頁の二番はクラスでします

The translation given is:

We will work on question 2 on page 21 in class.

Can someone explain the last part? i.e.クラスでします. I haven't come across any similar examples online.

Eddie Kal
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davidhin
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    Related (for で): [Why is particle で used instead of particle と in 家族で出かける (Kazoku de dekakeru)?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/8107/43676) – aguijonazo Dec 07 '21 at 23:50

2 Answers2

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二十一頁の二番はクラスでします

Nothing too mysterious happening here.

The で simply marks where the action is taking place, i.e. in class.

します is just the polite from of する i.e. 'to do', which they have liberally translated as 'work on'. So a literal translation of the whole sentence would be "As for number two of page 21 we will do it in class.

Edit

As you can see from the comment chain my explanation of で as 'where' is controversial. In this case the more likely usage is "as a", i.e. クラスで = as a class. See the link provided by @aguijonazo

user3856370
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    That's certainly one possible interpretation but doesn't seem very likely. Why would they move to a different place to solve this particular problem? I would understand this クラス as referring to a group of people, not a location. I would say 教室 if I mean a classroom. – aguijonazo Dec 07 '21 at 23:47
  • I see your point but to me, in English at least, I see very little difference between 'in class' as a location and 'in class' as a group of people. I also don't see why で would imply movement. I can easily envisage a scenario where the teacher is telling the pupils what homework questions to do this evening and says that they will do this particular question in class (maybe it's a more difficult question). That seems like a perfectly legitimate and likely use to me. Happy to correct if I've failed to understand something here. – user3856370 Dec 08 '21 at 08:19
  • I am questioning your explication that で marks **where** the action is taking place. Why would you specify where you are going to solve Q2 in page 21 unless you solve other questions in some other place? – aguijonazo Dec 08 '21 at 08:33
  • Well, I gave what I thought was a reasonable example with the homework scenario. Do you not think that is legitimate? If not I will change the answer. – user3856370 Dec 08 '21 at 08:35
  • As I said, your interpretation is possible. It just doesn’t seem very likely to me. If the teacher said クラスでします in your scenario, I would still understand クラス as a group of people, as opposed to each student doing it individually. If the teacher’s focus is on **where** that activity will take place, she would more likely say 教室. – aguijonazo Dec 08 '21 at 08:45
  • I'm not trying to be awkward but I think this is interesting. If the teacher said to me "We will solve this in class" I would not think about the physical location but the collection of people, as you say. But paradoxically I would not expect there to be a group effort to solve the problem, but rather the teacher explaining how to solve it, so in that sense it would be the location. I guess it's no coincidence that で can express both concepts since there seems to be a degree of ambiguity. Anyway, I will edit the question. Thanks for your comments. – user3856370 Dec 08 '21 at 08:51
  • What I meant is it marks a broader setting in which a group of people are involved, not a place. Whether the teacher explains how to solve the question or the class try to solve it together is not important. – aguijonazo Dec 08 '21 at 09:04
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Like the previous answer said, the クラスで means "in class" while the します is just a "do" do what? We are going to "do" question 2 on page 21, it sounds weird in english but the japanese do (する) is much more versatile and makes sense in this context.

If there's anything else you might have a doubt about just let me know.

Tata Maccarone
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