about the word 'consider' and 'as'

if someone said 'Mark was considered as an excellent leader.'

I know native speakers would correct it and say "the meaning of 'as' is already included in the verb 'consider', so omit 'as', it's not necessary."

What I'd like to ask is, is the fact (that 'consider' has 'as' in it) obvious to every native speaker without having learnt it? Or are you also confused and have you ever been confused about it? Do you know it by nature or think you know it just becasuse you have learnt that it's supposed to be that way.


what are your thoughts?
thanks~!

if someone said 'Mark was considered as an excellent leader.'

I would consider such a remark to be ambiguous.

Does it mean?

Mark was considered to be an excellent leader.

or does it mean?

Mark was considered an excellent leader.

The question mark is whether 'Mark is still considered to be an excellent leader'?

Mark was considered to be an excellent leader before the accident.

Mark was considered an excellent leader before the accident.


____________________________________________________


'Mark was considered as an excellent leader' and consequently selected for promotion.

___________________________________________________________

'Mark was considered an excellent leader'


If this statement has 'as' in it. It suggests that he was considered an excellent leader, but something happened that has made people question their original judgment.

The statement is in 'past tense' so it also suggests that that opinions on Mark's leadership qualities may have changed.

'Mark is an excellent leader'.

<<What I'd like to ask is, is the fact (that 'consider' has 'as' in it) obvious to every native speaker without having learnt it?>>

Yes, it's obvious to me as a native speaker. It would just be my own natural usage to say, "Mark was considered an excellent leader."

Hmm... that's the thing - to myself at least, the natural thing to add to such clauses is "to be", not "as", with "Mark was considered an excellent leader." becoming "Mark was considered to be an excellent leader."...

There seem to be people who try to translate a phrase from their native language literally and end up with "considered as". But some of the people who use this construction seem to be native English speakers, although it's hard to know for sure. BTW, "consider", "consider as", and "consider to be" are all valid constructions, but they each have a slightly different meaning. "A is considered to be B" means "People believe that A is B". "A is considered as B" means "People are thinking about A in terms of how it fulfills B's property". For instance, "Considered as a paperweight, Dianetics is actually quite useful".

"He was considered as an excellent leader" is correct. Just search Google or www.americancorpus.org for "considered as an". Plenty of examples from pretty reputable sources.

Nevertheless, "consider as" is more frequently used in the sense described by Another Guest... (BTW, nice example sentence there)

e.g.
"Ethanol should be seriously considered as an alternative fuel"
"We can understand his novel better if we consider it as an autobiography."

In these sentences "as" is REQUIRED. If you take it out, you'll get a different meaning.

So there are two senses of "consider":

1. consider sb/sth (to be / as) sb/sth (= believe sb/sth to be sb/sth)
2. consider sb/sth as sb/sth (= think of sb/sth as sb/sth)

"Ethanol should be considered as an alternative fuel" -- I am inviting the reader to think of some new aspect of ethanol for the purposes of some reasoning.

"Ethanol should be considered the greatest menace of society" -- I am asking the reader to change his permanent belief about "what ethanol is".