English grammar for all competitive examinations: TENSES
TENSES — MCQs for Competitive Examinations (SET - 2)
SECTION A: Average Standard
1. The sun ________ in the east.
- A) rise
- B) rises
- C) rose
- D) has risen
2. We ________ for the bus for twenty minutes when it finally arrived.
- A) wait
- B) waited
- C) were waiting
- D) had been waiting
3. She ________ a letter to her friend yesterday.
- A) writes
- B) write
- C) wrote
- D) has written
4. By the time he woke up, his mother ________ breakfast.
- A) prepares
- B) prepared
- C) has prepared
- D) had prepared
5. They ________ a new house next year.
- A) build
- B) built
- C) will build
- D) have built
Answers — Section A
- B) rises — Simple Present for universal truths and facts.
- D) had been waiting — Past Perfect Continuous for an action that was in progress for a period of time before another past action occurred.
- C) wrote — Simple Past for a completed action at a definite time in the past.
- D) had prepared — Past Perfect for an action completed before another past action.
- C) will build — Simple Future for a planned action in the future.
SECTION B: Medium Standard
6. By the end of this year, he ________ English for three years.
- A) is learning
- B) will learn
- C) will have been learning
- D) has been learning
7. Hardly ________ she stepped out ________ it began to rain.
- A) when / then
- B) had / when
- C) did / than
- D) has / when
8. Choose the grammatically correct sentence:
- A) I am understanding the problem now.
- B) I have been understanding this problem since morning.
- C) I understand the problem now.
- D) I was understanding the problem yesterday.
9. By the time you ________ this letter, I ________ the country.
- A) receive / will have left
- B) will receive / leave
- C) received / had left
- D) receive / left
10. He ________ for this organisation since he ________ college in 2018.
- A) works / left
- B) has been working / left
- C) worked / has left
- D) had worked / leaves
Answers — Section B
- C) will have been learning — Future Perfect Continuous for an action that will have been in progress for a specific duration up to a future point.
- B) had / when — "Hardly...when" is the correct correlative pair; Past Perfect follows "hardly."
- C) I understand the problem now. — "Understand" is a stative verb and cannot be used in continuous tenses.
- A) receive / will have left — Simple Present in the time clause referring to the future; Future Perfect for the action completed before that future point.
- B) has been working / left — Present Perfect Continuous for an action continuing from the past to the present; Simple Past for the completed past event (leaving college)
SECTION C: High Standard
11. Identify the error in the following sentence: "She has completed her assignment before the teacher arrived in the classroom."
- A) has completed
- B) her assignment
- C) arrived
- D) in the classroom
- E) No error
12. The scientists ________ the experiment for two years before they ________ a breakthrough.
- A) conducted / achieved
- B) had been conducting / achieved
- C) have been conducting / achieve
- D) were conducting / have achieved
13. He informed the manager that the clients ________ for over an hour and ________ growing impatient.
- A) had been waiting / were
- B) were waiting / are
- C) have been waiting / were
- D) waited / had been
14. Choose the option that best fills the blanks: "Unless you ________ now, you ________ the last bus."
- A) leave / will miss
- B) will leave / miss
- C) left / would miss
- D) had left / would have missed
15. Which of the following sentences contains an error in tense sequence?
- A) He said that he had already submitted the report.
- B) She told me that she was leaving the next day.
- C) They informed us that the match has been cancelled.
- D) He admitted that he had made a mistake.
Answers — Section C
- A) has completed — Since the action was completed before another past action (teacher arrived), the correct tense is Past Perfect — "had completed", not Present Perfect "has completed."
- B) had been conducting / achieved — Past Perfect Continuous is used for the action that was in progress over a period before another past action (achieving breakthrough) occurred in Simple Past.
- A) had been waiting / were — In reported speech set in the past, Present Perfect Continuous shifts to Past Perfect Continuous ("had been waiting"); "were" correctly maintains the past tense for the second verb.
- A) leave / will miss — In a real conditional sentence with "unless," the "if" clause uses Simple Present; the main clause uses Simple Future. Option C and D represent unreal conditionals which change the meaning entirely.
- C) They informed us that the match has been cancelled. — In indirect speech, when the reporting verb is in the past ("informed"), the verb in the reported clause must also shift to the past — "had been cancelled", not "has been cancelled."
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