Sentence Improvement Questions and Answers

Answer: C

It should read have been waiting.

Since the afternoon fixes a starting point, and an action continuing from a point in the past to now takes the present perfect continuous. The present continuous says nothing about when the waiting began.

Answer: A

It should read from mine.

Different takes from in careful British usage. Different than is American and is generally avoided in formal writing; different to is heard in Britain but from is the safest.

Answer: A

It should read chose to have her brain preserved.

The sentence is about a past event, so the verb must be past: chose, not chooses. And she did not preserve the brain herself; she arranged for it to be done, which the causative have ... preserved expresses.

Answer: D

It is final ... conclusion.

A long-awaited conclusion belongs in the final book of a series, and the two words support each other. A plot or a hero can appear in any volume, and a conflict comes at the start rather than the end.

Answer: B

It should read of earlier travellers' first encounters with Lake Manasarovar.

The encounters belong to several travellers, so the apostrophe follows the plural s. Encounter takes with before the thing met, and the word order must put earlier travellers next to what is theirs.

Answer: C

It should read much-needed.

Much-needed is the standard compound adjective for something badly wanted. So-needed and very-needed are not English, and needy describes a person in want.

Answer: A

It is the first option.

Discipline means a training that produces obedience - the definition needs its article and the noun training. The versions that make the word itself produce obedience confuse the term with what it names.

Answer: C

It should read to.

True to someone means loyal to them, which is what Sudama was to Krishna. True with is not English; true of introduces something that applies to a case.

Answer: C

It should read have been waiting.

Since the afternoon fixes a starting point, and an action continuing from a point in the past to now takes the present perfect continuous. The present continuous says nothing about when the waiting began.

Answer: D

Correct answer: had already started

When two past actions are described, the earlier takes the past perfect and the later takes the simple past. The film started before the arrival, so it must be had already started. The signal is the phrase by the time, which explicitly sets one action against another and almost always calls for the past perfect in the clause describing what was already complete. The adverb already points the same way, since it belongs naturally with the perfect tenses. Has already started is the present perfect and cannot be used with a stated past time; already starts is present tense altogether; and was already starting would describe an action still in progress, which contradicts already. The same sequence governs hardly had he arrived when, no sooner had she spoken than, and reported speech, where a simple past becomes past perfect after a past reporting verb.