Passage Correction Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: started

After it is high time, the verb takes the past tense even though the meaning is present or future: it is high time we started. This is a surviving use of the subjunctive, and the past form here does not refer to past time at all - it conveys that the action is overdue. The same construction appears in it is time you went to bed and it is high time the government acted. The alternative is an infinitive, which is equally correct but changes the shape of the sentence: it is high time to start preparing. What cannot be done is to follow it is high time with a present or future tense in a clause. Related subjunctive survivals are worth knowing together: if I were you, I wish I knew, he behaves as though he owned the place, and I suggest that he be informed. Each uses a form that looks wrong by ordinary tense rules but is required by the construction.

Answer: C

Correct answer: No correction required

The sentence is already correct. Too means more than is desirable and carries a consequence, which is exactly the sense here: the child’s weakness prevented walking. The construction is too + adjective + to + infinitive, and it is always negative in effect - too weak to walk means the child could not walk. The word to keep apart from it is very, which merely intensifies and implies nothing: very weak says only that the weakness was great. Saying the box is too heavy where very heavy is meant reverses the sense from description to impossibility. So would need a following that clause: so weak that he could not walk. Enough works in the opposite direction and follows its adjective: strong enough to walk. The pair too…to and enough…to are the two halves of the same pattern.

Answer: E

No correction is required.

The best of the performers is correct: the superlative takes the definite article, and the group it selects from must be plural. Each alternative either drops the article or makes the group singular.

Answer: D

Correct answer: we found the sunset

The sentence as printed contains a dangling participle. An introductory participial phrase attaches itself to whatever noun follows the comma, so Walking along the beach, the sunset looked magnificent says that the sunset was walking. The remedy is to make the subject of the main clause the thing that actually performed the action: Walking along the beach, we found the sunset magnificent. Now we were walking, which is what was meant. The rule is worth stating generally: whenever a sentence opens with an -ing or -ed phrase, the very next noun must be its doer. Classic failures of the kind include Being a rainy day, we stayed indoors and Having finished the work, the television was switched on. The alternative repair is to expand the phrase into a full clause: As we walked along the beach, the sunset looked magnificent.

Answer: D

Correct answer: for

For is used with a period of time, since with a point in time. Ten years is a duration, so the sentence requires for ten years. Compare: for ten years, for a month, for a long time against since 2015, since Monday, since he arrived. The quickest test is to ask whether the phrase answers how long or starting when. From also marks a starting point but requires an end point to be stated or implied, as in from Monday to Friday; it is not used with the present perfect in the way since is. During answers when rather than how long - during the holidays - and by marks a deadline. Note that the tense is already correct: an action beginning in the past and continuing now takes the present perfect continuous.

Answer: B

It should read were delighted.

Delight is a verb; the adjective describing how someone feels is the participle delighted. Delight cannot stand as a complement after were.

Answer: C

It should read should not have.

Should is a modal and takes the bare infinitive, so have, not had. Should not have done expresses regret about a past action.

Answer: B

It should read did the bells ring.

No sooner ... than requires inversion, and the sentence is past, so did the bells ring. The subject bells is plural, which rules out the singular alternatives.

Answer: B

Correct answer: than

No sooner is followed by than, never by when. It is hardly and scarcely that take when, and confusing the two pairs is the commonest error in this construction. The reason lies in the words themselves: sooner is a comparative, and comparatives are completed by than. Hardly and scarcely are not comparatives, so they take the temporal when instead. The sentence would also more usually take the past perfect in the first clause: No sooner had he arrived than the ceremony began - the earlier action in the past perfect, the later in the simple past. The form with did is heard but is less idiomatic. Inversion is required either way, since no sooner is a fronted restrictive adverb: no sooner had he, not no sooner he had.

Answer: B

It should read attended by all.

Attend in the sense of being present at takes a direct object and no preposition. Attend to means to deal with, which is not what invitees do to a meeting.