EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 11 of 120

Correct — C, (c) have been. The blank is decided by the phrase at the end of the sentence. ‘For the past three years’ names a stretch of time that begins in the past and runs up to the present moment — that is what ‘the past’ means, measured backwards from now. A tense chosen for that phrase must therefore connect the past to the present, and only the present perfect does that in English. The second half of the choice is between the simple and the continuous form of the present perfect, and the participle already printed in the sentence settles it. The sentence supplies ‘walking’, an -ing form, and the only auxiliary sequence that can govern it here is ‘have been’: I have been walking. The present perfect continuous is also exactly right for the meaning — an activity repeated or continuing over the named stretch and still going on. ‘I have been walking past this particular shop for the past three years’ says that the walking began three years ago, has gone on since, and has not stopped. So two constraints converge on one option. The time phrase rules out any tense that shuts the action off in the past, and the -ing form rules out any auxiliary that would need a past participle instead. A note on the choice English offers here: with ‘for’ and a duration, the present perfect continuous emphasises the activity going on, while the present perfect simple — I have walked past it for three years — is possible and stresses the completed fact. The paper does not print the simple form as an option, so the choice does not arise; the printed contrast is between a tense that reaches the present and three that do not.

• (a)was — ‘was’ gives ‘I was walking past this particular shop for the past three years’. The past continuous places an action in progress at a moment in the past — I was walking past the shop when I saw him — and it seals the action off from the present. That is incompatible with ‘the past three years’, a stretch measured from now and still open. The version that would work with this tense needs a different time phrase: ‘I was walking past that shop every day for three years, until we moved.’
• (b)have — ‘have’ gives ‘I have walking’, which is not a possible form. The auxiliary ‘have’ builds the perfect with a past participle — have walked, have seen, have been — and cannot govern the present participle ‘walking’ on its own. ‘I have walked past this shop for the past three years’ would be grammatical, but that is not what this option produces; inserting ‘have’ into the printed sentence leaves the auxiliary and the participle mismatched.
• (d)had been — ‘had been’ gives the past perfect continuous, which needs a second, later point in the past to look back from: ‘I had been walking past this shop for three years before it closed down.’ The sentence as printed supplies no such point, and ‘the past three years’ anchors the period to the present instead. Choosing (d) is the commonest slip on this item because ‘had been walking’ is a well-formed sequence in isolation; it fails on the time reference, not on the form.

The present perfect is the tense English uses to tie a past event to the present moment, and it comes in two aspects that this item quietly contrasts. The simple form, have or has plus past participle, reports the fact — I have read the file, she has lived here for ten years. The continuous form, have or has been plus the -ing participle, reports the activity as ongoing and often as incomplete — I have been reading the file, she has been living here for ten years. With duration phrases both are frequently possible; the continuous puts the weight on the going-on, the simple on the result or the record. The duration itself is marked in two ways. ‘For’ takes a length of time — for three years, for a fortnight, for as long as I can remember. ‘Since’ takes the point at which the stretch began — since 2020, since I joined, since the shop opened. Mixing them is one of the standard faults set in this section. The phrases that force a present perfect are worth knowing as a list, because they appear in the blank’s neighbourhood: for the past few years, so far, up to now, in recent months, lately, of late, already, just, yet, never, ever. Each of them holds the period open at the present end, which is precisely what a past tense cannot do.

Q11 opens the cloze set, the third of the four five-item sets in Part A, and it carries the Directions block that governs Q11 to Q15; the four followers print only their sentence. The instruction is to select the ‘most appropriate’ option, which matters later in the set, where more than one filler is grammatical and the choice turns on idiom or register. On this first item the task is stricter than that: three of the four options are ruled out by the grammar, not by taste. What the paper is rewarding is the habit of reading the whole sentence before looking at the options. The decisive words — ‘walking’ and ‘for the past three years’ — sit at opposite ends of the sentence, and a candidate who reads only up to the blank has neither of them. Reading to the full stop first, then asking what the sentence has already committed to, converts most cloze items from a matter of ear into a matter of rule.

• ‘For the past three years’ measures a period backwards from the present moment and holds it open at the present end, so it requires a present perfect rather than any past tense.
• The present perfect continuous is formed with have or has plus been plus the -ing participle; the sentence prints ‘walking’, so the auxiliary must end in ‘been’.
• ‘Have’ alone cannot govern an -ing form: the perfect with ‘have’ takes a past participle, as in ‘have walked’.
• The past perfect continuous, ‘had been walking’, needs a later past point to look back from, which this sentence does not supply.
• With durations, ‘for’ takes the length of time and ‘since’ takes the starting point: for three years, since 2020.

• Choosing a form that is well built in isolation without testing it against the sentence’s time phrase. ‘Had been walking’ is faultless English and still wrong here.
• Reading only as far as the blank. Both decisive clues in this sentence — the -ing participle and ‘for the past three years’ — lie after it.
• Confusing ‘for’ with ‘since’ when reconstructing the sentence, which can make a wrong tense look defensible.
• Treating ‘the past three years’ as an ordinary past reference. ‘The past’ in this phrase is measured from now, which is why it demands a present perfect.

The cloze set in this paper puts its grammar items first and its idiom items later, and the grammar items are usually settled by a single phrase planted at the end of the sentence — a duration, a time adverb, a subordinator. The four options are typically minimal variants of one another, differing by an auxiliary or a preposition, so there is nothing to be gained by scanning them first. Read the sentence to its full stop, name the constraint, and only then look down.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : The committee ________ for the revised guidelines since the Ministry issued its circular in March.

  • (a)waited
  • (b)has been waiting
  • (c)had waited
  • (d)is waiting

  Answer(b) has been waiting — ‘since’ plus a past starting point holds the period open at the present end, so a present perfect is required, and the continuous form suits an activity still going on. ‘Waited’ and ‘had waited’ close the period off in the past, and the present continuous cannot reach back to March.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : By the time the auditors arrived, the branch ________ the missing vouchers for over a week.

  • (a)has searched for
  • (b)is searching for
  • (c)had been searching for
  • (d)searches for

  Answer(c) had been searching for — ‘By the time the auditors arrived’ supplies a past point to look back from, which is exactly what the past perfect continuous needs; the duration ‘for over a week’ then runs up to that point rather than to the present.