NDA (II) 2016 GAT Q40: If he had listening to me he would not have got

Q: What is the answer to NDA (II) 2016 GAT Q40?

B. Correct — B, listened to me. Two things have to be right at once — 'had' must be completed by a past participle, which makes it 'had listened', and 'listen' cannot take a person straight after it, so the preposition 'to' has to stay; together they give 'If he had listened to me he would not have got lost.'

NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 40 of 150

Question text verified against the official NDA question paper.

If he had listening to me he would not have got lost.

(a)listened me
(b)listened to me
(c)listen me
(d)NO IMPROVEMENT

Answer

Why

Correct — B, listened to me. Two things have to be right at once — 'had' must be completed by a past participle, which makes it 'had listened', and 'listen' cannot take a person straight after it, so the preposition 'to' has to stay; together they give 'If he had listened to me he would not have got lost.'

Why the others are wrong

(a)listened me — The verb form is now right, but 'listen' is not a verb that takes a direct object, so the person heard must be introduced by 'to'.
(c)listen me — It fails on both counts — 'had listen' is not a possible verb group, and the preposition before 'me' is still missing.
(d)NO IMPROVEMENT — 'Had listening' is not an English verb form at all; 'had' is completed by a past participle, never by an -ing form.

Concept

An unreal supposition about the past, joined to a verb that needs its own preposition before a person.

The main half of the sentence, 'he would not have got lost', is already fixed and tells the reader that the 'if' half must be in the past perfect — the pattern for imagining a past that did not happen. That settles 'had listened'. The item then hides a second test inside the first, because two of the options drop the preposition. English distinguishes 'hear', which takes a person directly, from 'listen', which needs 'to'.

Key facts

An unreal past supposition pairs 'if' plus had plus the past participle with 'would have' plus the past participle in the other half.
'Listen to', 'reply to' and 'wait for' need their preposition, while 'hear', 'answer' and 'await' take the object directly.

Study next

Unreal suppositions about the past and the verb forms each half takesVerbs that require a preposition before their objectPairs that behave differently — listen and hear, wait and await, reply and answer

Common traps

Correcting the verb form and forgetting the missing preposition, or the other way round.
Completing 'had' with an -ing form.

Asked as a sentence-improvement item that plants two faults in one underlined phrase, so only the option that repairs both can be right.

Related PYQs

NDA_GAT_2017_I_Q252017Open & attempt →

If I don’t know the meaning of a word, I look it after in the dictionary.

(a) look it out
(b) look it for
(c) look it up
(d) No improvement

Answer(c) look it up

Both items hang on the small word that a verb insists on. There the wrong particle after 'look' changes the verb into something else entirely; here dropping 'to' after 'listen' leaves the verb without the link it always needs before a person.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which option best improves the underlined part — If she had replying my letter the matter would have ended there.
- (a)replied my letter
- (b)replied to my letter
- (c)reply to my letter
- (d)No improvement
Answer(b) replied to my letter — 'had' takes the past participle, and 'reply' needs 'to'.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which option best improves the underlined part — They were waiting the bus in the rain for an hour.
- (a)waiting for the bus
- (b)waited the bus
- (c)awaiting for the bus
- (d)No improvement
Answer(a) waiting for the bus — 'wait' needs 'for', while 'await' would take the object directly.