When I met John yesterday, it was the first time I ________ him since Christmas.
- (a)saw
- (b)have seen
- (c)had seen
- (d)have been seeing
Correct — A, 'saw'. The sentence is anchored to a single finished past occasion — 'When I met John yesterday' — and the seeing is that very meeting rather than something earlier than it. The simple past keeps both verbs inside the same past time frame.
- (b)have seen — The present perfect links an action to the present moment, but 'yesterday' fixes a finished past time and blocks it.
- (c)had seen — The past perfect would push the seeing behind the meeting, yet the meeting is the seeing; this is the form most coursebooks attach to 'it was the first time', which is what makes it the near-miss.
- (d)have been seeing — A present perfect continuous suggests a repeated or still-running activity, and that clashes with 'the first time', which names one occasion.
English signals when an event happened through tense, and a narrative pinned to a finished past time such as 'yesterday' normally keeps its verbs in the past.
There is a genuine tension on this item. Most grammar books teach the pattern 'it was the first time I had seen him', with a past perfect after 'the first time', which is why option (c) draws so many candidates. The commission's key for this paper marks (a), reading the meeting and the seeing as one and the same past event instead of two events one behind the other. Answer as the key does for this paper, and carry the past-perfect pattern forward for the more usual textbook version of the sentence.
- 'Yesterday' is a finished-time adverbial, so it will not sit with a present perfect.
- 'The first time' names a single occasion, which rules out a continuous form.
- The past perfect exists to place one past event earlier than another past event.
- Reaching for the past perfect on autopilot after 'it was the first time'.
- Using a present perfect even though 'yesterday' has fixed a finished time.
Asked as a selecting-words item — pick the verb form that fits the blank.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
I ________ him last Monday at the station.
- (a)have seen
- (b)saw
- (c)have been seeing
- (d)see
Answer(b) saw — 'last Monday' is finished past time, so the simple past is used.
- practice — not a real PYQ
By the time we reached the platform, the train ________.
- (a)leaves
- (b)has left
- (c)had left
- (d)leave
Answer(c) had left — the departure came before the past arrival, so the past perfect is needed.