NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 27 of 149

Correct — C, was running. 'When we saw him last' fixes a single moment in the past, and an action already under way at that moment is carried by the past continuous — 'When we saw him last, he was running to catch a bus.'

• (a)has run — The present perfect cannot sit beside a clause naming a definite past moment; 'when we saw him last' rules it out.
• (b)had run — The past perfect would place the running before the seeing, but the running was going on at the very moment they saw him.
• (d)No improvement — The simple past 'ran' presents the running as a complete event, so it does not convey the action in progress that the 'when' clause is pointing to.

A tense item pairing a simple-past 'when' clause with a past-continuous main clause for an action already in progress.

• The shorter interrupting event takes the simple past and the longer background action takes the past continuous.
• The past perfect is reserved for an action finished before the past reference point.

• Matching the tense of the main clause to the time clause out of habit.

Asked as a sentence-improvement item where a time clause decides which past tense the main verb must take.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which option best improves the underlined part — When the phone rang, I <u>cooked</u> dinner.

  • (a)was cooking
  • (b)have cooked
  • (c)had cooked
  • (d)No improvement

  Answer(a) was cooking — the cooking was already under way when the phone rang.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which option best improves the underlined part — While we <u>waited</u> for the bus, it began to rain.

  • (a)were waiting
  • (b)have waited
  • (c)had waited
  • (d)No improvement

  Answer(a) were waiting — 'while' introduces the longer background action.