The given sentence is divided into four segments. Select the option that has the segment with a grammatical error. We were on the way/ to the party;/ suddenly, there/ will a heavy downpour.
- (a)suddenly, there
- (b)will a heavy downpour.
- (c)We were on the way
- (d)to the party;
Answer
Why
Correct — B. Option (b) reads will a heavy downpour — a modal with no main verb after it.
will is a modal auxiliary, and a modal must be followed by a bare infinitive: will be, will come. Standing alone in front of a noun phrase it leaves the existential there with nothing to be.
The sentence is also narrating the past — We were on the way — so the repair is past, not future: there was a heavy downpour.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)suddenly, there — suddenly is a sentence adverb and there is the existential subject that follows it. Both are correctly placed; the fault lies in what comes after them.
- (c)We were on the way — were agrees with We and sets the past frame the rest of the sentence has to keep. The idiom is on the way to somewhere, which the next segment completes.
- (d)to the party; — The semicolon correctly joins two independent clauses, and to the party finishes on the way. Punctuation is not what this item is pointing at.
Concept
Spot-the-error items are usually settled by agreement or by a broken verb phrase. This one is the second.
English builds a verb phrase in a fixed order: modal, then bare infinitive, then the rest. will plus a noun is not a verb phrase. will be plus a noun is.
The second signal is the tense frame. A sentence that opens We were stays in the past unless something inside it moves the time. A future modal dropped into a past narrative clashes even after the verb phrase is repaired.
Both faults sit in the same segment, so you never have to decide which one SSC meant.
Scan each segment for its finite verb first. A segment that has none is broken whatever else is true of it.
Key facts
- A modal — will, shall, can, may, must — is always followed by a bare infinitive: will be, will go.
- Existential there needs a form of be after it: there was, there were, there will be.
- A past narrative frame, once set by was or were, is kept by the later clauses of the same sentence.
Study next
Common traps
- Marking segment (d) for its semicolon, which is correct between two independent clauses.
- Reading will a heavy downpour as shorthand for will come, and repairing it in your head before you have marked it.
The broken-auxiliary segment is a recurring shape: also asked 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.10 (will been working), 10 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.11 (will replaced traditional fossil fuels) and 09 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.19 (I will had graduated).
Its cousin, a segment with no auxiliary at all, is asked 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.20 (Jerry driving home late).
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.