Select the most appropriate verb / verb phrase to fill in the blank. They ________________ their house for the past two months, and it’s finally starting to look fantastic.
- (a)has renovated
- (b)have been renovating
- (c)were renovating
- (d)will renovate
Answer
Why
Correct — B. The trigger is for the past two months — a stretch of time that begins in the past and runs up to now.
The second clause says the house is finally starting to look fantastic, so the renovating is still under way as the sentence is spoken.
Duration reaching the present plus an action still running gives the present perfect continuous, have or has been plus -ing. With the plural subject They that is have been renovating, option (b).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)has renovated — has cannot take the plural subject They, and the plain present perfect would report the work as finished, which the second clause contradicts.
- (c)were renovating — were renovating shuts the work inside the past. For the past two months runs up to the present moment, so a past continuous leaves the sentence with no link to now.
- (d)will renovate — will renovate places the work in the future, but the house is already changing. Nothing in the sentence is still waiting to be started.
Concept
Two clues decide a tense blank like this one, and they have to agree.
The time phrase is the first. For plus a duration measures how long something has been going on, and when the stretch reaches the present, the tense must reach it too.
The aspect is the second. If the sentence reports a finished result, the plain present perfect fits. If it reports an activity still under way, the continuous fits. Finally starting to look fantastic says the work is unfinished, so the continuous wins.
For and since are the two markers to keep apart. For takes a length of time, as here, while since takes the point at which the stretch began.
Key facts
- The present perfect continuous is have or has been plus the -ing form.
- For plus a duration reaching the present selects a present perfect tense, not a past one.
- They is plural, so its auxiliary is have and never has.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking has renovated after reading the time phrase and not the subject.
- Treating the past two months as a finished period and reaching for a past tense.
SSC's verb-phrase blanks hand you a time marker and a second clause, and the answer is the one form that satisfies both at once.
The same format is set on 26 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.8 and 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.10, where the markers point instead to a simple past and a past perfect.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.