Choose the most suitable option to replace the highlighted part of the sentence: I met him yesterday night at the party.

Correct — C. The fault is the time phrase yesterday night. The standard phrase for the night just gone is last night.

The verb met is already right: one finished meeting at a stated past time takes the simple past.

So keep met and change only the phrase: 'I met him last night at the party.' → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  had met him last night — Had met is past perfect, which places an action before another past time or event. The sentence names no such event, so the simple past met should stay.
• (b)
  meet him yesterday night — Meet is present tense beside a past time phrase, and the option keeps the faulty yesterday night. It adds an error and fixes none.
• (d)
  was meeting him last night — Was meeting is past continuous, an action in progress around some other event. The sentence reports one completed meeting with nothing happening against it, so met fits.

This is a sentence-improvement item: find what is wrong in the highlighted words and change only that.

Two things sit in the highlighted part, the verb and the time phrase. Met is the simple past, the tense for one completed action at a stated past time, so it stays.

The time phrase is the fault. For the evening or night just before the present, English says last night.

Key facts

• Last night means the evening or night immediately before the present.
• Wiktionary's usage note: last night is about 1,000 times more frequent than yesterday night in US, UK, Canadian and Australian news.
• The simple past (met) reports one completed action at a stated past time.
• The past perfect (had met) places an action before another past time or event.

Common traps

• Changing the tense as well as the phrase: had met and was meeting fix yesterday night but break a verb that was already right.
• Keeping yesterday night because each of its words is correct on its own.

No directly related past PYQ was found.