Error Spotting: Tenses — MCQs with Answers (Set 1)

The correct past participle of ‘know’ is ‘known’, not ‘knew’, in this conditional structure.

‘Look forward to’ is followed by a gerund, not a bare infinitive: ‘to meeting you’.

After ‘should’, the base form of the verb is used: ‘should submit’, not ‘submits’.

An action continuing from the past to the present, with a starting point, needs present perfect continuous: ‘have been living’.

After ‘Scarcely’ at the start of a sentence, the auxiliary comes before the subject: ‘Scarcely had he left’.

‘Too…to’ is followed by the base form of the verb: ‘too weak to walk’.

Since the subject is ‘I’, the verb in the relative clause must agree with ‘I’: ‘who am responsible’.

Hypothetical wishes use the subjunctive: ‘I wish I were’, not ‘I wish I was’.

‘Hardly’ already has a negative meaning. Adding ‘not’ makes a double negative. So ‘does not have hardly’ is wrong. The correct form is ‘has hardly any money left’.

‘More’ should not be used with an adjective that already carries the comparative ‘-er’ suffix.

‘The reason…was because’ is redundant; the correct construction is ‘the reason…was that’.

‘Despite’ is never followed by ‘of’; the correct form is simply ‘Despite his illness’.

The object pronoun ‘it’ is redundant once ‘that’ already refers to the novel.

‘By the time’ with the present tense ‘arrives’ points to the future. The collapse will be complete before the brigade arrives. So the future perfect ‘will have already collapsed’ fits. ‘Had collapsed’ would need ‘arrived’ in the first clause.

‘One of the best players who…’ refers to ‘players’ (plural), so the verb should be ‘have played’.

‘Each’ is singular and takes a singular verb: ‘was given’.

A duration of time takes ‘for’, not ‘since’, which is reserved for a specific starting point.

‘Senior’ is correctly followed by ‘to’, not ‘than’: ‘senior to me’.

After ‘Not only’ at the start of a sentence, inversion is required: ‘Not only was he late’.

This sentence is correct: ‘since’ properly introduces the specific starting point, ‘last month’.

‘Would rather’ is followed directly by the bare infinitive: ‘would rather stay’, without ‘to’.

‘Team’ can take a plural verb when emphasizing the individual members acting together, especially in British usage; this is acceptable.

‘Their’ as a gender-neutral singular pronoun after ‘each student’ is standard, widely accepted modern usage.

With inversion after ‘Hardly’, the auxiliary comes before the subject: ‘Hardly had he reached the station’.

‘Prefer’ is correctly followed by ‘to’, not ‘than’: ‘prefers tea to coffee’.

‘News’ is always treated as singular in English, so it should be ‘was quite shocking’.

‘Scarcely…had’ is correctly paired with ‘when’, not ‘than’: ‘Scarcely had he entered when the lights went out’.

‘Since’ is used with a specific point in time (since 2019); a duration like ‘five years’ requires ‘for’, not ‘since’.

With ‘neither…nor’, the verb agrees with the nearer subject; since ’employees’ is plural, it should be ‘were aware’.

Hypothetical conditions use the subjunctive mood: ‘If I were you’, not ‘If I was you’.

Since the arrival happened in the past and the movie started before that, the past perfect ‘had already’ is needed, not ‘has already’.