Read the passage below. Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verbs in parentheses—'begin' for the first blank and 'be' for the second blank—to maintain consistent and grammatically correct verb tenses throughout the narrative.
Cevap:In December 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a South African museum curator, received a call from a fisherman who had caught an unusual fish. When she arrived at the docks, she immediately noticed the specimen's unique, limb-like fins. Although she was not an ichthyologist, she recognized that the creature was unlike any modern species she had ever seen. She took the fish back to the museum and began searching through reference books, hoping to identify the specimen before it (begin) 【began】 to decay. Her diligence eventually led to the identification of the coelacanth, a prehistoric fish that scientists believed (be) 【had been】 extinct for sixty-six million years.
Cevap
The first blank must be filled with 'began' and the second blank must be filled with 'had been'.
The narrative is written in the past tense. The first blank requires the simple past 'began' to show a sequential action in the past. The second blank requires the past perfect 'had been' to express a state that occurred prior to the past belief ('believed') of the scientists.
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Verb Tense and Consistency