Question

Fill in blank [3] with an appropriate verb:
The weather [1] ____ sunny lately, and it [2] ______ extremely hot now. Her health [3] ____bad. She [4] _____ pale. Her mother is always stressed out when she [5] _____ ill.
a- Is
b- Looking
c- Have gone
d- Become

Answer 1

Hint: Linking verbs are those verbs that are used to link the subject with its modifier or conditional. For example- I am a boy. Here, ‘I’ is the subject, ‘am’ is the linking verb and ‘boy’ is the modifier.

Complete answer:
In the given question- We can see that the first and the last sentence are given in the present tense. Hence, [3] should also be in the present tense.
Hence, the correct answer is; Her health is bad. ‘Her health’ is a singular subject which is linked with the modifier ‘bad’, with the help of the linking verb, ‘is’.
Now, let’s look at the given options-
Option a- ‘Is’ is the correct option because it is given in the present tense and it helps in forming a grammatically appropriate sentence.
Option b- ‘Looking’ is an incorrect option because it is given in the continuous form and a participle verb form is always paired with an auxiliary verb.
Option c- ‘Have gone’ is an incorrect option because the helping verb ‘have’, is given in the plural form. Also, ‘gone’ is the past tense form of ‘go’.
Option d- ‘Become’ is an incorrect option because it is the past tense form of ‘became’ and it is used with plural subjects.

The correct answer is Option ‘a’.

Note:
Linking verbs are not used for indicating an action but they help in forming a connection between the subjects and nouns/adjectives.