Question

Fill in the blank the correct form of the word:
Himanshu _____ up the water bottle when the school bell rang. (fill - correct form of the verbs)

Answer 1

Hint: Try to look for certain pointer words. They will help you understand which option you are looking for as they help to narrow down the exact tense required. Then, go through the given options, and choose the most appropriate option accordingly.

Complete answer:
Let us look at the given sentence first-
It describes an action that happened in the past as the sentence already contains the verb ‘rang’ which is a past tense verb. It states that the bell rang while the boy was doing something else. This means that we need the past continuous tense.
When there are two simultaneous actions going on, the tense used is usually the past/present/future continuous tense. This conveys the nature of the actions.
The past continuous tense is used to describe events that were taking place in the past with another action simultaneously and is constructed by adding the suffix ‘-ing’ to root verbs. The words ‘was’ and ‘were’ are also sometimes used as helping verbs. The word ‘was’ is for singular subjects and the word ‘were’ is for plural subjects.
The subject in the given sentence is Himanshu. This is a singular subject. This means that the helping verb to be used is ‘was’. This is the first part of the verb phrase. The next verb to conjugate is ‘fill’. This is a regular verb. This means that the continuous form of the verb ‘fill’ will be constructed by adding a simple suffix of ‘-ing’ to the root verb. So, the required verb is ‘filling’.
Now, we have the verb phrase required to complete the sentence. The complete answer to the given question is as follows:
Himanshu was filling up the water bottle when the school bell rang.

Note:
 The sentence has the verb ‘rang’ and the action took place simultaneously with another. Based on this information, we can safely assume that the action has already happened in the past, as it is a situation that has taken place. The subject is singular. This will help you determine the answer.