Question

Fill in the blank with a suitable verb form:

The man sitting next to me on the plane was very nervous. It was his first flight.
He ________ (never/fly) before.

a)is never flying
b)has never flown
c)had never flown
d)was never flying

Answer 1

Hint: The use of the word ‘was’ in the previous sentence implies that the tense should be a form of past tense.

Complete step-by-step answer:

 To describe that an action has never been done before, we use a form of the past tense, called the ‘past perfect tense’. The past perfect, also called the pluperfect tense, is a tense used to talk about actions that were completed before some point in the past. The perfect tenses include the helping verbs ‘have’, ‘has’, and ‘had’.
The given sentence is in the past tense. So, we must use the past perfect tense here.

The past perfect tense is constructed in the following way: had + past participle.

For example, the verb ‘eat’ would be conjugated in past perfect tense as ‘had eaten’.
Now, let’s look at the given options:

a)is never flying - This phrase contains the word ‘is’ which signifies that it is present tense. The root verb ends in ‘-ing’. This phrase is in the present continuous tense. So, this is an incorrect option.
b)has never flown - This phrase contains the word ‘has’, along with the participle ‘flown’. This signifies that it is in the present perfect tense. So, this is an incorrect option.
c)had never flown - This phrase contains the word ‘had’, and the participle ‘flown’. This signifies that this is in the past perfect tense. So, this is the correct option.
d)was never flying - This phrase contains the word ‘was’, which implies it is the past tense, and the root verb ends in ‘-ing’. This is in the past continuous tense. So, it is an incorrect option.

Note: Pick out the appropriate tense in conjunction with the word ‘was’ from the first sentence.