Question

Fill in the blank with a suitable verb form:
The park gates _________ (lock) at 6:30 p.m. every evening.
 a. locks
b. are locked
c. locked
d. were locked

Answer 1

Hint: The student should read the sentence carefully to understand when the event is supposed to be taking place. Then the options should be carefully distinguished to find out whether they are correct or not.

Complete answer:
A verb is a content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence. A verb is the word class that serves as the predicate of a sentence.
Let us thus analyze the options given to us in this question -
Option (a.), 'locks', refers to ‘locks’ which is used for singular nouns. Therefore, option (a.) is incorrect as ‘park gates’ is a plural noun.
Option (b.), ‘are locked', refers to ‘are’ which is used for plural nouns. Therefore, option (b.) is correct as ‘park gates’ is a plural noun.
Option (c.), ‘locked', refers to an adjective which means ‘Of a door, etc, that has been locked (with a key).’.Therefore, option (c.) is incorrect as we need a verb form and not an adjective.
Option (d.), ‘were locked', refers to ‘were’ which is in the past tense.
Therefore, option (d.) is incorrect as the verb form should be in the present tense since the sentence talks about a general rule/fact.

Note:
 In this question, it will be helpful for the student to recall the concept of tenses. Tense is a grammatical category of verbs used to express distinctions of time. There are three tenses - past, present, and future.