Question

Fill in the blank with the appropriate past perfect tense:
She ________________ a horse before that day. (not, ride)
a. rode
b. had not been riding
c. didn’t ride
d. had not ridden

Answer 1

Hint: When a sentence is in the past perfect tense, it means that an event (for instance, Event A) has already happened before another event (for instance, Event B). So, Event A has already happened before Event B. The formula for past perfect tense is ‘had + past participle of the given verb’.

Complete answer:
Let us use the formula ‘had + past participle of the given verb’. The given verb is ride. The past participle of the ride is ridden. Thus, the answer should be had ridden. Since the given question says we have to use the words ‘not’ and ‘ride’, let us include the ‘not’. So, the answer according to the sentence should be ‘had not ridden’.
Therefore, the correct answer is d, ‘had not ridden’. The complete sentence reads, ‘She had not ridden a horse before that day’. This means that before the day being talked about in the sentence, the girl had not ridden a horse.
Option a is wrong because rode is the past tense of the word ‘ride’. The option also does not include the word ‘not’.
Option b is in the past perfect continuous tense since it has the word ‘riding’. When used in the sentence, it is wrong. Thus, option b is also wrong.
Option c does not have the word ‘had’. It is in the past tense and when used in the sentence, the sentence becomes wrong. Thus, option c is incorrect.

Note: A past perfect sentence always has two events in it. The two events in the given sentence are ‘the girl not having the experience to ride a horse on that day’ and ‘the girl not having the experience to ride a horse on any day before that day’.