Question

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate pronouns:
It looks like _____ was the one who encouraged ________ while ______ was sunk in despair.
a. I, she, she
b. me, her, she
c. I, we, she
d. I, her, she

Answer 1

Hint: Depending on what comes before the blank, the blank will be filled with either a pronoun, a possessive/emphatic, or another pronoun.

Complete step by step solution:
Sentence construction in English is very crucial to the language. The most basic construction is ‘subject + verb + object’. However, in longer sentences, it becomes more complicated.

Let’s look at the given sentence as an example. The first blank is before the verb ‘was’. Grammar rules state that only nouns and pronouns can come before verbs, under normal circumstances. So, the first blank should either be a noun or a pronoun.
The second blank comes after the phrase ‘who encouraged’. That becomes the object of the sentence. So, the blank should be filled with an emphatic pronoun.
Then, there is a conjunction ‘while’. So, the connectivity between these two sentences does not matter now.
The second part of the sentence starts with a blank followed by the verb ‘was sunk’. This means that this blank will also be filled by another noun/pronoun.
There are no nouns in the options.

So, the answer we’re looking for is ‘pronoun/emphatic/pronoun’. The only option that fits this is option ‘d’. So, option ‘d’ is the correct answer.

Note: Use the method of trial and error in order to find out which option fits best. Make sure that the part of speech is fitting for the sentence.