Question

Fill in the blanks with the correct forms of verbs given in the bracket.
What ______ you______ here after I left for college? (do)

Answer 1

Hint: Here the sentence refers to the tense form of ‘do’. Tenses denote the time when the action happened, did it happen in the past, present or future. ‘Do’ is a verb here which means ‘perform’ the question here asks for an action that is performed in the past.

Complete answer:
The first part of the sentence itself denotes that the action had taken place in the past as the subject had left for college. Thus, the past form of ‘do’ will be used in the first fill-up of the sentence. As the first fill up is in the past form, the second fill up automatically will be filled by the present form of the sentence.
This is because as per the rules of tenses every past form of a verb is followed by the present form of the same or second verb. Thus, though the sentence denotes past action, the second fill-up will be filled with the first form of the sentence.

Thus, we frame the given question as:
 What did you do here after I left for college?
Here ‘did’ is the past form of the verb ‘do’ and ‘do’ is the present form of the verb ‘do’.

Note: Tenses are divided into three time periods: past. Present and Future. The type of time period depends upon the reference of the action that happened. As in the current question the action of ‘doing’ happened after leaving for college. Also remember, every past form of the verb is followed by the present form of the same or second succeeding verb.