Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate option.
When we went to the cinema, the film _________________.

a) Already started
b) Had already started
c) Would already start
d) None of these

Answer 1

Hint: From the given sentence, it is understood that the first half of the sentence is in the past tense. It also starts with “when”. Such sentences indicate that “when” something happened, another incident took place before that. This is represented by the “Past perfect” tense. Thus, when two incidents occur one after the other, the first incident is represented by the past perfect tense and the second one by the past tense. It is usually written as “had”+past participle of the verb. So we have to look for a verb in the past perfect tense in the given options.

Complete answer:

 Option a: “already started” is the past tense of “already start”. So it’s wrong.
Option b: “Had already started” is exactly the form of verb we are looking for. It is a past perfect tense, indicated by “had” followed by the past participle of the verb. This is the correct answer.
Option c: “would already start” is the future tense. It is an incorrect option.
Option d: If none of the above options seem correct or matching with the given sentence, then feel free to tick this option. However, according to our given question, we have already found an answer, hence this option is incorrect.
Thus, the correct option is option b.

Note: The word “already” is just an extra adverb which is describing or intensifying the depth of the given situation. The question clearly wants the right form of the verb given in the options. We could also have ignored the word “already” and proceeded with our analysis.