Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate words.
When I _____ home, I _____ a friend of mine.
A) was going / met
B) go / meet
C) was going / was meeting
D) are going /meet
E) were going / met

Answer 1

Hint: The above consists of two sentences. But they are joined by an adverb clause of time ‘when’. Adverb clauses of time are introduced by subordinating conjunctions like when, whenever, before, after, as, since, till, once, now that, etc. Thus, the given sentence is a complex sentence.

Complete answer:
The whole sentence structure seems to be in the past tense. So, let’s check which past tense category should be used to fill in the blanks.

Let us analyze the given options:
Option A) was going / met: The above option is correct as the first part of the sentence represents an action that is being done at some time in the past which is the person going home. Thus, ‘was going’ seems suitable to fill up the space in the first part of the sentence. The second part of the sentence expresses a past action or an event which here is meeting the person’s friend. Thus, ‘met’ is the correct word used to fill up the space in the second part of the sentence.

Option B) go / meet: The above option is incorrect as the first part ‘go’ is in simple present tense which doesn’t seem fit to be filled in the sentence representing an action that is being done at some time in the past. Similarly, the second part ‘meet’ is also in simple present tense which doesn’t fit in the second part of the sentence expressing a past event.

Option C) was going / was meeting: The above option is incorrect as even though the first part ‘was going’ is in past continuous tense which fits in the space to be filled in the sentence representing an action that is being done at some time in the past; but, the second part ‘was meeting’ is in past continuous tense which doesn’t fit in the second part of the sentence expressing a past event.

Option D) are going /meet: The above option is incorrect as the first part ‘are going’ is in present continuous tense which doesn’t seem fit to be filled in the sentence representing an action that is being done at some time in the past. Similarly, the second part ‘meet’ is also in simple present tense which doesn’t fit in the second part of the sentence expressing a past event.

Option E) were going / met: The above option is incorrect as the first part ‘were going’ is in past continuous tense in the plural sense which doesn’t seem fit to be filled in the sentence representing an action that is being done at some time in the past. But, the second part ‘met’ in simple past tense fits in the space to be filled in the second part of the sentence expressing a past event.

Therefore the correct answer is option ‘A’.

Note: A complex sentence is a sentence that consists of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. Even though an independent clause can stand alone as a sentence, a dependent clause having a subject and a verb cannot stand alone. Here, in the question, ‘I met a friend of mine’ is the independent clause and ‘When I was going home’ is the dependent clause using the subordinating conjunction ‘when’. Thus, the dependent clause is an adverb clause.