Question

In the sentence given below, one word has been omitted. Pick the option that has the missing word along with the words that come before and after it.
During the Industrial Revolution, the disposal of waste become more complicated as factories produced new types of wastes.
A. Waste had become
B. Waste has become
C. Waste had been
D. Waste would have

Answer 1

Hint: Omission is defined as the act of omitting, or leaving something out; a piece of information or thing that is left out. For example: It was a hot afternoon. Correct sentence - It was a hot afternoon (‘a’ was omitted in the sentence).

Complete answer:
In this question we will use past perfect tense to find the omitted word in the sentence, because the sentence is in past tense. Past perfect tense expresses the idea that something occurred before another action in the past. It can also show that something happened before a specific time in the past. Examples: I had never seen such a beautiful beach before I went to Andaman Island.

Let us look into the given options
Option A) Waste had become – is the correct answer because it is the most appropriate answer. ‘Had become’ is the past perfect tense. So, this is the correct answer.
Option B) Waste has become – is an incorrect answer because ‘has become’ is in the perfect present tense. Present perfect tense usually refers to actions begun in the past and continuing until the present, or just finished. And our sentence is in the past form. So, we cannot use this option. Thus, this is an incorrect answer.
Option C) Waste had been – is an incorrect answer because ‘had been’ is the past perfect continuous tense and these tenses are constructed by using had been + the verb present participle (do + ing). However, we will not consider this as the correct answer, we need an answer to be in the past perfect tense. Thus, this is an incorrect answer.
Option D) Waste would have - is an incorrect answer because ‘would have’ would is past tense of will and we use would have in conditionals to talk about something that did not happen in the past. But the sentence seems to have happened in the past. However, this is an incorrect answer.
During the Industrial Revolution, the disposal of waste had become more complicated as factories produced new types of wastes.

Hence the correct answer is option ‘A’.

Note: The Past Perfect tense in English is composed of two parts: the past tense of the verb to have (had) + the past participle of the main verb. 'Industrial revolution' was an event of the past. So, when the sentence talks about two events both of which have occurred in the past, we use past perfect or past perfect continuous tense. In this sentence, since we are talking about only one activity i.e. waste disposal, we will use a past perfect tense word.