Question

One AK – 56 rifle and some grenades __________ (find) in the house.
a) Was found
b) Have been found
c) Were found
d) Had been found’

Answer 1

Hint: The sentence indicates an action that has happened, i.e. it is in past tense. You have to find the correct form of the word to fill the blank; this implies that the correct option would be in past tense form.

 Complete answer:: Before attempting the question one must understand the requirement the question possesses – the sentence in the above-given question is in the form of simple past tense, which indicates – that a task/ action has been completed in a time before now (present). Therefore, the correct option would be the one which is in the simple past tense.
Hence, to find the correct solution let us look at the options given to us –
>Was found – is in past tense but it is an inappropriate usage and hence cannot be used here in the sentence given above.
>Have been found – is in present perfect continuous tense, this also cannot be used here because it indicates that action had started somewhere in the past and it may or may not have ended or completed.
>Were found – is in simple past tense and indicates that an action has already happened or is completed. Hence, this fulfils the required conditions to be the correct solution.
>Has been found – is in past perfect continuous tense, this cannot be used here because it is used to indicate an action in the past that began before a certain point in the past and has continued up until that time.

So, you can clearly see in the above-explained options that the correct one would be option – ‘c’, i.e. were found.

 Note: If you are familiar with the tense of the sentence it would be easier for you to narrow down your answers to those options that are in the past tense. After that, you can eliminate the ones that do not fulfil the requirement (even if they are in the past tense) to be the correct solutions for the blank in the question.