Question

Read the given situation and make a meaningful sentence from the words given in the bracket:
I invited Rachel to the party but she couldn't come.
(she / arrange / to do something else) _________________.
(a) She had arranged to do something else.
(b) She has arranged to do something else.
(c) She arranged to do something else.
(d) She has been arranging something else.

Answer 1

Hint: Read the sentence and try to guess what it is trying to convey. Now go through the given options and recall what they mean. Choose the one which helps in expressing the context of the given sentence as happened in the past.

Complete answer: We use the past perfect tense to indicate an action taking place before or after another action in the past itself. Past perfect tense helps in identifying which action took place first.
In the context of the given question, we know that X invited Rachel to the party but she couldn’t come. Here, we can see the use of ‘invited’ which suggests that the action took place in the past.
We have used past perfect tense to indicate that Rachel had already planned something else before X invited her to the party.
Now, let’s look at the given options-
(a) She had arranged to do something else- It is the correct option because it is given in the past perfect tense.
(b) She has arranged to do something else- It is an incorrect option because we cannot use the present perfect tense to indicate a past action.
(c) She arranged to do something else- It is an incorrect option because the action performed by Rachel took place before the action of inviting her to the party.
(d) She has been arranging something else- It is an incorrect option because we cannot use the present perfect continuous tense to indicate a past action.

Hence, the correct answer is Option ‘a’.

Note: The structure of the past perfect tense is; Subject + had + third form of the verb/ past participle + object. For example- When he came home, I had completed the chores.