Look at the underlined part of each sentence. Below each sentence are given three possible substitutions for the underlined part. If one of them (a), (b) or (c) is better than the underlined part, indicate your response on the Answer Sheet against the corresponding letter. If none of the substitutions improves the sentence, indicate (d) as your response on the Answer Sheet.
By 8.00 in the morning he wrote four letters to his friends.
- Ahad written
- Bhad been writing
- Cwas writing
- DNo improvement
Explanation
The time expression 'By 8.00 in the morning' marks a deadline in the past, which requires the past perfect tense for a completed action: 'he had written four letters'. The simple past 'wrote' cannot pair with 'by' in this past-deadline sense. The progressive options (b) and (c) are unsuited to the completed count of four letters. Hence option (a) is correct.