[Video] Q6: Were or will be or have been or was

Explanation for Question 6 From the Writing Section on the 2018 April Sat

Hey guys. So question six is dealing with both tents, 2 uh, as in present versus past tense and plurality. 3 So we see here, as he says, leading a team to determine the capital's 4 boundaries were major, Andrew Ellicott, 5 a well-known lamp, surveyor who needed a capable assistant. 6 So what this is telling us here is that, 7 um, this person major Andrew Ellicott was leading a team to determine the capitalist 8 boundaries. The first thing we think is this happening in the present tense, 9 the past tense or the future tense we know based on the rest of 10 this passage, this is talking about the past tense. 11 Just go back like sentence to, for example, federal legislators met in eight different 12 Northern cities before they decided that this is all past tense, 13 because it's telling us about things that happened to historical article, 14 which we can figure out just by looking at other sentences. 15 So it's not will be, 16 and it's not. Um, so yeah, 17 it's not, it's not will be, um, 18 and we can get rid of that answer choice right away. 19 Now we have to figure out, are we talking about a plural or a 20 singular item? So who is leading the team? 21 Was it multiple people we could, if it was, 22 we should say were, as they were versus he was, 23 was the singular singular tense of it. 24 So looking at this, it says leading the team to determine the capital's boundaries 25 is a singular person, major Andrew Ellicott. 26 So can be confident in was, um, 27 and have been again, that would be for multiple people. 28 Like they have been doing this. They have been. 29 So that would be for a group of people in the past tense to 30 have been doing something repeated. Now the fact that this is just plural and 31 a is plural as well means that we think be confident, 32 those are wrong. And.