Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

1. With her publication record and her fluency in three languages, Dr. Aydın ---- the international research grant without much difficulty, but she chose to remain in the private sector and never even applied.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

2. Although the expedition had been pinned down by the blizzard for almost two days, the rescue helicopter ---- the base camp shortly before nightfall on Thursday.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

3. The seismic network has recorded unusual tremors beneath the caldera, and volcanologists warn that the mountain ---- at some point within the next decade, though nothing is certain yet.

Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

4. By the time the additional funding was finally approved, the laboratory ---- for more than two years on a grant that had originally been intended to cover only six months.

Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

5. By the time the orbiting telescope becomes fully operational at the end of this decade, the engineering team ---- more than fifteen years to the design and calibration of its primary mirror.

Future Tenses

6. By the time the new desalination plant becomes fully operational in 2040, the region ____ nearly a third of the groundwater reserves it had at the beginning of the century.

Past Simple Tense & Past Continuous Tense

7. As soon as the preliminary results of the trial were announced, the share price of the biotechnology firm ---- sharply, surprising even the most cautious analysts on the exchange.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

8. Before digital archives became widely available, doctoral students ---- to distant libraries and copy rare manuscripts by hand, a process that could easily consume an entire summer.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

9. If the research team wants its grant to be renewed for a second term, it ---- the interim report before Friday; the funding body is notorious for rejecting late submissions without any further correspondence.

Types of Pronouns

10. The reading habits of adolescents who have grown up with smartphones differ in almost every measurable respect from ---- of the generation that reached adulthood before the internet became widely available.

Types of Pronouns

11. Unlike the earlier prototype, which had to be recharged every two hours, the device now being tested by the engineering team stores most of ---- operating energy in a graphene capacitor.

Types of Pronouns

12. During the first year of the joint project the two laboratories were extremely reluctant to share unpublished data with ----, since each of them feared that the other would claim priority for the discovery.

Future Tenses

13. I am afraid I cannot attend the departmental meeting on Friday afternoon; I ____ a group of visiting researchers around the new laboratory, and the timetable was fixed weeks ago.

Simple Present & Present Continuous Tense

14. Whenever he prepares a béarnaise for the tasting menu, the chef ---- the sauce at least four times, since he insists that it ---- unpleasantly sharp if the vinegar goes into the pan too early.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

15. Since the space telescope began operating in 2022, astronomers ---- observe galaxies that formed less than three hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Past Simple Tense & Past Continuous Tense

16. Until the theory of plate tectonics gained acceptance in the 1960s, most geologists ---- that the continents had always occupied their present positions.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

17. The fossil's teeth show no trace of wear and its limb bones are unusually slender, and since that combination occurs at no other stage of growth, the only possible conclusion is that the animal ---- a juvenile when it died.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

18. The lights in the observatory dome have been burning since dawn and all three vehicles are still parked outside, which can only mean that the team ---- still analysing the data from last night's session.

Past Simple Tense & Past Continuous Tense

19. The research team ---- the final set of soil samples when a sudden thunderstorm forced them to abandon the site halfway through the process.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

20. The dispatches were being delivered to an abandoned consulate throughout that autumn, so the ambassador ---- what his government had decided; not a single one of the papers ever reached his desk.