Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

1. No sooner ---- their preliminary assessment of the fault line than the provincial authorities ordered the evacuation of three nearby villages.

Past Simple Tense & Past Continuous Tense

2. At the exact moment when the tsunami warning finally ---- the coastal resorts, hundreds of tourists ---- on beaches that would be under water within the hour.

Future Tenses

3. - The projector in the seminar room has stopped working again, and the guest lecture is due to start in ten minutes.
- Don't panic. I ____ the technical office right now and ask them to send someone up immediately.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

4. 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.

Future Tenses

5. - Why have you brought all those printed charts and satellite images with you today?
- Because I ____ the committee how dramatically the coastline has retreated since 2010.

Past Simple Tense & Past Continuous Tense

6. As the delegates were making their way into the conference hall, a power failure ---- the entire building into darkness for almost twenty minutes.

Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

7. 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

8. The ethics board will not authorise the second phase of the clinical trial until the independent review panel ---- its evaluation of the preliminary safety data.

Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

9. By the time the ministry announced its new emission targets last spring, a number of large manufacturers ---- their own carbon-reduction programmes without waiting for any legal obligation.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

10. 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.

Present Perfect Tense & Present Perfect Continuous Tense

11. Professor Demirsoy ---- the current director of the institute since the two of them were graduate students in Vienna, which is why her recommendation carries so much weight in the department.

Types of Pronouns

12. The geologist ---- team first mapped the fault line running beneath the eastern districts of the city has since been asked to advise the national earthquake commission.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

13. The committee's decision to release the preliminary findings without independent replication now looks reckless: the results ---- by a second laboratory long before any public announcement was made.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

14. Since the journal moved to an entirely digital submission system, contributors ---- printed copies of their manuscripts; nothing in the guidelines forbids or even discourages the practice, and a number of senior scholars still post them out of sheer habit.

Types of Pronouns

15. The 1783 eruption of Laki, ---- released enough sulphur dioxide to disrupt harvests across northern Europe for two consecutive seasons, is still used to calibrate volcanic forcing in climate models.

Modals Verbs of Obligation, Necessity & Prohibition

16. Because her supervisor had already obtained ethical approval covering the whole project, Deniz ---- a separate application for her own sub-study, which spared her several weeks of tedious paperwork.

Types of Pronouns

17. Most of the referees found ---- hard to believe that a study based on only twelve participants could justify so sweeping a generalisation about the limits of human memory.

Modals Verbs of Ability & Possibility

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

Types of Pronouns

19. The dean was so dissatisfied with the wording of the final paragraph that she rewrote it ---- instead of returning the whole document to the drafting committee for a third time.

Tense Agreement in Time Clauses

20. 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.