Verb tense questions on the SAT primarily assess your ability to:
Once again, context plays a primary role in ensuring you have chosen the correct tense (past, present, future, etc.). As always, read the entire sentence in which the verb is found. But if you still feel uncertain, you may need to zoom out and read backward or forward 1-2 sentences more to ensure you have thoroughly understood what verb “time” is appropriate.
Virologist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett played a major role in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. Working at the National Institutes of Health, she led a team researching coronavirus spike proteins. Since 2020, Corbett ______ a leading voice in public health communication.
A. becomes
B. had become
C. has become
D. becoming
In evaluating verb tense, we are often helped by one particular structural marker. In this case, that marker is “since”. “Since” is one of the few words available in English to indicate that something happened in the past but has continued to happen until the present. With that kind of continuation from past to present, English demands that we use the present perfect tense, which uses “has” (singular) or “have” (plural). Therefore, “has become” is best; the answer is C.
While we can rule out “becoming” quickly because that “-ing” form cannot be the main verb we’re looking for, the other two choices can be tempting. We might like “becomes” because it’s clear that Corbett is currently a leading figure in public health communication, but that choice ignores the “since 2020” aspect: this started in the past!
Meanwhile, “had become” is in what’s called the pluperfect tense, which goes too far back in time (two steps backward into the past) to make sense here.
1. Understand the tense spectrum.
| Simple present | I eat cupcakes. |
| Present continuous | I am eating cupcakes. |
| Simple past | Yesterday, I ate cupcakes. |
| Past continuous | Yesterday, I was eating cupcakes when the doorbell rang. |
| Present perfect | I have eaten cupcakes regularly since 2011. |
| Present perfect continuous | I have been eating cupcakes regularly since 2011. |
| Past perfect | I had eaten cupcakes before I went swimming. Bad idea. |
| Past perfect continuous | I had been eating cupcakes while on lifeguard duty. Oops. |
| Future perfect | I will have eaten hundreds of cupcakes by my 20th birthday. |
| Simple future | I will eat a cupcake for dinner. |
| Future continuous | I will be eating cupcakes all my life. |
| Future perfect continuous | I will have been eating cupcakes for over a decade by age 20. |
| Conditional | I would eat cupcakes for all three meals a day if I could. |
| Gerund | I sure do like eating cupcakes. |
| Present Participle | I saw a happy girl eating cupcakes. |
2. Look for cues like “yesterday,” “before,” “since,” or “next year.”
Notice how the complicated form “will have been completed” works here because the marker “by the time” puts the event in the future; the “have been” part adds a past completion aspect. It’s as if we stand at a particular point in the future and look backward from there to see what has taken place.
3. Be consistent with conditional language (e.g., “could” and “would”).
The central question on many verb tense questions will be, “Past versus present?” Less commonly, you will encounter uses of the “perfect” family of verbs: present perfect e.g., (“has/have loved”), pluperfect (e.g. “had loved”) and future perfect (e.g., “will have loved”). The Approach question demonstrates an example where present perfect is needed, and you will a case of the pluperfect in the examples below.
Answer this: What does the letter E in the QUICKER method stand for?
EXAMINE your preferred answer to the end.
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, an ecologist known for her work in forest canopies, uses climbing gear to access treetop ecosystems. She shares her findings through public talks and educational programs. Today, Nadkarni ______ students across the country by connecting science to everyday life.
A. inspires
B. inspired
C. inspiring
D. was inspiring
The answer is A. Sometimes the marker of tense is very clear, as in the case of the sentence with the “blank” starting with “Today …” It’s hard to find a clearer marker of the present tense than that! Notice that the rest of the passage is in the present tense as well, another confirmation. The only wrong answer choice not clearly in the past is “inspiring”, which can work as the main verb we need for the sentence.
Dr. Jane Cooke Wright was a trailblazer in cancer treatment research. In the 1950s, she experimented with how chemotherapy drugs affected individual patients. Using this approach, she ______ the foundation for what is now known as precision medicine.
A. laid
B. lays
C. laying
D. has laid
The answer is A. Seeing that the answer choices pertain to the verb “lay/laid” may make the student nervous, as there is often confusion between this verb and “lie/lay”. Fortunately, that difference doesn’t play into this question, as all four choices, as usual, are forms of the same verb. As the choices are laid out, it is a straightforward process to distinguish past from present.
So do we need past or present, or perhaps the present perfect “has laid”? (We can rule out “laying” for the same reason seen before in this lesson.) Context tells us: the first two sentences give us the past tense words “was” and “experimented”. There are no words or phrases suggesting that the tense is changing as the passage moves to the last sentence. The past tense “laid” matches well.
In the early 2000s, linguist Dr. Jessie Little Doe Baird worked to revive the Wôpanâak language, which had not been spoken fluently for over a century. She and her team used historical documents and oral traditions. Eventually, they ______ a dictionary and began teaching the language in schools.
A. are completing
B. completed
C. were completing
D. complete
The answer is B. The key marker here is “eventually”. The word suggests that something finally happened (or happens, or will happen) after a long wait. The problem is that “eventually”, by itself, doesn’t tell us what tense we are dealing with. We have to use the rest of the passage to help us. The early sentences consistently use the past tense, so “completed” works best, since there is no suggestion that the tense changes in the last sentence.
After studying climate trends in the Himalayas, environmental scientist Dr. Arunima Singh published a report on glacier loss. Her research highlighted how melting ice affects water access for millions. By the time the international summit convened, Singh ______ several key policy recommendations.
A. had drafted
B. has drafted
C. drafted
D. drafts
The answer is A. The sentence in which the “blank” is found begins with “By the time …” The idea is that when something happens, something else had already happened. If the first event was already in the past, then the second event, which had already happened, is two steps into the past. This calls for the pluperfect tense with “had”.
This question is difficult: “drafted” is included among the choices and will probably sound right here to many students. But when there are two events that are clearly happening sequentially (first she makes the recommendations, then the summit convenes), we need to be able to distinguish between those tenses. We have “had drafted” to accomplish that distinction.
Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar has focused her research on Black women’s lives in early America. In her book about Ona Judge, an enslaved woman who escaped George Washington’s household, Dunbar ______ a compelling portrait of resistance and freedom. The book helps shift how readers understand the agency of enslaved people.
A. was painting
B. had painted
C. painting
D. paints
The answer is D. The reason this question is given last is that it uses something called the “literary present tense.” This tense occurs with description of an author’s work in his/her book, even when that book has already been written. Although it wouldn’t be wrong to say, “Dunbar painted a compelling portrait …” "paints works better here because the passage uses the present tense in the last sentence, as well as the present perfect “has focused,” which suggests that the present tense is to follow.
This explanation may not fully justify the use of “paints”, but keep in mind that the choice of “painted” is not included in the choices. That makes the decision that much easier!
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