Alice was (0) beginning to get very tired of (1) __________ (sit) by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had (2) __________ (peep) into the book her sister was reading, but it (3) __________ (have) no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," (4) __________ (think) Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" Alice wondered whether the pleasure of (5) __________ (make) a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes (6) __________ (run) close by her. Alice did not think this was very remarkable, until the Rabbit actually (7) __________ (take) a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and (8) __________ (look) at it, and then hurried on.

(1) sitting (2) peeped (3) had (4) thought (5) making (6) ran (7) took (8) looked

HOW THE 4 MARKS ARE AWARDED: half a mark per blank, eight blanks, no partial credit within a blank.

The narrative is in the SIMPLE PAST, but three blanks are governed by what they FOLLOW rather than by tense: (1) sitting — after the preposition OF, a verb takes the -ing form. "Tired OF SITTING", "tired of waiting". Note that the same construction recurs later in the sentence: "of having nothing to do". (5) making — again after OF: "the pleasure OF MAKING a daisy-chain". (4) thought — simple past, but note the INVERTED order: "thought Alice" rather than "Alice thought". Inversion is normal after direct speech and does not change the verb form.

The rest are simple past, and three are irregular: HAD (have), RAN (run), TOOK (take). Learn the irregular forms as a set — they appear in this question every single year.

THE RULE TO CARRY AWAY: before writing a tense, check whether the blank follows a PREPOSITION (of, by, before, after, without). If it does, the answer is the -ing form regardless of the narrative tense.