Once upon a time, in the days when genies and giants (0) roamed the land, there (1) __________ (live) a farmer (2) __________ (name) Baba Ayub. He lived with his family in a little village by the name of Maidan Sabz. Because he had a large family to feed, Baba Ayub (3) __________ (see) his days (4) __________ (consume) by hard work. Every day, he (5) __________ (labour) from dawn to sundown, (6) __________ (plough) his field and (7) __________ (turn) the soil and (8) __________ (tend) to his meagre pistachio trees.

(1) lived (2) named (3) saw (4) consumed (5) laboured (6) plowing (ploughing) (7) turning (8) tending

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

The worked example gives "(0) roamed", so the passage is in the SIMPLE PAST. But only four of the eight blanks are simple past — the rest are governed by what they FOLLOW: (1) lived — simple past. Note the inverted word order "there lived a farmer", which is normal in a fairy-tale opening and does not change the verb. (2) named — a past participle used as an adjective: "a farmer NAMED Baba Ayub" is short for "a farmer WHO WAS named". Writing "naming" would reverse the sense, making the farmer do the naming. (3) saw — simple past, irregular. (4) consumed — another past participle: "he saw his days CONSUMED by hard work". The days were consumed; they did not consume. (5) laboured — simple past. (6), (7), (8) plowing, turning, tending — PRESENT PARTICIPLES describing actions going on at the same time as the main verb "laboured". He laboured from dawn to sundown, ploughing, turning and tending. All three must take the same form, because items in a list must be parallel.

THE LESSON: the last three blanks stand or fall together. If you can see that they belong to one list, you get all three or none.