Tell the time by him because he always finished work...

[Iza]

hi Alan !!

Can you explain the meaning of this sentence please?

Test No. incompl/elem-5 "Finish/End", question 8

You could tell the time by him because he always ......... work at exactly the same time every day.

(a) ends
(b) ended
(c) finish
(d) finished

Test No. incompl/elem-5 "Finish/End", answer 8

You could tell the time by him because he always finished work at exactly the same time every day.

Correct answer: (d) finished

Thank you in advance Iza

[Alan]

Hi,

This means that you knew exactly what the time was because he stopped work at the same time every day - in other words when you saw him stop work then you knew it must be for example 5.30.

Alan
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[Iza]

Thank You very much Alan .

[TAVO]

Ok, that's a good explanation but why you didn't choose ends because as the sentence let us know; the activity is a normally one that the person does, so simple present is used for this kind of particular activities. Could you explain that, please

[Rich7]

It might be because of the fact that in this sentece the modal auxiliary verb "could" is used thus indicating past tense.

[thuytienhana]

Dear Alan,

Why it isn't ends?

[A]

This sentence has two words that are context clues. These are "always" and "every day". So this sentence is in simple present tense.

[Niveen]

Dear Alin:

I'm new in this forum and this is the first question I ask becuause I was confused when correct answer was finished! "he always" in the present , so, why did we choose "finished" which is a verb in the past...?

Thanx in advance, wish you a nice day..

Niveen

[Yankee]

Hi everybody

Yes, the word 'always' is very often found in a present tense sentence. But it can also be used with other tenses.

As Rich7 mentioned, the word 'could' is also the past tense of 'can'.

For example, maybe we're talking about someone who worked in our company in the past. He retired last year, so he's not here (in the company) now. In that case, you can talk about what he always did every day when he worked here. And that would all be in the past.

Does that help?
Amy

[Niveen]

Dear Amy:

your answer is very helpful, I'm now convinced, Thank You....
All the Best,
Niveen.

[Aurora]

Hi Torsten and the all forum mates,

I did the test and I got 6 right out of 10. I couldn't understand the rule for number 8. It is past simple withouth specific point in time, rsrs, why?

Once again the lessons are very useful because we keep learning without going to school.

See you,

Aurora

[Torsten]

Hi Aurora,

Many thanks for your positive feedback. It's good to hear you find our materials useful. As for your question, please click here to get more information.

Best regards,
Torsten
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Aurora]

[Kzie]

Hi all, I too have a question.

The word "could" doesn't neccessarily indicate events in past, is that right? I often found in conversations with native speakers that it rather indicated the probability of something. That is "could" could be used in a situation that contains some uncertainty, and "can" expresses a higher probability of the event.

[Trampham]

Hi everybody,
I have the same question as that of Kzie. Is there anyone can explain it for us? How to recognize when "could" refer to probability or the past tense form of "can"?