Question

) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded and died from grief, and the earth stiff and cold. Read the passage. Look at the underlined section marked number (15). There may be a mistake in the way the sentence is written. If you find a mistake, choose the answer that corrects the mistake. If there is no mistake, choose ‘Correct as is.’ A) Correct as is. B) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded and died from grief, and the earth grew stiff and cold. C) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded and died from grief, and the earth was growing stiff and cold. D) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves were falling from the sorrowing trees, the flowers were fading and died from grief, and the earth grew stiff and cold.

Answer 1

the answer is B) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded and died from grief, and the earth grew stiff and cold.

Answer 2

The correct answer that corrects the mistake found in the sentence presented is B) Then all the gods wept, the summer breeze wailed, the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded and died from grief, and the earth grew stiff and cold.

The sentence narrates a series of events that happened all together, in a sequence. The last event numbered "and the earth stiff and cold" (in the original) is incomplete because a verb is missing after the word "earth". All of the other verbs in the sentence are in the Simple Past ("wept", "wailed", "fell", "faded" and "died"), so, the missing verb would have to be in Simple Past too. Therefore, the option that best corrects the sentence, by adding a verb in its Simple Past tense where it was missing, is option B.

Answer A couldn't be correct because the sentence is not correct as is, a verb is missing at the end. Answer C couldn't be correct because the verb added "was growing" is in Past Continuous tense, not following the pattern established by the other verbs in the sentence and breaking their sequence. Answer D couldn't be correct because it changes the verbs in "the leaves fell from the sorrowing trees, the flowers faded (...)" from Simple Past to Past Continuous tense, without changing the other ones and adding the missing verb in its Simple Past tense too, which creates disagreement between verbal tenses' use.