Question

Choose the correct passive form of past tense from the options given below :
Fifty one trees ____ on the school campus last year.
a. Were planted
b. Were plant
c. Was planted
d. Planted

Answer 1

Hint: To make a passive form of past tense, we use was/were with the past participle of the verb.

Complete step by step solution:
In the given question, we need to fill up the blank with the correct passive form of past tense. The simple past passive tense expresses discrete, completed, noncontinuous actions or events in the past while moving an object from an active sentence into the subject position. It is an English verb form that refers to verbs in the past tense, simple aspect, indicative mood, and passive voice. Verbs in the simple past passive are formed by the past tense form of the verb, which includes a past participle.
Now, let us examine the options and find out the correct answer. Option 'a' is, were planted, which has a plural form "were" for the trees(which is also plural) and "planted", which is in the past tense. "Were planted" is simply in a passive voice.
Option 'b' is, were plant, which has "were" for the trees(plural), but not a past tense of "plant", which is necessary for this sentence.
Option 'c' is, was planted. It cannot be used in the given sentence as the sentence is talking about "trees" which is in plural form, and "was" is not used with anything plural.
Option 'd' is planted. This cannot be the answer of the given question because we are asked to find the correct form of "past passive", which should have a "was/were" in it.
Hence, the correct answer is, option 'a', were planted.

The complete sentence would be: Fifty-one trees were planted on the school campus last year.

Note: Only transitive verbs and verbs with verb phrase complements may be conjugated into the passive voice.