Choosing a Past Participle in a Complete the Words Item
A 'Complete the Words' practice paragraph reads: 'Rooftop beekeeping has g____ rapidly since 2015, but colony numbers have not kept p____. Inspectors find many hives empty because new keepers q____ after one season. The city now requires a workshop before a permit is i____.' Only the first letter of each missing word is shown; dash count is not a reliable length clue. A student answers grown, pace, quit, issued. The class debates whether 'grown' and 'pace' are both safe, and whether 'quit' should be 'quitting' to match the -ing form elsewhere.
1. Is 'grown' a defensible completion for g____? Explain the grammatical and collocational evidence.
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Yes. The auxiliary 'has' requires a past participle, and 'grown' is the only common g-initial participle that fits an intransitive rise. 'Has gained rapidly' would normally need an object, and 'gone rapidly' changes the meaning. 'Grown rapidly' also collocates with a trend over time ('since 2015'). The answer is defensible on both syntax and collocation.
2. A classmate argues that p____ must be 'pace' because 'keep pace' is an idiom, but another says 'kept pace' needs 'with.' Decide which argument is stronger.
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'Pace' is correct. 'Keep pace' can stand alone with the sense 'advance at the same rate'; the comparison is supplied by the preceding clause ('colony numbers have not kept pace'). Adding 'with colony numbers' would be more explicit but is not required. The first-letter constraint rules out the other idiom, 'kept up' (u), and 'kept p____' has no competing p-word that fits. The claim that 'with' is obligatory is too strong.
3. Should the third blank be 'quit' or 'quitting'? What does this choice reveal about how Complete the Words items test syntax?
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'Quit' is correct. The clause 'because new keepers ____ after one season' needs a finite verb; 'quitting' would leave the clause without an auxiliary, producing a fragment or participle phrase. The nearby '-ing' form in 'Inspectors find many hives empty' is not a pattern to copy. Complete the Words items test the syntax of the blank's own clause, not surface repetition of a nearby ending.