An issue that can sometimes be confusing in Reading A is deciding which tense to use when the answers are verbs. This is important, because as grammar is marked even if your verb choice is correct, using the wrong tense will mean you get zero marks for that question. As a general rule, the tense of your answer should be the same as the tense of the verbs around it – if these are present tense, use present tense, and so on. Let’s look at an example:

Text: “Of the injuries requiring operation, 29.8% were to the elbow”

Question: “Of the injuries recorded, more than half were sprains and strains, and elbow injuries accounted for 29.8% of those that …(question)…

Of course, the words in the text that we want are “requiring surgery”, but grammatically this does not fit into the question. We need to change the form of the word “requiring”. Note that the other verbs in this question, “recorded”, “were”, and “accounted” are all past tense. This means that our verb form of “require” should also be past tense. The answer is therefore “required operation“. This is just one quick example of how to use this trick when needing to decide on tense choice.