GIVE ANSWERS - English

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”After the students had taken the test, they immediately had to know the correct answers.” (Correct?)

Hi, I wrote the sentence from the title (After the students had taken the test, they immediately had to know the correct answers.) as part of a gap filling exercise, where "had" was one of the gaps. My English teacher thinks that "had" is not quite correct, however I disagree with him, as I would say it portrays not a necessity, but the fact that as a student, after an exam, almost everyone goes around and asks their friends what they put, and so on.

PS: Uncover free English lessons: Free module: Trinidad and Tobago Timeline — CONJUNCTIONS → Contrast — Phrasal Verbs and their Equivalent — Quantifiers

GIVE ANSWERS

AussieInBg profile picture AussieInBgDecember 2021
Are you learning British English or American English? Is your teacher a native English speaker?

In British English, it would usually be:

”After the students had taken the test, they immediately had to know the correct answers.”

and is perfectly fine. The logic is that the need to know the correct answers at that point in the past is a result of an action at an even earlier point in the past - taking the test.

Americans would tend to use:

”After the students took the test, they immediately had to know the correct answers.”

The logic which functions in this case is that the two events are more important because they are sequential rather than having a relationship (such as being causal) with one another.

Many gap-fill exercises have answer keys that are appropriate for either the British or American English speaker who wrote the exercise....