English 2022 JAMB Past Questions - Question 24: During the surgery, the doctor real­ised that the patient’s legs

Correct Answer

C

Explanation

The sentence is correct as:
During the surgery', the doctor real­ised that the patient’s legs had long decaved. The sentence first needs to be seen as a direct statement that is later changed into indirect statement. As direct statement, it is: “the pa­tient’s legs have long decayed,” the doctor realized. Present tense verb in the direct speech changes to past tense in the indirect speech, and present perfect tense also changes to past perfect. Thus, ‘have (long) de­cayed' in the direct speech changes to ‘had (long) decayed’ in the indi­ rect speech. Another way of looking at it is that there are two past actions in the sentence ‘During the surgery, the doctor realised that the patient’s legs had long decayed’. The action of the leg decaying happened much earlier, so it takes the past perfect tense, ‘had decayed’. The action of the doctor realizing this takes hap­pened after that, so it takes the past tense ‘realised’.