Since the community garden opened in March, volunteers ______ more than four hundred hours of work.

Vocabulary and Grammar in Context · ELPAC Grades 6–8 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.

Extra practice, not a separate task on the real test: a sentence with one word missing, testing the vocabulary and grammar the passages assume.

The question

Read the sentence. Choose the word that best completes it.

Since the community garden opened in March, volunteers ______ more than four hundred hours of work.

• Acontribute
• Bcontributed
• Chave contributedCorrect answer

Why “have contributed” is correct

This tests the present perfect, which is one of the hardest tenses for English learners because many languages handle it with a simple past. The word 'since' marks an action that started at a point in the past and is still running, and English requires 'have contributed' for that. Point out to a student that 'since' plus a starting point is a near-automatic signal for 'has' or 'have' plus a past participle.

Why the other answers are wrong

• contribute — 'Contribute' is simple present and describes a habit or a general truth; it cannot carry the stretch of time from March until now.
• contributed — 'Contributed' is the most common error here because it is past and the garden opened in the past, but simple past closes the action off, while 'since' says the hours are still adding up.

Practice more of this

More reading practice for Grades 6–8, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 6–8. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.