Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate words.
Tom _____________mathematics. He ___________ it at school.
a) Like/ study
b) Likes/ studies
c) Likes/ studying
d) To like/ studies

Answer 1

Hint: A verb is used to express an occurrence, action, or state. It is the grammatical center of the predicate in a sentence. In the above question, we need the third – person singular present an indicative form of the words in both the blanks.

Complete answer:
A verb is used to express an occurrence, action, or state. It is the grammatical center of the predicate in a sentence. Whereas, an auxiliary verb is a verb which is used in the formation of tenses, moods, tones, etc.
Now, to complete the above sentence we need the third–person singular present indicative form of the words (verbs) in both the blanks.
So, let us look into the options that we have and see which of the option fits correctly in the blanks to complete the sentence.
Option (a) – like/ study – like is the infinitive form of a verb and so is the word study. Since we need a third-person form this is an incorrect solution.
Option (b) – likes/ studies – likes is the third–person singular present indicative form of a verb and so is the word studies. Therefore, this is the correct solution.
Option (c) – likes/ studying – likes are the third – person singular present indicative form of verb and studying is the present participle form. Hence, this is not the correct solution.
Option (d) – to like/ studies – is used as like is used mostly and studies is the third – person singular present indicative form of the verb. Hence, this is incorrect.
Therefore, as we can see that as per the explanation the correct solution is option (b) i.e. ‘likes/ studies. This completes the sentence as – “Tom likes mathematics. He studies it at school”.

Note:
 Like and to like are mostly used in the same meaning and they express the fact that you enjoy something. Also, like is the infinitive form of a verb (not needed here).