Question

The court asked the Advocate General what ______ at the time.

• A. were the authorities doing
• B. are the authorities doing
• C. the authorities were doing
• D. the authorities are doing

Answer 1

Answer:

C. the authorities were doing

• Reported speech: The sentence reports a question asked by the court.

• Past tense: The reporting verb asked is in the simple past tense. Therefore, the present continuous tense in direct speech usually changes to the past continuous tense in reported speech.

• Word order: An indirect question follows the normal subject–verb order, not the question order.