The correct answers are: I was to have inherited the haunted mansion, but my uncle changed his will at the last minute. I was going to haunt the new owners, but I got distracted by a shiny mirror in the hallway. I would have had to vacate the premises eventually anyway, since the house was scheduled for demolition.
"Was to have inherited" is an advanced structure used to describe a formal arrangement in the past that was not fulfilled.
"Was going to haunt" correctly expresses a past intention that didn't happen.
"Would have had to" correctly uses a past modal to describe a hypothetical future obligation from a past perspective.
"Was on the point to leave" is incorrect; the phrase requires a gerund (was on the point of leaving).
"Should be haunting... yesterday" is incorrect; past unfulfilled obligations require should have been haunting.
Future tense
English doesn't have a single dedicated future tense — it has multiple ways to talk about future time. The most common are will + bare infinitive (I'll call you), be going to + infinitive (I'm going to study), the present continuous for arrangements (I'm meeting Sam at six), and the present simple for fixed schedules (The train leaves at 8).
The choice between them isn't free — each carries a different shade of meaning. Will often signals spontaneous decisions or pure prediction; going to signals intentions formed earlier or evidence-based predictions. Picking the right form is one of the trickiest distinctions for B1+ learners.
Past tense
The past tense is how English talks about events finished before now. It comes in four flavours: simple past (I walked) for completed events, past progressive (I was walking) for actions ongoing at a past time, past perfect (I had walked) for events before another past event, and past perfect progressive (I had been walking) for ongoing events leading up to a past point.
Choosing the right one is what makes past narratives clear instead of murky. When I arrived, she ate dinner is technically grammatical but means something different than had eaten (already done) or was eating (in progress when you arrived).
Modal verb
A modal verb is a special class of auxiliary — can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would — that adds shades of meaning around possibility, ability, permission, obligation, or speculation. I can swim (ability), You should rest (advice), It might rain (possibility), You must leave (obligation).
Modals are grammatically peculiar: no -s in the third person (she can, not she cans), no infinitive, no participle, followed by the bare verb (I can swim, never I can to swim). Mastering them is the move from describing facts to expressing how you feel about them — likelihood, necessity, recommendation.
Infinitive
The infinitive is the basic, unmarked form of a verb, used when no tense or subject agreement is needed. English has two flavours: the to-infinitive (to swim, to read) and the bare infinitive (swim, read). The to-infinitive follows verbs like want, decide, hope, plan (I want to swim); the bare infinitive follows modal verbs (I can swim) and certain causative verbs (Let him go).
Knowing which form to use after which verb is one of the trickiest distinctions in English — closely tied to the parallel choice of gerund (-ing form). I want to swim but I enjoy swimming aren't interchangeable.
Gerund
A gerund is the -ing form of a verb used as a noun — swimming, reading, being late. It can sit in any position a noun can: as the subject (Swimming is fun), as the object of a verb (I enjoy swimming), or as the complement of a preposition (She's good at swimming).
Gerunds matter because dozens of common English verbs and almost every preposition force you into the -ing form. Pick the wrong shape — I enjoy to swim, good at to swim — and the sentence sounds clearly off to a native speaker. Knowing which contexts demand a gerund (vs. an infinitive) is what makes verb patterns click.
C1 | Advanced
C1 is the advanced level in the CEFR framework, sitting between B2 and C2. At C1 you stop translating in your head and start thinking in English — handling specialised articles outside your field, picking up implicit meaning, and writing structured arguments on complex topics.
Grammatically, C1 means natural use of inversion (Rarely have I seen…), mixed and advanced conditionals, subjunctive forms in formal contexts, and cleft sentences for emphasis. Most university programmes for non-native speakers and many professional certifications set C1 as their entry standard.
Difficulty: Hard
The Hard difficulty tag marks questions and challenges aimed at upper-intermediate to advanced learners — typically B2 and above. Expect interacting rules, edge cases, distractors that look right at first glance, and contexts where the surface meaning and the grammatical answer don't match.
Filter by Hard when you're past the basics and want material that genuinely tests your understanding. These questions catch the gaps your textbook didn't — register-sensitive choices, exception cases, mixed conditionals, the difference between would have been and had been.