The following sentence has been divided into parts. One of them may contain an error. Select the part that contains the error from the given options. If you don't find any error, mark 'No error' as your answer.
The receptionist asked if Diya / will take a seat and / wait for the boss to call her in.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The correct answer is option 3 i.e. will take a seat and.
Error concept: Reported speech and tense consistency.
What is wrong: “will take” is incorrect to use.
Grammatical concept: In reported speech with a past reporting verb, the future tense “will” usually changes to “would”.
Incorrectness of the concept in context: Using “will” directly after “asked” sounds wrong in reported speech. “Will take” should change to “would take” after a past reporting verb (“asked”).
How to correct: Change “will take” to “would take”.
Correct phrase: would take a seat
Final sentence: The receptionist asked if Diya would take a seat and wait for the boss to call her in.