<p>Before he sprained his back, Morgan [spends] [much of] his leisure time [engaged in] outdoor sports, [particularly] hiking and canoeing.
i chose [spends] at first, but then as i read on, i feel like [engaged in] sounds awkward and wrong. Shouldn’t it be “engaging in” instead of engaed in?</p>
<p>You were right the first time. The action happened in the past. He spent his time…Similarly, he no longer hikes or canoes. He was engaged in those activities in the past. Also, the ‘ing’ verbal forms act as nouns and adjectives. “Engaged’ in this sentence acts as an adverb, thus the infinitive form is required. Infinitives don’t take an ‘ing’ ending. Of course, one might also argue that ‘engaged’ is a past participle modifying 'Morgan”. But since a past participle usually ends in ‘ed’, the result is the same. "Engaged’ is called for either way.</p>
<p>^ thank you!
btw, what is infinitive form?</p>
<p>engaded is correct, past tense, but spends is not, it is SPENT.</p>
<p>Before he sprained his back, Morgan [spends] [much of] his leisure time [engaged in] outdoor sports, [particularly] hiking and canoeing.</p>
<p>The adverbs “before” and “much of” indicate an action that took place on a regular basis in the past. Therefore the best choice for verb form is the past perfect – “had spent”, certainly not the present tense “spends”.</p>
<p>The phrase “engaged in outdoors sports” describes how Morgan had spent much of his leisure time. The key is “how”. So this is an adverb phrase. Adverbs can modify phrases, and here the phrase that the adverb modifies is “Morgan spends much of his leisure time”.</p>
<p>You can make an argument that “engaging in” also make sense. Here the relevant (participle) phrase would be: “engaging in outdoor sports”. This phrase may make sense as an adjective phrase that applies to Morgan.</p>
<p>In SAT questions such as this you are not asked whether or not there is a “better” choice but whether a particular choice is correct.</p>
<p>In any case don’t over-think questions such as this, especially when there is a very serious error in the sentence already – such as a tense error.</p>