SATII Spanish PR Questions

Got2BYale
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:02:16 +0000

I was prepping for the Spanish subject test with Princeton Review and am confused about a couple of questions.

For the first fill-in-the-blank:
*Quiero que ----- apuntes sobre la lectura.
(A) tomas
(B) tomes
(C) tomabas
(D) tomaste

Obviously C and D are wrong, but I thought the answer woud be B because the sentence is in the subjunctive and the opposite ending for tomar would be ‘es’ but the book says the answer is A and that:
“The phrase that starts the sentence, “Quiero que,” tells you that you should use the subjunctive. Choices C and D both refer to the past, so if you at least know you need to stay in the present tense, you can eliminate two choices.”

The book does not explain why it uses the simple present instead of the present subjunctive…is this just a mistake by the editors???

Second, for this question:
*Todos sus parientes vinieron, incluyendo su bisabuela, a quien Rosa nunca habia ---- antes.
(A) conoce
(B) conozca
(C) conocido
(D) conocio (with an accent mark over the last o)

I thought because of the ‘habia’ the pluperfect (aka imperfect subjunctive) should be used and so the answer would be C. but the book says the answer is D and that:
“A key word here is antes. This tells us that we need a form of the verb in the past. Choice D is the only one that works.”

Is this correct. Can you use habia and then the following verb in the preterite. We never learned that. My teacher said following habia would be the the past participle (conocido). This would still be a past tense. Just past perfect…the pluscuamperfecto…

Please help! (and thanks in advance!)