Select the correct verbal form to express the cessation of an ongoing activity:
Upon hearing the fire alarm, the laboratory technicians stopped ________ the chemical compound and evacuated the building immediately.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. heating
Answer: heating. Why not the others: 'to heat' would mean they interrupted their work in order to begin heating the compound; 'to have heated' is syntactically invalid; 'for heating' is not a recognized complement of 'stop'.
- Step 1: Determine the meaning of 'stop': 'stop + gerund' means to discontinue an ongoing action, whereas 'stop + to-infinitive' means to pause an existing activity in order to begin a new action.
- Step 2: The technicians discontinued heating the chemical compound, requiring the gerund form: 'stopped heating'.
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