Hardly had the invigilator distributed the question papers _____ the classroom bell began to toll.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. when
- Step 1: Limiting negative adverbs such as 'hardly' and 'scarcely' strictly correlate with 'when'. Step 2. The standard construction is 'hardly... when', denoting immediate subsequent action. Answer: when. Why not the others: 'Than' correlates with 'no sooner'; 'then' and 'that' are ungrammatical in this inverted structure.
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