TOEIC Question

Question

Hello!The following question came from a TOEIC book I am using in class.I enjoyed ________ with you yesterday.A.  meetB.  to meetC.  having metD.  meetingThe answer is D, but a student asked why C was not correct and I had trouble answering her.  Is it because "yesterday" is a specific time in the past so we can't use a perfect form of the verb?  Any explanation you could give would be helpful!Thanks!

Free_spirit · Accepted Answer

Don't always trust the books! I've spotted numerous misspellings and grammatical glitches in English language textbooks from Japan. I think I "failed" a diagnostics test in one language school (not in Japan) because I took exception to the grammar used in some of the questions and wrote comments such as statements were ambiguous to a native English speaker such as myself, or that the grammar was no correct... but on to your question.

I think this is one such glitch. I would accept "I enjoyed having met with you yesterday." Having is a "helper verb" in this sense. While my Spanish is not up to scratch, I translated the sentence using the Spanish "helper verb" haber. It works too: "Me gustó haber conocido con usted ayer." ("met" / "meeting" is a problematic translation between English and Spanish).

There are 15,300 Google results for the words "having met with you" ...
There are 2,960,000 Google results for the words "having met with" ...

Can Google ever be wrong?

I think it provides a strong argument for the words being in general usage.

There are dozens of ways I can think of using "having" + past tense verb, although some of the results sound a little formal or archaic to me.

Mister Micawber · Answer

I agree.  The question writer may have had 'specific time reference' in mind, but the fact is that C is in common use.

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