either Mark or his students BLANK

on the ferry boat.

if you want to use the present tense, which word would fill the BLANK.
A.are
B.is
C.were
D.was

There are two that are present tense. Then which do you need, singular or plural.

Hint: how many people does the sentence say are on the boat?

To determine the correct word to fill in the blank, we need to understand the subject of the sentence. In this case, the subject is "Mark or his students," which is a compound subject. When a compound subject consists of two or more singular nouns connected by "or," the verb should agree with the noun closest to it.

In this sentence, the closest noun to the verb is "students," which is plural. Therefore, we should use a plural verb form.

Out of the given options, the only one that corresponds to a plural verb form is "C. were." So, the correct word to fill in the blank is "were."