Fill in the blank using the subjunctive mood:
Mike must explain his idea. It is important.
It is important that Mike _ _ _ _ _ _ his ideas.
A. explain
B. will explain
C. explains
D. would explain

Hint:In linguistics, moods are verb categories. These categories indicate what the verb is expressing. A verb can express a fact, a command, a question, a condition, or a wish or possibility. Based on what the verb is expressing, mood), conditional (I ‘would buy’ that dress if I had money) or subjunctive (It is recommended that she ‘prepare’ a short speech before the ceremony).


Complete answer:
1. The subjunctive form of a verb is usually formed by removing the ‘-s’ from the third-person form of the verb.
2. It is used after certain expressions that contain an order or a request, a hypothetical, or a wish.
3. Option A, ‘explain’ is the correct answer to this question. This is because of two reasons. The first reason is that the word ‘explains’ is the third person form of the verb ‘explain’.
When, this word is modified by dropping the ‘-s’ ending from it, the word we get is ‘explain’ which is the correct verb form that is to be used in the subjunctive mood. Secondly, it completes the sentence meaningfully. In another point, we can give the argument that as it is showing a suggestion in the first part of the sentence (“It is important that”); so the verb form will not get the trailing ‘-s’ despite the subject being in the third person.
4. The other options are wrong because they are not the verb forms used in the subjunctive mood.

Hence the correct answer is option ‘A’

Note:The question that we solved today highlighted the concept of moods used in English grammar. We studied about the subjunctive mood, which is used to express the cases of urgency, importance, desirability, demand, order, suggestion or request. It doesn’t denote the time of action and remains in the same form irrespective of the tense in the main clause.