Each night in Gijón, Spain, a section of the city's marina is bathed in a soft green glow. The source...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• Each night in Gijón, Spain,
• a section of the city's marina
  • is bathed in a soft green glow.
• The source of the glow
• is the Árbol de la Sidra,
  • a large sculpture
    • made up of 3,200 recycled glass bottles.
• A lamp
  • inside the tree-shaped structure
• (?) the green glass.
• Where (?) = will be illuminating / illuminates / would illuminate / illuminated

Understanding the Meaning

Let's read from the beginning to understand what's happening:

"Each night in Gijón, Spain, a section of the city's marina is bathed in a soft green glow."

• This is describing something that happens regularly - every night
• The marina gets covered in green light
• Notice the verb: "is bathed" - present tense

"The source of the glow is the Árbol de la Sidra, a large sculpture made up of 3,200 recycled glass bottles."

• Now we learn what creates this glow
• It's a tree-shaped sculpture made of green glass bottles
• Still present tense: "is"

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank:

"A lamp inside the tree-shaped structure ______ the green glass."

Let's look at our choices:

• A. will be illuminating (future progressive)
• B. illuminates (simple present)
• C. would illuminate (conditional)
• D. illuminated (past)

What do we know so far?

• The whole passage is describing what happens each night - a regular, ongoing situation
• All the verbs so far are in present tense: "is bathed," "is"
• We're explaining how this sculpture works as a general fact

What verb form fits this pattern?

• We need simple present tense to match the rest of the passage
• The subject is "A lamp" (singular), so we need a singular verb
• The answer is B: illuminates

This completes the thought:

• A lamp inside the structure illuminates (lights up) the green glass,
• which creates the soft green glow that bathes the marina each night.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Maintaining Consistent Verb Tense for Habitual Actions

When you're describing something that happens regularly or explaining how something generally works, you use simple present tense. All verbs describing the same time frame should stay consistent:

Pattern for habitual/regular actions:

• "Each night" / "Every day" / "Generally" → use simple present tense
• Example: "Each morning, the sun rises in the east" (not "will rise" or "rose")

Applying this to our passage:

• Time indicator: "Each night" → tells us this is habitual
• Established tense: "is bathed," "is" → present tense throughout
• Therefore: The blank needs simple present → "illuminates"

Complete flow:

• Each night... a section is bathed (present)
• The source is the sculpture (present)
• A lamp illuminates the glass (present - maintains consistency)

This creates a cohesive description of something that happens repeatedly, using consistent verb tenses throughout.