A contraction is a shortened form of a word. Only one of the words you’ve underlined is a contraction (haven’t). Contractions are words like: didn’t, couldn’t, hadn’t, I’m, I’ve, etc.
A verb phrase consists of a ‘helping’ verb which comes before the main verb. Helping verbs include words like is, are, were, was, be, been, have, had, do, did, can, could, will, would, etc.
So the verb phrase for question 4 would be ‘They had feared’ or ‘They’d feared’ - ‘had’ is the helping verb, which comes before ‘feared’, the main verb.
