Q&A: practice questions with answers

Concept: Pessimist = one who always expects the worst.

1. Optimist = expects the best (opposite).
2. Determinist = believes all events are fixed by causes.
3. Realist = sees things as they actually are.

Trick: Pessimist ← Latin 'pessimus' = worst; Optimist ← 'optimus' = best.

Answer: (C) Pessimist

Concept: 'No sooner' is always followed by 'than'.

1. The sentence starts with 'No sooner had…', so the second clause begins with 'than'.
2. Correct: No sooner had the referee blown the whistle than the officials intervened.

Trick: No sooner → than; Hardly/Scarcely → when (comparative 'sooner' pairs with 'than').

Answer: (B) than

Concept: Harshness = roughness or severity, especially in tone or manner.

1. Asperity = harshness/sharpness of tone or temper → synonym.
2. Kindness, Softness, Delight are opposite in sense.

Trick: Asperity looks like 'asper' = rough (Latin) — think 'rough tone'.

Answer: (B) Asperity

Concept: The fixed expression is 'seldom, if ever' (= almost never).

1. 'Seldom' is already negative in sense; adding 'never' makes a double negative.
2. Correct: He seldom, if ever, agrees to attend public events without thorough preparation.

Trick: Seldom if ever / Seldom or never are idiomatic; 'seldom if never' is wrong.

Answer: (B) never

Concept: Preposterous = completely absurd.

1. Break it up: pre + post + er + ous → p-r-e-p-o-s-t-e-r-o-u-s.
2. Other options miss the 'e' after 't' or change the '-erous' ending.

Trick: Literally 'before-after' (pre + post) — something upside-down, hence absurd.

Answer: (B) preposterous

Concept: Modal + have + V3 (active) → Modal + have been + V3 (passive).

1. Object 'the final report' becomes the subject.
2. 'must have submitted' → 'must have been submitted'.
3. Agent: 'by them'; 'before the deadline' stays.

Trick: Keep the modal and 'have' unchanged; only add 'been'.

Answer: (B) The final report must have been submitted by them before the deadline.

Concept: A homonym has the same spelling but a different meaning.

1. In the given sentence, 'ambulatory' = a covered walkway/aisle in a church or monastery.
2. Options (A), (C), (D) use the same architectural sense.
3. In (B) it means an outpatient care unit (for patients who can walk) → different meaning.

Trick: Spot the option whose setting changes — clinic vs church/museum/monks.

Answer: (B) The clinic opened a new ambulatory for post-surgery patients.

Concept: 'While' + longer ongoing past action → past continuous; the interrupting action → simple past.

1. Ongoing action: the students were working.
2. Interrupting action: the professor entered.
3. Plural subject 'students' → 'were working'.

Trick: While + was/were + V-ing … , simple past (entered).

Answer: (B) were working

Concept: A relative clause with 'where' uses statement order: subject + verb.

1. 'where will scientists conduct' is question order.
2. Correct: '…where scientists will conduct environmental studies…'.
3. So part (3) has the error.

Trick: Inversion (verb before subject) is only for direct questions, not inside a sentence.

Answer: (C) (3)

Concept: was/were being + V3 (passive) → was/were + V-ing (active).

1. Agent 'the legal department' becomes the subject (singular → 'was').
2. 'were being verified' → 'was verifying'.
3. Active: The legal department was verifying the documents.

Trick: 'being' in passive signals a continuous tense — choose the -ing option in the same (past) time.

Answer: (B) The legal department was verifying the documents.

Concept: To see which way the wind blows = to find out how people's opinion or events are moving before deciding.

1. He waited to judge the general mood before backing the policy.
2. (A) and (B) take the words literally; (D) is unrelated.

Trick: Idioms are never about the literal object — reject the 'compass/weather' options.

Answer: (C) Sense how events or opinion are trending before acting

Concept: Skeptic = a person who doubts claims.

1. Correct form (as keyed, American spelling): s-k-e-p-t-i-c.
2. Skeptick and Skepticc add extra letters.
3. 'Sceptic' is the British variant; the key accepts 'Skeptic'.

Trick: Ends simply in -ic, like 'critic' and 'logic'.

Answer: (C) Skeptic

Concept: 'Last month' needs simple past; the pronoun must agree with 'She'.

1. visits → visited (past time marker).
2. their → her (subject is 'She').
3. So the segment reads: 'visited her grandparents in the countryside'.

Trick: Time words decide tense: 'last month/yesterday/ago' → V2.

Answer: (C) visited her grandparents in the countryside

Concept: Past reporting verb → tense shifts one step back; pronouns follow the speaker.

1. 'have lost' (present perfect) → 'had lost' (past perfect).
2. I → he, my → his.
3. Mayank complained that he had lost his favourite pen.

Trick: Present perfect → past perfect: have/has + V3 → had + V3.

Answer: (C) Mayank complained that he had lost his favourite pen.

Concept: Start with the sentence that names the subject; pronoun sentences follow.

1. 1 names 'Emotional intelligence' → opener (2 and 3 begin with 'It').
2. 2 lists its parts; 3 contrasts it with academic intelligence.
3. 4 begins 'Hence' → conclusion. Order: 1-2-3-4.

Trick: A sentence starting with 'It' can never open a paragraph.

Answer: (C) 1-2-3-4

Concept: The blank pairs with 'preserves' — the archive fixes things by naming them.

1. Reify = to treat an abstract idea as a concrete, fixed thing.
2. Naming something turns it into a fixed category → 'reifies'.
3. Extinguishes/evacuates go against 'preserves'; dissimulates (= disguises) does not fit naming.

Trick: 'and' joins similar ideas: preserves … and reifies (both keep/fix).

Answer: (B) reifies

Concept: The phrase after the dash explains the blank.

1. Blank is explained as 'the refusal to be coherent' and 'the grammarless whisper'.
2. Being unreadable and outside symbols/language = 'asymbolic opacity'.
3. Algorithmic agency belongs to the system being resisted; conditionality is unrelated.

Trick: Words after a dash usually restate the blank — match 'grammarless' with 'asymbolic'.

Answer: (D) asymbolic opacity

Concept: The blank is defined right after the dash: 'the unworking of systems and the destitution of legibility'.

1. The passage seeks undoing, not repair → 'destitution' (stripping away/removal from position).
2. 'Not reparation' rules out restitution and reconciliation.
3. The echo 'destitution of legibility' confirms the word.

Trick: Contrast marker 'not … but' — the answer is the opposite of 'reparation'.

Answer: (C) destitution

Concept: The blank is part of a list: '____, excessive and unlocatable'.

1. A justice that 'never arrives' cannot be pinned down or defined.
2. Indeterminate = not fixed or settled → fits with 'unlocatable'.
3. Perpetual (= endless) and transcendent (= beyond) do not mean 'undefined'.

Trick: Items in a list share one tone — 'unlocatable' signals 'cannot be fixed'.

Answer: (A) indeterminate

Concept: The dash phrase defines the blank: 'a presence that eludes and persists'.

1. Fugitive = escaping, hard to catch → 'eludes'; form = a presence that 'persists'.
2. Spectral coherence and passive unity suggest settled wholeness, which the passage rejects.
3. Ontic recurrence (repeated being) misses the idea of escaping.

Trick: Match key words: eludes ↔ fugitive.

Answer: (A) fugitive form