Q&A: practice questions with answers

Concept: Pick the word whose meaning matches the whole description: hatred of people in general + living alone.

1. Key clue: dislike for humanity (all people, not one group).
2. Misanthrope = one who hates or avoids mankind; fits the solitude part too.
3. Misogynist hates only women; a cynic doubts people's motives; a narcissist loves himself.

Trick: Root help: mis (hate) + anthrop (man/humanity). Same root in anthropology.

Answer: (A) Misanthrope

Concept: An idiom has a fixed figurative meaning, not a literal one.

1. Bite the bullet = face a painful or unpleasant situation that cannot be avoided.
2. Ravi accepts surgery because no other choice is left – he faces the unavoidable.
3. Options (C) and (D) mean avoiding things – the opposite idea.

Trick: Picture a soldier biting a bullet during surgery without anaesthesia – he just endures the pain.

Answer: (B) To get something over with because it is inevitable

Concept: Idioms related to hard work and effort.

1. Burn the midnight oil = work or study late into the night, i.e. work hard for long hours.
2. Shruti quietly spent long hours making blankets – sustained hard work.
3. (A) and (D) are about sleep timings; (B) 'a few minutes' contradicts 'long hours'.

Trick: Old days: lamps burned oil at midnight only when someone was still working.

Answer: (C) Work hard for a long time

Concept: Neither of / Either of / Each of + plural noun takes a singular verb.

1. Subject = 'Neither (one) of the two girls' → singular.
2. So 'have completed' must be 'has completed'.
3. 'her assignment' already agrees with the singular subject.

Trick: Mentally replace 'Neither of the two girls' with 'Not one girl' → 'has' sounds right instantly.

Answer: (B) girls have

Concept: With neither…nor / either…or / not only…but also, the verb agrees with the nearer subject.

1. Nearer subject = 'the students' (plural).
2. Plural subject needs 'have' → 'have arrived'.
3. Error is in 'has arrived'.

Trick: Look only at the noun just before the verb and match the verb with it.

Answer: (C) has arrived

Concept: Choose the word that fits the clue 'uniting parties across the political spectrum'.

1. Unanimous = agreed by all, with no one opposing – matches 'uniting all parties'.
2. Nominal = only in name; perfunctory = done as a mere formality; partisan = favouring one side.
3. Partisan is the direct opposite of the clue.

Trick: Unanimous = unus (one) + animus (mind) → everyone of one mind.

Answer: (D) unanimous

Concept: Fixed prepositions: angry with a person, angry at/about a thing or situation.

1. Object here is a person – 'you'.
2. So 'angry at you' → angry with you.
3. 'angry on' is never correct; 'angry about you' is also non-standard for a person.

Trick: Person → with; thing → at/about (angry at the delay, angry about the loss).

Answer: (A) angry with you

Concept: Active has/have to + V1 → Passive has/have to be + V3.

1. New subject: 'The door of the building' (singular) → 'has to be left'.
2. 'open' is an adjective (state of the door), so 'left open', not 'left opened'.
3. 'by the staff' comes right after the verb, before 'for all the visitors…'.

Trick: Check the modal first: 'have to' must stay → removes (A) instantly; 'opened' removes (C).

Answer: (B) The door of the building has to be left open by the staff for all the visitors to get in.

Concept: Past reporting verb (said) → reported simple present becomes simple past.

1. 'I' → 'he' (refers to the boy).
2. 'am' → 'was'.
3. Result: The boy said that he was eight years old.

Trick: Back-shift is one step only: am/is → was; has been / had been are never made from 'am'.

Answer: (C) The boy said that he was eight years old.

Concept: It is being + V3 (present continuous passive) → active with an indefinite doer: Someone is + V-ing.

1. No doer given → use 'Someone'.
2. Keep tense: is being claimed → is claiming.
3. Only the main clause changes; the that-clause stays as it is.

Trick: Tense match first: (C) 'claims' is simple present → out; (B) is still passive → out.

Answer: (A) Someone is claiming that a new organism has been discovered in Africa.

Concept: Spot the wrongly spelt word among four sentences.

1. Correct spelling: continuum (double 'u' before 'm').
2. Sentence (B) has 'continum' – one 'u' missing.
3. (A), (C), (D) spell it correctly.

Trick: Continuum ends like 'vacuum' – both have 'uu'.

Answer: (B) The Professor explained that learning is a continum, not a series of isolated steps.

Concept: Two clauses need only one linking word; 'As…so' together is wrong.

1. 'As' already shows the reason.
2. So remove 'so': …in the team, she worked very hard.
3. (A) keeps 'so' and has wrong verb 'work'; (C) 'and' and (D) 'because' add another conjunction.

Trick: Never pair: as…so, although…but, because…so. Use only one of each pair.

Answer: (B) she worked very hard

Concept: Present continuous active (is + V-ing) → passive (is/are being + V3).

1. 'What is the teacher explaining?' – present continuous.
2. Passive: What is being explained by the teacher?
3. (A) present perfect, (C) past, (D) active – tense or voice changed.

Trick: Continuous tense in passive always shows 'being'. Look for 'being' first.

Answer: (B) What is being explained by the teacher ?

Concept: While converting back to direct speech, undo the back-shift: past perfect → simple past.

1. 'determined that' → said, "…".
2. 'had developed' → developed.
3. Keep all other words, including 'long before its demise'.

Trick: Reverse the indirect rule: had + V3 came from V2, so go back to V2.

Answer: (B) The archaeologist said, "The early civilization developed advanced irrigation techniques long before its demise."

Concept: A word naming an idea/quality and acting as object of a verb is a noun.

1. 'offers what?' → convenience – object of 'offers'.
2. It names an abstract quality → noun.
3. Adjective form = convenient; adverb = conveniently.

Trick: Suffix -ence / -ance usually makes nouns (patience, importance, convenience).

Answer: (D) Noun

Concept: Adjectives that tell the kind/quality of a noun are descriptive (qualitative).

1. 'sensory' tells what kind of appeal → quality.
2. So it is a descriptive adjective.
3. Demonstrative = this/that; quantitative = some/much; interrogative = which/whose.

Trick: Ask 'what kind?' → descriptive; 'how much?' → quantitative; 'which one?' → demonstrative.

Answer: (B) Descriptive adjective

Concept: Collocation = words that naturally go together.

1. Passage: the smell of ink and paper 'evokes nostalgia'.
2. 'Evoke' naturally pairs with feelings/memories → correct collocation.
3. Passage says 'minimizes interruptions', 'memory retention', 'offers convenience' – other pairs are made up.

Trick: Scan the passage for the exact verb – only one pair appears word-for-word.

Answer: (A) Evokes nostalgia

Concept: Use the passage line and the positive tone of nearby words.

1. Passage: 'fosters deep comprehension, focused attention, and better memory retention'.
2. All listed effects are positive, so a strong positive word is needed.
3. Brief, shallow, sudden weaken the sense.

Trick: 'Foster' (to nurture/grow) never goes with negative words like shallow.

Answer: (C) Deep

Concept: The main idea is the point most of the passage supports.

1. Passage admits e-books are convenient, but mostly lists strengths of printed books: focus, memory, sensory appeal, less eye-strain, ownership.
2. So it argues printed books have clear advantages.
3. (A), (B) use extreme words 'always/perfect'; (D) is never said.

Trick: Reject options with extreme words (always, perfect, stop altogether) in main-idea questions.

Answer: (C) Reading printed books has clear advantages over digital reading

Concept: Antonym = word of opposite meaning.

1. 'Clear' = easy to understand.
2. Abstruse = difficult to understand, obscure → opposite.
3. Obvious, Evident, Comprehensible all mean nearly the same as 'clear'.

Trick: Three options are synonyms of each other – the odd one out is the antonym.

Answer: (C) Abstruse