Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner and Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (APFC and EO/AO) 2025 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, PENA-A-PTS); answer worked out by our faculty — UPSC has published no answer key for this sitting. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 25 August 2026.

I was wondering which festival _________ we celebrate together this year ?

(a)will
(b)might
(c)shall
(d)do

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) shall.

The sentence is a deliberative question - one in which the speaker is not predicting what will happen but proposing that a decision be made jointly. English has a dedicated form for that: 'shall' with a first-person subject, singular or plural. 'Shall we dance ?' 'What shall I tell him ?' 'Which route shall we take ?' In every case the speaker is inviting the hearer to settle something, not forecasting it.

Everything in this sentence points that way. The subject is 'we'. The verb 'celebrate together' describes a joint act. 'This year' marks a choice still open. And the frame 'I was wondering ...' is the polite English formula for floating a suggestion: it softens the proposal by presenting it as musing rather than as a demand. Put those together and the sentence is asking which festival the two of them should choose to celebrate, which is exactly the work 'shall' does.

The grammatical point behind the idiom is that 'shall' in first-person questions is not a future tense marker at all. Its future-marking use with 'I' and 'we' has largely given way to 'will' in modern English, but its deliberative use in questions - asking for instruction, consent or a joint decision - has survived intact, and it is the only modal in this option set that can carry it.

One printing note, since it affects how the sentence reads. The stem is an embedded question inside a statement - 'I was wondering which festival ... we celebrate ...' - and would ordinarily end in a full stop, but the booklet prints it with a question mark. That is a feature of the paper as printed; the grammatical point the item tests is unaffected by it.

Why the others are wrong

(a)will — 'Will' makes the sentence a question about the future rather than a proposal about a choice. 'Which festival will we celebrate together this year' asks what is going to happen, as though the matter had already been settled by someone else and the speaker were seeking information about it. That reading sits badly with 'I was wondering', which introduces something still open, and with 'together', which implies the two parties are deciding jointly. The distinction between predicting and proposing is the whole of the item, and 'will' lands on the wrong side of it - which is why it is the strongest of the three wrong options and the one most often chosen.
(b)might — 'Might' expresses remote possibility, and a deliberative question does not express possibility at all: the speaker is not wondering whether a festival will be celebrated but which one to choose. Substituted here it produces a sentence in which the speaker speculates idly about an event neither party controls - 'which festival might we celebrate' - when the sentence plainly describes something both parties will decide. 'Might' also cannot carry the invitation to the hearer that the sentence needs; it hedges, where the sentence proposes.
(d)do — 'Do' is a present-tense auxiliary and produces 'which festival do we celebrate together this year', which asks about existing practice rather than a decision - the sense of 'which festival do we celebrate in October ?', a question about what the custom is. The clash is with 'this year', which singles out one occasion still to be arranged, and with the whole frame 'I was wondering', which is not asking to be reminded of a habit. It is also the only option in the set that is not a modal, so it can be struck out on the same reading that identifies what the other three are competing to do.

Concept

'Shall' survives in modern English chiefly in two places, and objective papers test the second one.

The first is the formal, legal or statutory use, where 'shall' imposes an obligation: 'the employer shall deposit the contribution within fifteen days'. This is the sense that fills Acts and rules.

The second is the deliberative question with a first-person subject. 'Shall I open the window ?' 'Shall we begin ?' 'What shall we do about the report ?' Here the speaker is asking for the hearer's decision, consent or instruction. The traditional prescriptive rule about shall and will for simple futurity - shall with I and we, will with the others - has faded almost completely from everyday use, but this interrogative use has not faded at all, and no other modal replaces it: 'Will we begin ?' asks for a prediction, not for permission to start.

The practical test is to ask what an answer to the question would be. If the natural answer is a fact - 'yes, it will' - the modal is will. If the natural answer is a decision - 'yes, let's', 'no, not that one, let's take the other' - the modal is shall.

A related structure worth holding alongside it is the question tag: an imperative invitation takes 'shall we', as in 'Let's start, shall we ?', which is the same deliberative shall in another position.

This is the third item of the fill-in-the-blank set and the second in a row on modality, which is a fair indication of how much weight EPFO's English section puts on the modal system. The set covers three of its uses in five items: general possibility, deliberative suggestion, and negative deduction.

The item is also a good example of how these blanks are constrained by their surroundings rather than by the blank itself. Nothing in the four words nearest the gap decides anything - 'which festival ______ we celebrate' would take any of the four. The decision comes from three things further out: the frame 'I was wondering', the adverbial 'together', and the time reference 'this year'. Candidates who read only the immediate neighbourhood of a blank routinely lose items of this shape.

The stem as printed carries a question mark although the sentence is a statement containing an embedded question, and the booklet's house style also puts a space before that mark. Neither affects the grammar being tested, and the stem is reproduced here exactly as the booklet has it.

Key facts

'Shall' with a first-person subject in a question is deliberative: it asks for the hearer's decision, consent or instruction rather than predicting an event - 'Shall we begin ?', 'What shall I say ?'.
The prescriptive shall-with-I-and-we rule for simple futurity has largely given way to 'will' in modern usage, but the deliberative interrogative use of 'shall' is fully alive and has no substitute.
The answer test separates the two: a question that invites the answer 'yes, let's' takes shall, and one that invites 'yes, it will' takes will.
Three features of the sentence outside the blank fix the reading - the frame 'I was wondering', which floats a proposal; 'together', which marks a joint act; and 'this year', which marks a choice still open.
'Do' is the only non-modal in the option set, and it produces a question about existing custom rather than about a decision still to be taken.

Study next

Shall and will across their modern uses: statutory obligation, deliberative questions, and the residue of the old futurity rule.Deliberative and suggestive structures - shall we, let's, why don't we, how about - and the register each belongs to.Embedded questions inside statements, their word order, and the punctuation they take.Polite framing formulas in English - 'I was wondering', 'I don't suppose', 'would you mind' - and how they change the force of what follows.Question tags after imperatives and suggestions, including 'let's ..., shall we ?'.

Common traps

Choosing 'will' because the sentence refers to the future; the item is about proposing a decision, not about locating an event in time.
Reading only the words next to the blank, when the frame, the adverb 'together' and the time reference are what decide the item.
Assuming 'shall' is archaic because its futurity use has faded, and so eliminating the correct answer on principle.
Treating 'do' as a possible auxiliary here without noticing that it turns the sentence into a question about habitual practice.
Being distracted by the printed question mark on an embedded question; the punctuation is a feature of the paper and not the point being tested.

Modals recur throughout EPFO's English sections, and the papers favour the uses that everyday speech has partly abandoned - deliberative shall, ought to, the distinction between can and may in possibility, and negative deduction with cannot. The option lists are homogeneous by design, so the item cannot be answered by recognising which words are modals; the candidate has to know what each one does. A dependable approach is to convert the sentence into a plain paraphrase of its intent - is this a prediction, a proposal, a deduction, a permission, an obligation - and then to pick the modal that carries that intent. That single step answers this item, the general-possibility item above it, and the deduction item that closes the set.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q9

Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “Don’t ask him how he is because if he starts talking about his health you’ll never get off from him”, has an error?

(a) Don’t ask him how he is because
(b) if he starts talking about his health you’ll never
(c) get off from him
(d) No error

Answer(c) get off from him

Error-spotting on 'get off from him' - an item decided by knowing the exact form a construction takes in English rather than by whether the sentence reads acceptably.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q7

Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “As you know that the ignorant are easily duped”, has an error?

(a) As you know
(b) that the ignorant
(c) are easily duped
(d) No error

Answer(b) that the ignorant

Error-spotting on 'As you know that the ignorant are easily duped', where the fault lies in a small function word, as it does in a modal item.

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q7

Consider the sentence : 'The teacher gave me the book'. 1 2 3 4 5 6 where the words are numbered for convenience of reference. Consider also the insertion of a single word 'only' into this sentence to indicate a desired emphasis. Where shall this word be inserted if the emphasis is to be (i) On the recipient (ii) On the uniqueness of the item given (iii) On the giver respectively (only one at a time) ?

(a) (i) Between 3-4; (ii) After 6; (iii) Between 2-3
(b) (i) Between 3-4; (ii) Between 5-6; (iii) Before 1
(c) (i) Between 4-5; (ii) Between 3-4; (iii) After 1
(d) (i) Between 2-3; (ii) Between 4-5; (iii) Between 1-2

Answer(b) (i) Between 3-4; (ii) Between 5-6; (iii) Before 1

Asks where a word may be inserted in a numbered sentence, testing structural judgement about a sentence's frame rather than its vocabulary.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The two of us have finished the file. ______ we send it to the Regional Office now ?
- (a)Will
- (b)Shall
- (c)May
- (d)Would
Answer(b) Shall - the speaker is proposing a joint action and inviting a decision, which is what deliberative 'shall' with a first-person subject does. 'Will' would ask for a prediction, 'May' would ask for permission for the speaker alone, and 'Would' would make the sentence conditional.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is a deliberative question rather than a question about the future ?
- (a)Will the office reopen on Monday ?
- (b)Shall I carry the file for you ?
- (c)Are they going to publish the list today ?
- (d)Is the Manager coming this evening ?
Answer(b) Shall I carry the file for you ? - the speaker offers an action and asks the hearer to decide, and the natural answer is 'yes, please' rather than a statement of fact. The other three ask for information about what will happen.

Why