EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 15 of 120

Correct — B, (b) be fused. The words on either side of the blank decide this. Before it stand ‘these divergent views’; after it stands ‘into an integrated whole’. The sentence therefore needs a verb that takes several distinct things and combines them into one, and that takes the preposition ‘into’ when it does so. ‘Fuse’ is that verb. To fuse is to join by melting together, and in its ordinary figurative use it means to blend separate elements so completely that they form a single thing: the two traditions were fused into a single style. It collocates directly with ‘into a whole’, which is the phrase printed here. The passive is right as well. The views do not do the combining; the historian does, and the sentence leaves him unnamed, so ‘must be fused’ states the obligation without naming who is under it — the ordinary way of putting a professional requirement in formal prose. Sense matches structure. An ‘integrated whole’ is a unity in which the parts are combined and still present, not one in which they have been replaced. ‘Fused’ preserves that: the divergent perspectives survive inside the single account they are made into. The sentence then says something a historian would actually claim — good history holds several perspectives at once and welds them together rather than choosing between them. The Directions for this set ask for the ‘most appropriate’ option, and that is the standard to apply here, because more than one filler will parse. The one that fits both the preposition and the idea of unity built from difference is (b).

• (a)be made — ‘be made’ is grammatical — ‘must be made into an integrated whole’ breaks no rule — which is what makes it the closest rival. It is less appropriate on two counts. ‘Make into’ is the general verb of conversion, used when one material is turned into a different product: rags made into paper, a barn made into a house. It carries no suggestion of several things being combined, which is the whole content of ‘divergent views’, and it hints that the original is superseded by the product rather than preserved in it. ‘Fused’ says precisely what ‘made’ leaves vague.
• (c)fit — ‘fit’ produces ‘these divergent views must fit into an integrated whole’, which parses but reverses the direction of the work. ‘Fit into’ presupposes that the whole already exists and asks whether each part can be accommodated in it — a piece fits into a puzzle that is already there. The sentence needs the opposite: the whole is what the views are to be turned into, and it does not exist until they are combined. The option also drops the passive, turning an obligation on the historian into a requirement that the views be conveniently shaped.
• (d)be balanced — ‘be balanced’ takes the wrong preposition and the wrong idea. English balances one thing against another, or balances competing claims, and it does not balance anything ‘into’ a whole; the phrase has no standing as a collocation. The idea is wrong too: to balance divergent views is to keep them apart and weigh them, holding each at its proper value, which is the very thing an ‘integrated whole’ is contrasted with. The option is attractive because balance is a virtue in historical writing, and that is exactly why it has to be tested against the preposition rather than accepted on its associations.

This item tests the pairing of a verb with its preposition and, beyond that, the precision of the verb itself. English keeps a small set of verbs for combining separate things into one, and they nearly all take ‘into’: fuse into, merge into, blend into, integrate into, weld into, consolidate into, coalesce into. The direction of the preposition matters — ‘into’ names the thing that results, so the whole is the outcome, not the container. A neighbouring set takes ‘with’ and describes joining without loss of identity: combine with, associate with, be reconciled with. A third set takes ‘against’ and describes weighing rather than joining: balance against, weigh against, set against. The fourth relevant pattern is ‘fit into’, which belongs to a different family altogether — accommodation into something that already exists. Choosing between these is not a matter of style. Each preposition encodes a different relation between the parts and the whole, so the phrase after the blank is a constraint as strong as any rule of syntax. Reading it first, before looking at the options, is the whole technique for items of this kind.

Q15 closes the cloze set that began at Q11 and prints only its sentence; the Directions block stands above Q11. It is the item in the set where the instruction to choose the ‘most appropriate’ option does the most work, since (a) and (b) both produce grammatical sentences and the decision rests on which verb says what the sentence means. That is a deliberate design and it recurs across this section. An examiner who wanted to test grammar alone would leave only one option standing; an examiner testing command of English leaves two or three standing and lets the sentence’s own vocabulary — ‘divergent’, ‘integrated’, ‘whole’ — pick the winner. The reading habit that pays is to notice which words in the sentence are doing conceptual work and to require the filler to answer them. Here ‘divergent’ demands a verb of combining, and ‘integrated whole’ demands one that leaves the parts inside the result.

• ‘Fuse into’ means to blend separate elements so that they form one thing, and it collocates directly with ‘into a whole’.
• Verbs of combining in English generally take ‘into’ for the result: fuse, merge, blend, integrate, weld, consolidate.
• ‘Balance’ takes ‘against’, not ‘into’, and describes weighing things kept separate rather than combining them.
• ‘Fit into’ presupposes a whole that already exists and asks whether a part can be accommodated in it.
• The Directions for this set ask for the most appropriate filler, so an option that merely parses is not thereby correct.

• Settling on the first grammatical filler. Two options parse here, and the Directions ask for the most appropriate one.
• Ignoring the words after the blank. ‘Into an integrated whole’ eliminates ‘be balanced’ on its own, before any question of meaning arises.
• Choosing a word for its favourable associations. Balance is a virtue in historical writing, which is precisely why the option is placed there.
• Overlooking the direction of the relation. ‘Fit into’ and ‘fuse into’ share a preposition and describe opposite pieces of work.

The last item of a cloze set in this paper is typically the one that requires a judgment rather than a rule, with two grammatical candidates and a decision resting on collocation or on the sentence’s own vocabulary. Expect the wrong options to be individually respectable words — made, fit, balanced — chosen because each is idiomatic somewhere else. The counter is to read the words immediately after the blank as part of the question, since a preposition printed in the sentence silently rejects most of the options before the meaning is even considered.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : The three regional offices will be ________ into a single zonal establishment from the first of April.

  • (a)balanced
  • (b)compared
  • (c)merged
  • (d)reconciled

  Answer(c) merged — verbs of combining take ‘into’ for the resulting single thing, and merging is what happens when several offices become one. ‘Balanced’ and ‘compared’ keep the offices separate, and ‘reconciled’ takes ‘with’ and describes settling a difference rather than forming a unit.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the most appropriate option for the blank : The report weighs the cost of the subsidy ________ the gain in enrolment, and concludes that the scheme should continue.

  • (a)into
  • (b)against
  • (c)with
  • (d)for

  Answer(b) against — ‘weigh one thing against another’ is the fixed pattern for setting two considerations side by side and judging between them. ‘Into’ belongs with verbs of combining, and neither ‘with’ nor ‘for’ produces the comparison the sentence describes.