EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 3 of 120

Correct — C, (c) QSRP, so the paragraph runs S1 – Q – S – R – P – S6. Three tests decide this item, and each one kills at least one option. First test, the definite phrase. R introduces the idea of proportion — ‘It also lacks perspective since it is bereft of a sense of proportion’ — using the indefinite ‘a sense of proportion’, the form English uses when something is being mentioned for the first time. P then says ‘The relevance of the issue of proportion is significant’, with a definite article and the word ‘issue’, both of which presuppose that proportion is already under discussion. R must therefore come before P. That removes (a), which puts P at position 2 and R at position 5, and (d), which opens on P. Second test, the joint with S6. S6 gives two examples of how hard it is to tell at the time which events matter: some are recognised at once, others are hidden in obscurity. That illustrates the problem of proportion, so the sentence just before it must be about proportion. In (c) it is P; in (b) it is Q, which is about the missing inner knowledge of politicians and planners and which S6 does not illustrate at all. Third test, the joint with S1. S1 calls contemporary history ‘at best a tentative record’. Q answers it word for word — ‘It possesses, indeed, a massive supply of public record, but it necessarily lacks…’ — where ‘indeed’ concedes S1’s point and ‘but’ qualifies it. That concessive pair is welded to S1, which is a second reason (b) fails: it exiles Q to the end. The body then reads as a ladder of deficiencies. Q: no inner knowledge. S: no way, over a few years, to gauge the significance of events. R: no perspective either, because no sense of proportion. P: and proportion is the crux — which S6 then demonstrates.

• (a)QPSR — QPSR gets the opening right and then breaks the definite-article rule at once. P at position 2 speaks of ‘the issue of proportion’ before any sentence has raised proportion; the sentence that raises it, R, is parked at position 5. Placing R last also throws away the ‘also’ in ‘It also lacks perspective’, which is an additive connector and needs the earlier lack — Q’s missing inner knowledge — close behind it, not four sentences away.
• (b)SRPQ — SRPQ contains the correct R-then-P chain, which is what makes it the serious rival, but it ends on Q. S6’s two examples — an event recognised as momentous the moment it happens, against one hidden in obscurity — illustrate the difficulty of judging proportion, not the absence of inner knowledge of politicians’ minds and technicians’ break-throughs. It also opens on S, wasting the record/‘public record’ repetition that ties Q to S1.
• (d)PRSQ — PRSQ opens with the one sentence that cannot open: ‘The relevance of the issue of proportion is significant’ has both a definite article and no antecedent, since S1 says nothing about proportion. It then repeats (b)’s ending fault by closing on Q, so the paragraph finishes on a deficiency that S6 does not take up.

The controlling device in this item is the article. English marks the first mention of an idea with an indefinite article or a bare noun — ‘a sense of proportion’ — and every mention after that with a definite article or a demonstrative — ‘the issue of proportion’. That rule turns a jumbled passage into something close to an ordering constraint you can write down: first mention before second mention, always. Wherever two of the four sentences name the same idea, look at the articles and the order is fixed. A second device, weaker but useful, is the additive connector. ‘It also lacks perspective’ says that a lack has already been stated, so R needs a stated deficiency behind it; Q supplies the first one. A third is concession. ‘It possesses, indeed, a massive supply of public record, but…’ is a two-part move that answers S1’s verdict of a merely tentative record. Concessive sentences are conversational replies, and they attach to what they are replying to.

This is the third of the five rearrangement items in Part A, and it prints only its six sentences; the Directions block governing it stands above Q1. The item is worth studying because it is the one in this set where the two most plausible options, (b) and (c), share the same internal chain and differ mainly in where the concession sentence goes. Candidates who assemble the middle correctly and then stop lose the mark at the ends. The working habit the paper rewards is to test a candidate order at four joints — S1 to the first, each internal seam, and the last to S6 — and to reject on the first failure rather than to read the whole thing for smoothness. Every option in a well-built set is designed to be smooth.

• R prints ‘a sense of proportion’ with an indefinite article and P prints ‘the issue of proportion’ with a definite one, so R is the first mention and must precede P.
• S6 illustrates the difficulty of judging which events matter at the time they happen, so the sentence immediately before it has to be about proportion or significance.
• Q is bound to S1 by the repetition of ‘record’ and by ‘indeed … but’, a concession that answers S1’s verdict that contemporary history is at best a tentative record.
• ‘It also lacks perspective’ in R is additive: it presupposes a lack already stated, which is Q’s absence of inner knowledge.
• Only two of the four printed options place R before P, so the article test alone halves the field before any reading for sense begins.

• Building the middle of the paragraph correctly and then accepting an option whose first or last sentence is wrong — the exact failure that makes option (b) look right.
• Reading ‘also’ and ‘indeed’ as filler. They are load-bearing: one requires a previous lack, the other requires a previous verdict to concede.
• Ignoring articles. ‘A sense of proportion’ and ‘the issue of proportion’ are the same idea mentioned twice, and their order is not negotiable.
• Assuming the shortest sentence makes a good opener. P is the shortest here and is the one sentence that can never come first.

The rearrangement set in this paper repeatedly tests one relation per item — a demonstrative in the first item, a concession-and-reversal in the second, article-marked first and second mention here. The passages are always expository and always six sentences long, and the four printed options are close permutations of one another rather than a random sample of the twenty-four possible orders, so the discipline that pays is to derive one or two positional constraints from the sentences themselves and then to strike out options, not to score each option for readability.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  S1 : An audit report is only as good as the records it rests on. S6 : A file that cannot be traced is, for the auditor, a file that does not exist. P : The problem of traceability is therefore the first thing a supervisor checks. Q : It draws, no doubt, on ledgers, vouchers and returns that the office has already prepared. R : It suffers from a further weakness as well, in that it depends on a chain of custody nobody has verified. S : It is rarely possible, in the weeks allowed for a field visit, to test more than a sample of them. Select the proper sequence.

  • (a)QPSR
  • (b)QSRP
  • (c)SRPQ
  • (d)PRSQ

  Answer(b) QSRP — Q concedes S1’s point with ‘no doubt’ and repeats ‘records’; S adds the sampling limit; R’s ‘a further weakness’ needs a weakness already stated and introduces the chain of custody; P’s definite ‘the problem of traceability’ picks that up and leads into S6’s untraceable file.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Two of the jumbled sentences in a rearrangement item mention the same idea, one as ‘a sense of proportion’ and the other as ‘the issue of proportion’. What follows ?

  • (a)The two sentences must be adjacent
  • (b)The sentence with the definite article must come first
  • (c)The sentence with the indefinite article must come first
  • (d)Nothing follows; articles carry no ordering information

  Answer(c) The sentence with the indefinite article must come first — English marks a first mention indefinitely and later mentions definitely, so the indefinite sentence introduces the idea and the definite one refers back to it. They need not be adjacent, only in that order.