NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 26 of 149

Correct — A, at home. Staying in of an evening is expressed by the fixed adverbial 'at home', which takes no article and no possessive — 'Mr. and Mrs. Rao stay at home every evening.'

• (b)inside home — 'Inside' needs a determiner before 'home', and even then it describes a physical position rather than the habit of not going out.
• (c)within their home — 'Within' marks a boundary and belongs to formal or legal writing; it is far too heavy for a sentence about an evening routine.
• (d)No improvement — 'In their home' points at the building itself, whereas the sentence is about the couple staying in rather than going out, and English uses the bare idiom 'at home' for that.

A zero-article idiom item — a small set of everyday place expressions drop the article after their usual preposition.

'In their home' is not broken English, which is why the option tempts. Improvement items ask for the form English actually uses, and for the habit of not going out that form is 'stay at home'.

• The same pattern appears in 'at school', 'in hospital', 'at work', 'in bed' and 'to church'.
• 'Home' also works as an adverb, so 'go home' and 'reach home' take no preposition at all.

• Adding a possessive to a fixed adverbial phrase.

Asked as a sentence-improvement item that replaces a fixed adverbial with a wordier phrase that is grammatical but unidiomatic.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which option best improves the underlined part — My brother goes to <u>the bed</u> at ten every night.

  • (a)bed
  • (b)a bed
  • (c)beds
  • (d)No improvement

  Answer(a) bed — 'go to bed' takes no article.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which option best improves the underlined part — She reached <u>to home</u> before sunset.

  • (a)home
  • (b)at home
  • (c)in home
  • (d)No improvement

  Answer(a) home — 'reach home' needs no preposition.