NDA (II) 2022 General Ability Test · Question 22 of 150

Correct — D, SQPR. Reassembled the sentence runs 'Many people today are willing to (S) surrender to the idea that (Q) there is in all instance a single, (P) authoritative truth to be discovered and defended (R).' S alone has a subject and verb to open with, 'willing to' then demands the bare infinitive 'surrender', and the that-clause carries the rest, with the comma after 'a single,' pointing straight at the noun phrase that opens R.

• (a)RPSQ — 'Authoritative truth to be discovered and defended' has no verb of its own and is the tail of the that-clause, so it cannot open the sentence.
• (b)SPRQ — S ends on 'willing to', which must be followed by a bare infinitive, and 'there is' cannot follow it, so the join between S and P breaks.
• (c)RPQS — Besides opening on the verbless fragment R, this order leaves 'many people today are willing to' at the end with nothing for 'to' to govern.

A sentence-ordering item in which the joins are fixed by grammar, since 'willing to' needs an infinitive and 'the idea that' needs a full clause.

Work the seams rather than the sense. Two fragments end on words that cannot be left hanging, namely 'willing to' and 'the idea that', and each has exactly one continuation among the four parts. The comma printed at the end of 'a single,' is the last clue, since it points to the adjective and noun phrase that opens R. The printed part reads 'there is in all instance a single,' in the question paper, and the ordering does not turn on that wording.

• Joining 'willing to' to a finite clause instead of to a bare infinitive.
• Letting a fragment with no verb of its own open the sentence.

Asked as an ordering-of-words item — pick the sequence of P, Q, R and S that makes one coherent sentence.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arrange the parts to form a coherent sentence — (P) that the earth was flat (Q) for centuries (R) people were willing to (S) believe

  • (a)QRSP
  • (b)PQRS
  • (c)RSPQ
  • (d)SQRP

  Answer(a) QRSP — 'For centuries people were willing to believe that the earth was flat.'

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arrange the parts to form a coherent sentence — (P) to accept (Q) the committee was reluctant (R) without further evidence (S) the proposal

  • (a)PQRS
  • (b)SRQP
  • (c)QPSR
  • (d)RQPS

  Answer(c) QPSR — 'The committee was reluctant to accept the proposal without further evidence.'