SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 12 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Sentences of a paragraph are given below in jumbled order. Arrange the sentences in the correct order to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph. A. It is also called a nuclear family. B. It is good to be in a small family because there is better management of resources. C. A small family is one with parents and a maximum of two children. D. The advantages of a small family are numerous.

(a)CADB
(b)ACBD
(c)CBDA
(d)BACD

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Two links fix the order CADB.

C is the only sentence whose subject is a full noun phrase, "A small family is one with parents and a maximum of two children", so it has to open.

A begins "It is also called", and that pronoun needs C's definition standing in front of it.

D then announces that the advantages are numerous, and B supplies one — better management of resources: option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
ACBD — ACBD opens on "It is also called a nuclear family", a pronoun with nothing to refer back to, and it parks D's announcement of advantages after B has already given one.
(c)
CBDA — CBDA pushes A to the end, breaking the definition block. The paragraph then runs through the advantages and only afterwards remembers to say the family has another name.
(d)
BACD — BACD opens with the verdict that a small family is good before any sentence has said what a small family is, and it closes on D, which announces advantages instead of delivering them.

Concept

Para-jumbles are solved by dependency, not by meaning. Find the sentence that stands alone with no back-reference, then chain the ones that cannot.

Here the give-aways are a pronoun and an announcement. "It" in A points backwards, so A can never open. "The advantages are numerous" in D promises something, so D must be followed by an advantage, and only B supplies one.

That leaves C as the sole possible opener, and CADB as the only order in which nothing points at empty space.

Two of the four orders open with C, so the quickest route is to accept C as the opener and then test CADB against CBDA on the single question of whether D comes before B.

Key facts

A sentence opening with a bare pronoun such as It cannot be first in a jumbled paragraph.
A definition sentence, one that states what a term means, normally opens the set.
An announcement such as The advantages are numerous must be followed by at least one advantage.

Study next

Pronoun and article chains as ordering evidence in para-jumblesAnnouncement-and-elaboration pairs, where a general claim is followed by its instanceSegment rearrangement, where the same tests run over parts of one sentence

Common traps

Ordering by how natural each sentence sounds rather than by what each refers back to.
Treating B as a conclusion because it reads like an opinion, when D introduces it.
Splitting C and A, which belong together as definition and alternative name.

Rearrangement also runs at English Q.6, on sentence segments, and at English Q.15, on single words; here it is whole sentences. The test is the same at every scale: find what cannot come first.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.