In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. As a result of Covid-19, the quick (1) ______ to digital training has exposed the hazards of student disengagement and the resulting consequences of lower student performance across (2) ______ courses. The latest (3) ______ has altered the education of millions of people around the world. New approaches and improvements in the school system are urgently required. Considering the increasing digital divide, the strategy may exacerbate existing inequality disparities. More than 500 million students, at various levels, around the world were forced to (4) _______ their studies. These changes have caused and will continue to cause some inconvenience, but they will also foster innovation and future reforms inside this education system. During a global Covid-19 pandemic, the 'pile-on effect' of the coronavirus can have long-term consequences for schooling, notably for the most vulnerable. Children, (5) ________ basic, core learning (reading, math, languages, etc.) was weak to begin with, face a significant risk of regression. During Covid-19, millions of children whose right to education has already been violated, particularly girls, are exposed to greater health and well-being hazards (both psychosocial and physical).
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 4.
- (a)suspend
- (b)carry on
- (c)resume
- (d)reopened
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The frame around the blank is were forced to ______, which needs a base-form verb and, because of 'forced', something the students would not have chosen.
Suspend means to stop something temporarily — exactly what closures did to schooling.
Read it back: more than 500 million students were forced to suspend their studies. That is option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)carry on — carry on means to continue, so nobody has to be forced into it here. It also contradicts the regression and lost learning the passage goes on to describe.
- (c)resume — resume means to start again after a break, and at this point in the sentence the break has not yet been described. The order of events is wrong.
- (d)reopened — reopened is a past form and cannot follow 'to' in this frame. The infinitive needs 'reopen', and even then it would reverse the loss the sentence reports.
Concept
This blank is settled by form before meaning.
After 'be forced to', English takes the bare infinitive: forced to leave, forced to wait, forced to suspend. Any option carrying a tense ending is out on sight.
Meaning then chooses between what is left. 'Forced' signals compulsion against the students' interest, so the verb must name a loss — studies stopping, not studies continuing or restarting.
Suspend and stop are not the same. Suspend carries the sense of a pause that is expected to end, which matches a passage that goes on to talk about reforms and recovery.
Key facts
- After 'be forced to' the verb appears in its base form.
- Suspend means to stop something temporarily.
- Resume means to begin again after an interruption.
- The passage puts the number of affected students at more than 500 million.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing 'resume' because it belongs to the same topic of interrupted study.
- Choosing 'reopened' on meaning without checking the form after 'to'.
SSC's cloze blanks test verb form as often as vocabulary, and a wrongly inflected option is the usual way one distractor is built.
This is blank 4 of the passage asked at 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.21 to Q.25.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.