SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 20 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.

The following sentence has been split into four segments. Identify the segment that contains an error. They secret / decided / to leave / the town.

(a)the town
(b)to leave
(c)decided
(d)They secret

Answer

Why

Correct — D. A word that modifies a verb has to be an adverb, and the verb here is decided.

Secret is an adjective or a noun. It can describe a meeting or a plan, but it cannot stand in front of decided and say how the deciding was done.

The segment has to read They secretly — They secretly decided to leave the town. Option (d) is the faulty segment.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
the town — the town is the object of leave, carrying the definite article for a place the speakers both know. Nothing in the segment breaks a rule.
(b)
to leave — decide is followed by a to-infinitive — decide to leave, decide to go. The segment matches that pattern exactly.
(c)
decided — decided is the simple past, which takes no agreement marking after a plural subject. The tense also fits an action already completed.

Concept

The error in an item like this one is a single substitution: the right word in the wrong word class.

An adjective describes a noun (a secret meeting). An adverb describes a verb, an adjective or another adverb (they met secretly). Swap the two and the sentence stops being grammatical even though the meaning still comes through.

Most of these adverbs are the adjective plus -ly: secret to secretly, bad to badly, quick to quickly.

Read the four segments as four separate claims and test each on its own. The faulty one here is the shortest, which is where a hurried candidate looks last.

Key facts

A verb is modified by an adverb, not by an adjective.
The adverb of secret is secretly, formed with the regular -ly ending.
Decide takes a to-infinitive: decide to leave.
The corrected sentence reads They secretly decided to leave the town.

Study next

Adjective and adverb pairs SSC swaps in error items, such as bad and badlyVerbs that must take a to-infinitive against those that take an -ing formError-spotting technique: testing each segment alone before comparing them

Common traps

Hunting for the error in the longest segment and skipping the two-word one.
Accepting They secret as shorthand for they kept it secret.
Marking the town wrong because leave town without an article is also idiomatic.

SSC splits one sentence into four labelled segments and asks which carries the error, so your answer is always a segment and never a correction.

The same adjective-for-adverb swap is keyed at 26 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.8, where the faulty segment reads bad injured.

Error items elsewhere turn on a different rule each time — 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.4 keys no informations, and 17 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.17 keys brought about a new.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.