In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Now, we have Mr. X as the President of India. It has come as a surprise (1)______ Scheduled Tribes who are (2)______ the most marginalised groups of the country. The Adivasis of India have been (3)______ socially, economically and culturally. Despite various efforts taken by the Government of India, they are still under (4)______ and suffering. Therefore, the (5)______ a leader from a marginalised community or group does not indicate that now the entire community will be uplifted. However, this kind of move may bring certain changes in the status of the Adivasis.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no.3
- (a)marginalised
- (b)censored
- (c)elevated
- (d)uplifted
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The sentence after the blank decides it: Despite various efforts... they are still under poverty and suffering.
Despite concedes that effort was made and still says the old state persists, so the word in the blank has to be negative.
The passage has already supplied it, calling the tribes the most marginalised groups of the country. Reusing that word gives have been marginalised socially, economically and culturally. That is option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)censored — Censored applies to what is published or said — a book, a film, a broadcast. A community's social, economic and cultural standing is not the kind of thing that can be censored.
- (c)elevated — Elevated is positive, and the next sentence rules positives out: efforts have been made, and the Adivasis are still in poverty and suffering.
- (d)uplifted — Uplifted is the word the passage saves for what has not happened yet — the entire community will be uplifted. Putting it in the blank makes the paragraph contradict its own later sentence.
Concept
A cloze blank is rarely settled by the sentence it sits in. The sentence after it usually carries the polarity marker.
Two markers do the work here. Despite concedes a contrast, and still reports a state that has not changed. Both demand a negative word in the gap.
Lexical cohesion finishes the job: a passage that has already used marginalised will happily use it again, and a repeated word can be the right answer.
The deciding evidence is not in the option set at all. It is in the two sentences around the blank, one of which hands you the word.
Key facts
- Despite concedes a contrast, so what follows runs against the effort described.
- Still marks a state that has continued unchanged.
- Censor applies to speech, writing or broadcast, not to economic standing.
- The passage itself calls the tribes the most marginalised groups of the country.
Study next
Common traps
- Rejecting marginalised because the passage already used it, on the assumption that a repeat cannot be the answer.
- Borrowing uplifted from later in the passage without noticing it describes a future that has not arrived.
- Reading only the sentence that contains the blank.
A mid-passage blank tests vocabulary in context, and this option set puts two positive words against one negative word and one that belongs to another field.
The same polarity reasoning is keyed at 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.22, where landslides are triggered by earthquakes rather than prevented or blocked, and at 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.23, where masking and isolation have consequences for young children.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.