SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 13 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. Select the option that arranges the sentences in the correct sequence to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph. A)This past summer, my dream finally came true. B)Strange lands, exciting places, and new cultures have always fascinated me. C)Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed about travelling overseas. D)I got to travel to England, France, Switzerland, and Germany.

(a)DCBA
(b)CBAD
(c)ABCD
(d)BADC

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The paragraph is a childhood wish that gets fulfilled, so it must run wish, reason, fulfilment, detail.

C sets the earliest point on the timeline — Ever since I was a little girl — and states the dream.
B says where the dream came from: strange lands and new cultures.
A delivers the payoff, This past summer, my dream finally came true.
D names the countries, which means something only once the trip has been announced.

That is CBAD → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
DCBA — D lists four countries the paragraph has not yet said were visited, so it cannot open. A closing detail placed first leaves the reader with no dream to fulfil.
(c)
ABCD — A announces that the dream came true before any dream has been mentioned. This past summer is a payoff line, and a payoff cannot precede its setup.
(d)
BADC — This puts A before C, so my dream appears before the dream is named. It also strands C at the end, where Ever since I was a little girl has nothing left to introduce.

Concept

A jumbled paragraph is settled by links, not by taste. Two kinds of link do most of the work: time markers (Ever since I was a little girl, This past summer) and back-references, where a pronoun or a definite phrase such as my dream needs an earlier mention.

The opening sentence is the one that refers back to nothing outside itself, and here that is C. Every other sentence is then placed by what it depends on: D lists the countries of the trip, so it has to follow the sentence saying the trip happened.

You can kill DCBA and ABCD on their first sentence alone, since each opens with a consequence. That leaves CBAD and BADC to compare, and BADC fails because it puts my dream came true ahead of the sentence that introduces the dream.

Key facts

The opening sentence of a coherent paragraph refers back to nothing outside itself.
A definite phrase like my dream requires an earlier mention of that dream, which fixes A after C.
Proper nouns introduced late in a paragraph normally elaborate a claim already made.

Study next

Identifying the opening sentence by the absence of back-referencePronoun and definite-article chains as ordering evidenceTime-sequence markers: ever since, this past summer, finally

Common traps

Ordering by how each sentence sounds rather than testing which sentence needs an earlier one
Assuming the sentence labelled A opens the paragraph because it is labelled A

SSC labels the sentences A to D and prints the options as four-letter strings. This paper runs another at English Q.17 (also 12 Sep 2024, 16:00), on mobile phones, where the same open-then-elaborate reading decides it.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.