SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 16 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 divided into parts. One of them may contain an error. Select the part that contains the error from the given options. If you don’t find any error, mark ‘No error’ as your answer. My brother received / his MBA degree into / the university last year.

(a)the university last year
(b)his MBA degree into
(c)No error
(d)My brother received

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The verb received marks its source with from: you receive a degree from a university, a letter from a friend, a prize from a judge.

The printed segment gives into, which encodes movement across a boundary to the inside of something, and nothing in this sentence moves anywhere. Repair it — my brother received his MBA degree from the university last year — and every remaining segment stands untouched → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
the university last year — last year is a finished past-time adverbial and it agrees with the simple past received. The definite article is right too, since one particular university is meant.
(c)
No error — The preposition into is wrong, so an error does exist. No error is available only when every printed segment survives inspection.
(d)
My brother received — received is the correct simple past of receive and it sits with the singular subject my brother without difficulty. Nothing in this segment needs repair.

Concept

Error-spotting items usually turn on a single word inside one segment, and prepositions are the commonest carrier. The preposition is chosen by the verb and the relation, not by the noun that follows it.

Receive takes from for its source. Into expresses movement to the interior of something — walk into the hall, pour water into a glass. A university awards the degree, so it is the source of the degree, and from is the preposition that relation calls for.

SSC has already split the sentence for you, and the error sits inside one printed part, so the fix has to be expressible without moving words across the slashes. Replacing into with from does exactly that.

Key facts

Receive takes from for its source: received a gift from a friend.
Into expresses movement to the inside of something: he walked into the room.
In marks position and into marks movement: sit in the car against get into the car.

Study next

Verb-governed prepositions: receive from, borrow from, differ fromIn against into, and on against ontoSegment-based error spotting: testing tense, then agreement, then preposition

Common traps

Marking No error because the sentence reads fluently when skimmed
Hunting for a tense mistake and never testing the preposition

The divided-sentence error format returns in this paper with a narrower brief at English Q.20 (also 12 Sep 2024, 16:00), where you are told in advance that the fault is a misused interjection.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.