SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 14 of 98

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 five segments. The first segment has no error. Select the option that has the segment with the grammatical error. Due to the pandemic, / the prices of / medicines increased / every day since / last December.

(a)every day since
(b)last December.
(c)medicines increased
(d)the prices of

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The time marker is since last December, and 'since' with a point in past time fixes a stretch that runs up to now. English marks that stretch with the present perfect, not the simple past.

So the verb in the third segment is wrong: it should read 'the prices of medicines have increased every day since last December', or 'have been increasing'. The faulty segment is 'medicines increased' — option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
every day since — every day since stands as it is. 'Since' is the right preposition for the starting point of a stretch of time, and the tense fault it exposes lies in the verb, not here.
(b)
last December. — last December is a legitimate past point for 'since' to take. It is a bare time expression with nothing in it that could be ungrammatical.
(d)
the prices of — the prices of correctly links the head noun 'prices' to 'medicines'. Note that the head noun is plural, so the corrected verb is 'have increased' and not 'has'.

Concept

Since plus a point in past time is one of the hardest tense triggers in English, because it forces a perfect form.

'Since last December' means from that December up to the present, and only the present perfect ('have increased') or the present perfect continuous ('have been increasing') can express a span that reaches now.

A simple past closes the action inside past time and clashes with a marker that keeps it open. The same rule blocks 'I live here since 2019' in favour of 'I have lived here since 2019'.

Segment items ask you to find the fault, not to repair it.

Naming the repair is still the fastest way to be sure. If you cannot write the corrected segment out, you have not located the error.

Key facts

Since with a past point of time requires a perfect tense, not the simple past.
For plus a duration takes the same perfect forms, as in 'have worked here for five years'.
The subject here is the plural 'the prices of medicines', so the corrected verb is 'have increased'.
The instruction states that the first segment has no error, so 'Due to the pandemic' is not in play.

Study next

Present perfect against simple past with since, for, ago and yetPresent perfect continuous for an action repeated up to the presentSubject-verb agreement when a prepositional phrase separates subject and verb

Common traps

Suspecting 'every day since' because two time expressions in one sentence look redundant.
Correcting the verb to 'has increased' and agreeing it with medicines instead of prices.

SSC keeps returning to verb form in a segment item. At 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, EC Q.10 the keyed segment is 'will been working' in a sentence ending 'for five years', which rewards the same reflex: read the time marker, then test the verb against it.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.