In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. (1) _________ a letter came to inform them that Raka’s mother Tara had another breakdown and was in a nursing home in Geneva and that Raka’s grandmother Asha, (2) _________ seen another grandchild safely into the world, was flying to Switzerland to be with her, Nanda Kaul (3) _________ her lips, (4) _________ the blue sheets of paper with that distasteful sprawl (5) _________ them, and hid them in her desk.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 4.
- (a)tucked away
- (b)cleared up
- (c)folded up
- (d)hid away
Answer
Why
Correct — C. Read to the end of the sentence before filling this blank: it already closes with and hid them in her desk.
So blank 4 must be an action that comes *before* hiding and is not itself hiding. Folded up the blue sheets of paper gives that sequence — fold, then hide.
It also fits the object: sheets of paper are folded up, and folding is what makes them small enough to go into a desk.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)tucked away — Tucked away means put somewhere safe and out of sight. That is the same act as "hid them in her desk" at the end of the sentence, so the sentence would say it twice.
- (b)cleared up — Cleared up takes a mess or a misunderstanding as its object — you clear up a room or clear up a doubt. It does not describe doing something to particular sheets of paper.
- (d)hid away — Hid away repeats the sentence's own final verb. It would leave Nanda Kaul hiding the sheets and then hiding them again in her desk.
Concept
Phrasal verbs in a cloze are rarely settled by the blank's own words. The evidence is the rest of the sentence.
Here three of the four options mean roughly "put out of sight", and the sentence has already said that in its last clause. Redundancy is the discriminator: a well-formed sentence does not spend two verbs on one action.
What is missing from the chain is the physical step between reading the letter and hiding it, and that step is folding.
The comma list — pursed, folded up, and hid — is a sequence of three separate actions by one subject. Sequences are the reason a cloze blank should be read against the whole clause chain, not the five words on either side.
Key facts
- To fold up is to bend something over on itself so that it becomes smaller.
- To tuck away is to put something in a safe or hidden place.
- To clear up means to tidy a place or to resolve a confusion.
- The sentence ends with "hid them in her desk", so blank 4 cannot mean hid.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing hid away because it matches the mood of the passage, while hid already ends the sentence.
- Treating all four phrasal verbs as loose synonyms of put away and then guessing.
Phrasal-verb blanks come up in the same cloze format on 24 Sep 2024, 16:00 at English Q.23, where listening is a process that calls for concentration, and on 25 Sep 2024, 16:00 at English Q.25, where the options are calling for, calling on, calling at and calling from.
The particle is usually what separates them, so learn phrasal verbs in families.
Related PYQs
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