In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Rory Cooper was a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the up-and-coming Virginia Republican who lost a 2014 House primary. He was also a prominent Never Trumper, openly (1)______________ how awful he found the 45th president. The cause Cooper has (2)______________ himself to for the past year, though, is closer to home. He is, as he puts it in his Twitter bio, ‘Apparently Mr. Open the Schools’. A father of a fifth grader, a second grader and a kindergartner, Cooper is (3) ___________ because the public schools in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives, have not reopened. Fairfax, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, is one of the school districts that has moved (4) ___________ toward in-person learning, and it is still not close: only in the past few weeks have students started to return to classrooms, and only about half of those eligible have opted to go back, for an (5) ________________ of two days a week.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 3
- (a)indebted
- (b)excited
- (c)provoked
- (d)frustrated
Answer
Why
Correct — D. The because clause supplies the cause, and it is a negative one: the schools have not reopened. So the blank needs an adjective of thwarted feeling.
frustrated is precisely that — blocked from something you want and unable to shift it. It also matches the man the passage has just drawn, a father of three school-age children who calls himself Mr. Open the Schools.
Frustrated takes a because-clause or a that-clause freely: frustrated because nothing moved, frustrated that no one listened.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)indebted — indebted means owing money, or owing gratitude. It needs a benefactor, and a school district that stays shut is the opposite of a favour done to him.
- (b)excited — excited is a positive reaction, while the cause the sentence gives is a closure it treats as a grievance. The direction is wrong, not the grammar.
- (c)provoked — provoked needs someone who deliberately goads you, and it reports a flash of anger rather than a year-long state. A building that stayed shut provokes nobody in that sense.
Concept
An adjective blank is decided by the polarity of the clause attached to it. Here 'because ... have not reopened' is a negative cause, so every positive adjective is out on sight.
What remains are negative feeling words, and they are separated by what each one requires. Frustrated needs an obstacle. Provoked needs a provoker. Indebted needs a benefactor. Match the requirement against what the sentence actually supplies — an obstacle — and exactly one option survives.
The passage builds the man's stake before it gives you the blank: three children at three school levels, and a bio naming him for the campaign. The evidence for a feeling word sits in the clause attached to it, so read to the end of the sentence before choosing.
Key facts
- Frustrated describes the feeling of being blocked from something you want.
- Provoke means to goad someone deliberately into a reaction, so it implies an agent.
- Indebted means owing something, money or gratitude, to someone.
- A because-clause names the cause, so it fixes whether the missing adjective is positive or negative.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking excited because the passage is about a campaign. Campaigns are run by people unhappy with the way things stand.
- Treating provoked as a synonym for annoyed. It carries an agent who did the provoking.
- Choosing before reading past the blank, when the cause clause after it is the only evidence available.
Feeling adjectives keyed by their surrounding clause also appear at 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.23, where 'grumpy' is keyed against sparkling, ecstatic and joyful, and at 19 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.22 (keyed 'relieved').
Inside this passage the run continues with a superlative at Q.24 and a quantity noun at Q.25.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.