In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The limbs of the flying squirrel are interlinked with a membrane. When the creature (1)________ into the air, the membrane opens and the squirrel seems to (2)_______ swiftly downwards. This movement gives the (3)_______ of flight. However, it is not flying really. It is a (4)_______ in the air from a higher level. It is also noteworthy that a squirrel cannot (5)_____ its direction while it is in flying mode.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 2.
- (a)skate
- (b)skim
- (c)glide
- (d)wheel
Answer
Why
Correct — C. After "seems to" every option is a bare infinitive, so form decides nothing here and sense decides everything.
Glide means to move smoothly and continuously through the air without power — precisely what an open membrane lets the squirrel do.
The sentence supplies the test: swiftly downwards is a steady descent through air, not travel across a surface, and the passage goes on to call the result flight-like without being flight → option (c).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)skate — Skate needs a hard surface underfoot and something to run on it — ice, a floor, skates or wheels. The squirrel is in mid-air with nothing beneath it.
- (b)skim — Skim means to pass lightly over a surface, touching it or nearly touching it, as a stone skims water. It takes over or across, not downwards.
- (d)wheel — Wheel describes turning in a wide circle in flight, the way gulls wheel overhead. The passage gives a straight descent, not a circling one.
Concept
Near-synonym blanks are settled by what each verb expects around it, not by how close the meanings feel.
Skate and skim both need a surface. Wheel needs a curved path. Glide needs neither: it names smooth, unpowered movement, and it is at home in the air.
So read what the sentence already gives you. Here that is swiftly downwards, and shortly afterwards the statement that this is not really flying. Glide is the verb that fits a descent which merely looks like flight.
Glide is also the ordinary term for what flying squirrels actually do: they do not fly, they descend on an outstretched membrane. The passage says the same thing in plain words.
Key facts
- Glide means to move smoothly and continuously, especially through the air without power.
- Skim means to pass lightly over a surface, touching or nearly touching it.
- Wheel, used of flight, means to move in a wide circle.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking skim because it also carries the idea of moving quickly.
- Reading glide as a synonym of fly, which this passage explicitly denies.
- Ignoring downwards, the word that rules out the horizontal verbs.
The same passage fills blanks (1) to (5) at English Q.21 to Q.25 of this 18 Sep 2024, 09:00 sitting, so read the whole paragraph once before answering any one blank.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.