SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 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 10 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 split into four segments. Identify the segment that contains a grammatical error. He never talks / for anybody. / He is alone / all day.

(a)He is alone
(b)all day
(c)for anybody
(d)He never talks

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The verb 'talk' selects the preposition to (or 'with') for the person addressed, so the segment should read 'to anybody'.

'Talk for somebody' means to speak on that person's behalf, the way a representative does — a different sentence from the one the writer intends.

The faulty segment is therefore for anybody, option (c).

The rest is sound as printed: 'never' sits correctly before the main verb, 'is alone' agrees with 'He', and 'all day' is a standard adverbial of duration.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
He is alone — 'He is alone' is grammatical — singular subject, singular verb, and 'alone' used predicatively, which is where it belongs. Nothing here needs correcting.
(b)
all day — 'All day' is a standard adverbial of duration and takes no preposition in front of it. It is 'for all day' that would be the error.
(d)
He never talks — 'He never talks' puts the frequency adverb never before the main verb in the simple present, which is the position English gives it.

Concept

Spot-the-error items are decided segment by segment, and one recurring fault line is the preposition a verb selects.

'Talk' belongs to a set that takes to for the addressee: talk to, speak to, listen to, reply to. Swap the preposition and the meaning changes rather than the register — 'talk for' assigns representation, 'talk about' assigns a topic.

Read each segment as if it stood alone, then read the four in sequence. A segment can be internally fine and still wrong in context, but here the fault sits inside the segment itself.

The sentence's sense invites 'lonely' in place of 'alone', but that is a word-choice preference, not a grammatical error, and the item asks for the grammatical one.

Key facts

Talk to someone is the standard collocation for the person addressed, with 'talk with' as a variant.
Talk for someone means to speak on that person's behalf.
'Never' is placed before the main verb in simple present tenses, as in 'He never talks'.

Study next

Verbs with a fixed preposition: listen to, depend on, insist on, apologise toPosition of frequency adverbs with main verbs and with auxiliariesAdverbials of duration and when 'for' is required before them

Common traps

Hunting for a tense or agreement error and reading straight past the preposition
Marking 'He is alone' wrong because 'lonely' would suit the sense better

The four-segment format recurs through the 2024 CGL papers — also asked 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.11 ('The company specialises at') for a preposition fault, and 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.3 ('very louder') for a comparative fault.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.