In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. When Ojeya Cruz Banks moved to Ohio from New Zealand (1) ________ years ago, she was overwhelmed by the logistics of uprooting her life. But Cruz Banks, a Denison University professor and a single mom, who is also my neighbour and friend, was (2) ________ to find a house next to a public elementary school. She assumed that she would be able to walk to pick up her daughter, a needed convenience given that she didn’t yet have a car. Unfortunately, when she went to register her daughter for kindergarten, she was met with an (3) ________ surprise: The only (4) ________ option was a half-day program that would bus students to a day-care centre on the outskirts of the town for the afternoon. The district did offer a limited number of full-day slots, but those had all been claimed in a lottery earlier that spring and came with a tuition cost. “I was like, ‘Cost me? What? Public school costs money here?’” she told me. Many parents across the United States, like Cruz Banks, may assume that free, full-day kindergarten is a (5) ________ part of the country’s public education system. I was one of them, until my youngest had to enter our district’s lottery several months ago. When he was assigned to the half-day program, I swung between alarm and frustration.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 2.
- (a)distraught
- (b)dispassionate
- (c)worried
- (d)relieved
Answer
Why
Correct — D. The sentence opens with But, which turns the paragraph against the sentence before it: she was overwhelmed by the logistics of uprooting her life.
A contrast marker after a negative feeling calls for a positive one, and the good news is in the same clause — a house next to a public elementary school.
Relieved is the word for a worry lifting, which is the movement But has set up.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)distraught — Distraught means deeply upset. It repeats the feeling in the previous sentence instead of contrasting with it, which is what But demands.
- (b)dispassionate — Dispassionate means calm and impartial in judgement. It describes a stance towards an argument, not a reaction to finding a convenient house.
- (c)worried — Worried is negative, so it fights the But. It also leaves the next sentence, about walking to pick up her daughter, following from nothing.
Concept
Cloze blanks that hold a feeling are decided by the discourse marker in front of them, not by the dictionary.
But, however and yet reverse the direction of what came before. And, moreover and so continue it. Unfortunately and sadly flip a positive stretch into a negative one.
Here the previous sentence is negative — overwhelmed — and the marker is But, so the blank must be positive. That one test removes distraught, dispassionate and worried before their exact shades of meaning matter at all.
Relieved to find is also the natural collocation: relieved takes a to-infinitive naming the thing that removed the worry, as in relieved to hear or relieved to see.
Key facts
- Relieved: no longer anxious, because the cause of the anxiety has gone.
- But at the start of a sentence reverses the direction of the sentence before it.
- Dispassionate means free from emotion or bias, not free from worry.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing worried because the paragraph so far is about difficulty, and missing that But has changed the direction.
- Reading dispassionate as simply unemotional and forcing it onto a moment of good luck.
The passage is continuous prose with words removed, so the logic joining its sentences is still intact. The marker in front of a blank is usually worth more than the options are.
The remaining blanks of this passage are English Q.21, Q.23, Q.24 and Q.25 of this shift (19 Sep 2024, 09:00).
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.