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. 5.
- (a)inessential
- (b)disapproved
- (c)ceaseless
- (d)required
Answer
Why
Correct — D. The sentence reports what parents assume, and the passage exists to show that the assumption is wrong: the full-day places were rationed by lottery and carried a tuition cost.
For that correction to bite, the assumption has to be that full-day kindergarten is guaranteed — a required part of the system, something the public system must provide.
Required is the word that makes the parents wrong in the way the passage goes on to show.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)inessential — Inessential means not necessary. It would have parents assuming the very thing the passage proves, which leaves the paragraph with nothing left to correct.
- (b)disapproved — Disapproved means judged unfavourably. Nobody in the passage disapproves of kindergarten, and parents do not assume a part of a system is disapproved.
- (c)ceaseless — Ceaseless means never stopping. It describes an activity that runs without a break, not the standing of a component, so it cannot modify part here.
Concept
The verb assume is the switch in this sentence. When a writer reports an assumption after showing the reality, the assumption has to be the opposite of the reality.
The reality in this passage is a lottery, a limited number of full-day slots and a fee. The opposite of that is an entitlement — kindergarten as something the system must supply.
Required carries that obligation, and it fits the frame a ___ part of, which takes words describing the standing of a component: a required part, an optional part, a central part.
Required here means demanded by rule, not needed by the child. The sentence is about what the public system owes families, not about whether full-day kindergarten is good for them.
Key facts
- Required: demanded by rule or law, obligatory.
- The passage states that full-day slots were limited, allotted by lottery and came with a tuition cost.
- Inessential is the antonym of required, and both fit the grammar of the blank, so grammar cannot decide it.
Study next
Common traps
- Filling the blank with what the passage proves rather than with what the parents believe.
- Choosing inessential because the passage is critical, and missing that the criticism attaches to the reality, not to the assumption.
This blank sits in the sentence that states the passage's point, so it is answered from the argument as a whole rather than from the words beside it.
Blanks 1 to 4 of this passage are English Q.21, Q.22, Q.23 and Q.24 of this shift (19 Sep 2024, 09:00).
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.