SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 19 of 99

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 6 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.

Parts of the following sentence have been given as options. Select the option that contains an error. It rain a lot in this part of the country.

(a)of the country
(b)a lot
(c)It rain
(d)in this part

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Rule: a third person singular subject takes the -s form of the verb in the simple present.

The subject here is the impersonal It of weather sentences, which is grammatically singular.

So the segment has to read It rains. Printed as It rain, it carries the error → option (c).

The other three segments are sound: 'a lot' is an adverbial of degree and 'in this part of the country' is a well-formed phrase.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
of the country — of is the preposition that links a part to the whole it belongs to, and 'the country' is a definite noun phrase. There is nothing to correct in this segment.
(b)
a lot — a lot is standard after a verb in the sense 'often' or 'very much', and the paper prints it as two words, which is the correct spelling. The single word 'alot' would have been an error.
(d)
in this part — this is a singular demonstrative and part is a singular noun, so they agree, and in is the preposition English uses for a location inside a larger area.

Concept

Error spotting hands you four segments with exactly one fault in them. Test agreement first, because that is where most of these items hide it.

Weather sentences run on a dummy subject: the It in 'It rains' refers to nothing at all, but it is still third person singular, so the verb keeps its -s.

The remaining segments are two prepositional phrases and an adverbial — structures with no agreement to get wrong, which is why the verb is the place to look.

The Commission prints the sentence with the fault already inside it, so the part that reads oddly is the answer rather than a misprint.

Check the verb against its subject instead of trusting the rhythm of the line.

Key facts

In the simple present, a third person singular subject takes the -s form: it rains, he goes, she writes.
The 'It' of weather sentences is a dummy subject with no referent, and it counts as singular.
'A lot' is written as two words when it means 'often' or 'very much'.
The -s belongs to the verb, not to the subject: a singular subject takes the -s form and a plural subject takes the bare form.

Study next

Dummy subjects 'it' and 'there' and the agreement they forceSubject-verb agreement when a prepositional phrase separates subject from verbSegment-based error spotting where three of the four parts are error-free

Common traps

Marking 'a lot' because it reads as informal, when informality is not a grammatical error
Hunting for the error in the longest segment
Correcting 'It rain' to 'It is raining', which fixes the sentence but is not what the item asks

SSC splits one sentence into four labelled parts and asks which part is wrong, and subject-verb agreement is one of the faults it plants there.

The same subject-verb test decides 09 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.20 ('I are dancing') and 09 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.16 ('Every students in the hostel').

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.