In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Augmented reality and virtual reality are two types of reality technologies that either augment or replace a real-world environment with a (1)________ one. In augmented reality, a virtual environment coexists (2)________ the actual world, to be instructive and offer more data about the real world that a user can access without having to search. When a handset is pointed at a piece of malfunctioning (3)________, for example, industrial AR apps might provide rapid troubleshooting information. Virtual reality is a (4)________ environmental simulation that completely replaces the user's surroundings with a totally virtual world. For example, VR may provide a user with a box containing a cartoon (5)________ of Mike Tyson in a virtual boxing ring.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 3.
- (a)equipment
- (b)baggage
- (c)outfit
- (d)arsenal
Answer
Why
Correct — A. Two filters, in order.
a piece of is a partitive, and partitives take uncountable nouns. Outfit and arsenal are countable - an outfit, two arsenals - so 'a piece of outfit' and 'a piece of arsenal' are not English. Both go.
That leaves two mass nouns, equipment and baggage. The handset is pointed at something malfunctioning that an industrial app can troubleshoot, and it is machinery, not luggage, that malfunctions.
Equipment clears both filters: option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)baggage — Baggage is uncountable, so a piece of baggage is perfectly grammatical - but it means luggage, and an industrial troubleshooting app is not pointed at a suitcase.
- (c)outfit — Outfit is countable, a set of clothes, so it fails the partitive before meaning is even considered.
- (d)arsenal — Arsenal is countable too, a store of weapons or a stock of resources. Same partitive failure, and a factory floor is not an armoury.
Concept
English splits nouns into countable and uncountable, and an uncountable noun needs a partitive when you want to talk about one of them: a piece of equipment, a slice of bread, a bar of soap, an item of clothing.
Equipment takes no plural in standard use. 'The equipment was faulty' is right; 'the equipments were faulty' is not.
This option set is built on that split. Two words survive the partitive and two do not, and only after that does meaning decide between the survivors. Working in that order halves the question.
Baggage is the honest trap. It clears the grammar filter, so a candidate who checks only 'a piece of' will stop at whichever mass noun catches the eye first. The deciding word is malfunctioning.
Key facts
- Equipment, baggage, luggage, furniture and information are uncountable and take a piece of or an item of.
- Outfit and arsenal are countable nouns, so they take a or an and form plurals.
- The passage's example is industrial: an AR app supplying rapid troubleshooting information about machinery.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking baggage on the strength of the partitive alone, without reading malfunctioning.
- Writing equipments in your own answer, which is the same error one step later.
A noun blank fixed by the words framing it rather than by a definition is set at 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.21, where 'the quick ___ to digital training' needs transition.
In this passage the framing phrase is 'a piece of', which does as much work as any vocabulary clue.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.