Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined word segment in the given sentence. Sanat has just arrived in Mysore on transfer; he requests his friend Raghu to help him find an appropriate location.
- (a)a suitable elevation
- (b)a rented accommodation
- (c)a proper junction
- (d)an allocation recommendation
Answer
Why
Correct — B. The governing verb is find — "help him find ___" — so the slot needs something a friend can actually locate for you.
The frame settles the rest. Sanat has just arrived in Mysore on transfer, which describes a man who needs somewhere to live.
Accommodation is the noun English uses for a place to stay, and rented matches a posting rather than a purchase → option (b).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)a suitable elevation — Elevation is height above a given level, or a raised piece of ground. It can also mean promotion, which is what makes it tempting next to "on transfer", but a promotion is not something Raghu can help him find.
- (c)a proper junction — A junction is a point where roads or railway lines meet. It is at least a place, which is the whole of its appeal, but nobody looks for a junction to live in.
- (d)an allocation recommendation — Allocation recommendation is not idiomatic English, and neither noun names a place. A recommendation is advice, so it does not answer "help him find" either.
Concept
A substitution item hands you a sentence and four phrases that all fit the slot grammatically. Grammar therefore decides nothing, and sense and collocation decide everything.
Work outward from the frame. Two things do the deciding here: the verb find, which needs a locatable object, and the situation — a man newly transferred to a city, asking a local friend for help.
Read those together and the sentence is asking for lodging. One option names a place to live. The other three name a height, a road feature and a piece of advice.
The response sheet prints the sentence without its underline, so the replaced segment has to be recovered from the options. All four are determiner-plus-noun phrases of the same shape, and an appropriate location is the only segment they can stand in for.
One honest caveat on the wording: in careful British usage accommodation is uncountable and appears as "rented accommodation", without the article. That is a quibble about how the option is printed, not a reason to prefer any of the other three.
Key facts
- Accommodation means a place to live or stay.
- Elevation means height above a given level or a raised place, and it can also mean promotion.
- A junction is a point where two or more roads, railway lines or rivers meet.
- Every option in this item is a noun phrase, so the choice turns on meaning rather than on grammar.
Study next
Common traps
- Matching "suitable" in option (a) to "appropriate" in the original and stopping there.
- Reading elevation as promotion because the sentence mentions a transfer.
- Treating the item as a grammar test when all four phrases fit the slot.
SSC prints this stem — substitute the underlined word segment — and fills the options with phrases that are all grammatical, so meaning alone decides.
A near-identical stem heads 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.13 ("The wedding was put on until January", keyed put off) and 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.18 ("hanging on her bony forehead", keyed straggling over).
Within this same shift the substitution stem also appears at English Q.3 and English Q.18.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.