SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 22 of 98

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 10 September 2026.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an (1) ______________ student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone (2) _______________ him to apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors, an acid-tongued theoretician known to (3) ____________ his audience to a herd of cows, routinely tucked ‘open’ math problems into homework assignments, without telling the students. These had never been solved by anyone. Ardila solved one. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in math from MIT. But his academic experience was also one of isolation. Part of it had to do with his own (4) _____________. Part of it was cultural. As a Latino, he was very much in the minority in the department, and he did not feel comfortable in American mathematical spaces. No one had tried to explicitly (5) ______________ him, yet he felt alone. In math, collaborating with others opens up new kinds of learning and thinking. But in his nine years at MIT, Ardila worked with others only twice.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 2

(a)dissuaded
(b)suggested
(c)dispirited
(d)removed

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The sentence after the blank settles it: To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Whatever the someone did, it pushed Ardila towards the application, not away from it.

That rules out every option except one. Suggested is the verb that puts an idea to a person — and the passage adds that he had not heard of the school, so the idea had to come from outside.

Option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
dissuaded — dissuaded means talked him out of it. The passage has him applying and getting in, so the direction is backwards, and dissuade takes from plus a gerund, not a to-infinitive.
(c)
dispirited — dispirited means drained of enthusiasm, discouraged. Same wrong direction as dissuaded, and dispirit does not take a person plus to-infinitive after it.
(d)
removed — removed means took away or got rid of. Removed him to apply to MIT is not English, and nothing in the passage removes Ardila from anywhere.

Concept

Two things can decide a verb blank: the meaning the passage forces, and the pattern the verb takes after it. Check the meaning first, because the pattern often eliminates nothing.

Here the story runs one way only. A boy failing his classes is told about a school he has never heard of, applies, and gets in on scholarship.

Three of the four verbs push away from that outcome or make no sense with a person as object. The verb the passage needs is the one that offers an idea rather than blocking it.

Standard English does not say suggest somebody to do something. It says suggested that he apply to MIT, or suggested applying to MIT.

The frame SSC prints here is loose, but among the four verbs offered only the keyed one carries the right meaning, so the card is written around the key rather than against it.

Key facts

Suggest is followed by a that-clause or by a gerund, not by an object plus to-infinitive.
Dissuade is followed by from plus a gerund, as in dissuaded him from applying.
Persuade, advise, encourage and urge do take an object plus a to-infinitive.
Dispirited means having lost spirit or enthusiasm.

Study next

Verb patterns after suggest, recommend and proposeVerbs of persuading and preventing, and the prepositions each one takesThe prefix dis- reversing a verb, as in dissuade, dispirit and disallow

Common traps

Picking dissuaded because the paragraph opens with him failing his classes. The next sentence, To his surprise, he got in, shows the advice worked.
Judging the blank on grammar alone. All four verbs sit awkwardly in this frame, so meaning has to decide it.

Deletion blanks that turn on what a verb means rather than what form it takes are asked at 23 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.22, keyed to including, and again at Q.24 of the same set, keyed to measured.

The rest of this passage is worked at English Q.21 and Q.23 to Q.25 here.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an (1) ______________ student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone (2) _______________ him to apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors, an acid-tongued theoretician known to (3) ____________ his audience to a herd of cows, routinely tucked ‘open’ math problems into homework assignments, without telling the students. These had never been solved by anyone. Ardila solved one. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in math from MIT. But his academic experience was also one of isolation. Part of it had to do with his own (4) _____________. Part of it was cultural. As a Latino, he was very much in the minority in the department, and he did not feel comfortable in American mathematical spaces. No one had tried to explicitly (5) ______________ him, yet he felt alone. In math, collaborating with others opens up new kinds of learning and thinking. But in his nine years at MIT, Ardila worked with others only twice.