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. 4.
- (a)quantification
- (b)introversion
- (c)interrogation
- (d)molestation
Answer
Why
Correct — B. The two sentences around the blank split one cause in two: Part of it had to do with his own blank, then Part of it was cultural.
That parallel fixes what goes in. Against a cause outside him — culture — the blank has to name something inside him, a trait of his own.
Introversion, the disposition to keep to oneself, is that trait, and the passage bears it out: in nine years at MIT he worked with others only twice. Option (b).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)quantification — quantification is the act of expressing something in numbers. It names a procedure, not a personal quality, and nothing in the passage is being measured.
- (c)interrogation — interrogation is formal questioning. It is something done to a person rather than a quality he owns, and no one questions Ardila anywhere in the passage.
- (d)molestation — molestation is an assault on someone. Again it is done to a person, not possessed by one, and the passage reports isolation, not attack.
Concept
The frame his own plus a noun demands something that belongs to the person — a trait, a habit, a fault. A noun naming an action done to him will not fit it, however impressive the word looks.
The second clue is the parallel sentence. Part of it was cultural names an external cause, so the first cause must be internal.
Introversion is the standard noun for a preference for one's own company over group settings, and it explains the detail the passage gives about how rarely he collaborated.
The passage is careful to give the isolation two sources, one personal and one cultural, and it goes on to say he did not feel comfortable in American mathematical spaces as a Latino. The blank is only the personal half.
Key facts
- Introversion is the tendency to look inward and to prefer solitude, and extroversion is its opposite.
- The frame his own plus a noun calls for an attribute of the person, not an action performed on him.
- The passage states that in his nine years at MIT, Ardila worked with others only twice.
Study next
Common traps
- Reaching for the longest Latinate noun. Only one of the four names a personality trait at all.
- Missing the parallel with Part of it was cultural, which sets an internal cause against an external one.
Blanks that want an abstract noun matching the frame around it are set at 23 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.21, where a summary assessment is the answer, and at 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.24, where the phrase is under poverty.
The same passage runs from English Q.21 to Q.25 here.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.