In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option, in the questions that follow, to fill in each blank. Listening starts with hearing but goes (1)___________. Hearing, in other words, is necessary, but is not a sufficient (2)___________ for listening. Listening involves hearing with attention. Listening is a process that (3)___________ concentration. While listening, one should also be observant. In other words, listening has to do with the ears, (4)____________ with the eyes and the mind. Listening is to be understood as the total process that involves hearing with attention, being observant and making interpretations. Good communication is essentially a/an (5)___________ process.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 5.
- (a)interactive
- (b)obnoxious
- (c)pecuniary
- (d)onerous
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The sentence is Good communication is essentially a/an (5)___________ process.
The paragraph has just defined listening as hearing with attention, being observant and making interpretations - a listener doing work rather than receiving passively.
Interactive means involving action between two sides, which is the word for a process in which speaker and listener both contribute. It is also the one positive word on this list, and the sentence calls the process good.
The rest describe unpleasantness, money and burden, none of which the passage raises. Option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)obnoxious — Obnoxious means extremely unpleasant or offensive. Calling good communication an obnoxious process contradicts the sentence's own adjective.
- (c)pecuniary — Pecuniary means relating to money. Nothing in the passage concerns cost or payment, so the word is a pure vocabulary check with no foothold in the argument.
- (d)onerous — Onerous means burdensome, involving much effort. The passage does say listening demands concentration, but it never calls communication a burden, and good rules that reading out.
Concept
The last blank of this passage is a summary blank: it asks for the word the whole paragraph has been building towards.
The paragraph defines listening as attention, observation and interpretation, all of them things the listener does. Communication is therefore two-sided, and the word for two-sided is interactive.
Note the printed a/an. The article is written both ways, so it tells you nothing about whether the answer begins with a vowel.
For a summary blank, do not test each option in the sentence alone. Test it against the paragraph's argument.
Three of the four options are negative or irrelevant - obnoxious, pecuniary, onerous - while the sentence being completed begins Good communication. A polarity check finds the answer before you have to weigh definitions.
Key facts
- Interactive means involving two-way action between people, or between a person and a system.
- Obnoxious means extremely unpleasant or offensive.
- Pecuniary means relating to or consisting of money.
- Onerous means involving a great deal of effort or difficulty.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking onerous because the passage says listening calls for concentration, which sounds like effort.
- Reading the printed a/an as a hint, when it is written that way to remove the hint.
Vocabulary blanks in a cloze are answered from the paragraph's argument, not from the blank sentence alone.
The same paragraph runs a collocation blank at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.22 (condition) and a phrasal-verb blank at English Q.23 (calls for), so its five blanks test different skills one after another.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.