SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 18 of 100

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.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the option that can substitute/replace the bracketed word correctly and complete the sentence. If he runs, he (get) there in time.

(a)got there in time
(b)will get
(c)is getting
(d)has to get

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The trigger is the present-simple if-clause: If he runs.

That is an open (first) conditional — a real possibility, not a hypothesis. English pairs it with will + base verb in the result clause, so the bracketed (get) becomes will get.

Running is the condition, arriving on time the predicted result, and option (b) is the form that keeps the condition open.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
got there in time — Got is past simple, and a condition still open cannot deliver a result already finished. A hypothetical reading would need the second conditional — If he ran, he would get — which the present-tense runs rules out.
(c)
is getting — Is getting is present continuous, which reports an action already under way or an arrangement already fixed. The result of an open condition has not started yet, so the continuous cannot carry it.
(d)
has to get — Has to states an obligation, not a prediction. It makes arriving on time a duty that running imposes, when the sentence is forecasting what running will achieve.

Concept

The first conditional describes something that may really happen. The condition takes the present simple, the result takes will + base verb.

Keep the tenses on their own sides of the comma. The if-clause never takes will in this pattern — If he will run is wrong — and the result clause is where will belongs.

Step the whole thing back one tense and you get the other patterns: If he ran, he would get there in time (unreal present), If he had run, he would have got there in time (unreal past). Nothing here licenses either, because runs is present.

The bracket holds only the bare verb (get), so you supply the form, not the words around it. Both will get and has to get are grammatical English after this if-clause — the question is which one a conditional predicts with, and that is will.

Key facts

First conditional: if + present simple in the condition, will + base verb in the result.
The if-clause of a first conditional does not take will.
The second conditional steps back one tense — If he ran, he would get there in time.

Study next

Zero, first, second and third conditionals and the tense pair each one usesUnless, in case and provided that as alternatives to ifPresent simple after time words such as when, until and as soon as for future meaning

Common traps

Putting will inside the if-clause
Choosing a past form because the sentence describes one particular occasion
Reading has to get as a prediction when it states an obligation

SSC prints the verb bare in brackets and gives no instruction about tense — the form is forced by the tense already printed around the blank.

The same bracket-and-replace format is also asked at 18 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.3, where (seek) keys Sought, and at 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.16, where a reported clause keys didn't.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.