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 rise in global temperature (1)__________ already occurred is leading to extreme weather events that bring (2)__________ heat waves and droughts, devastating floods and increasingly powerful hurricanes and tropical storms. The combination of these factors means the impact on human health is increasing and is (3)__________ accelerate. But there is room for hope, particularly if governments take action now to (4)__________ the pledges made at Glasgow in November 2021 and to go further in resolving the climate crisis. WHO is (5)__________ governments to lead a just, equitable, and fast phase out of fossil fuels and transition to a clean energy future.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 2.
- (a)maximise
- (b)mild
- (c)intense
- (d)minor
Answer
Why
Correct — C. The blank sits inside a list of what extreme weather events bring, and the other members of that list are 'devastating floods' and 'increasingly powerful hurricanes and tropical storms'.
Every modifier in the series scales the danger up, so the adjective in the blank has to do the same. Intense heat waves and droughts keeps the sentence consistent with the phrase governing it.
The slot also has to be filled by an adjective, and 'intense' is one: option (c).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)maximise — Maximise is a verb. The slot sits directly before a noun phrase and needs an adjective, so this option fails on word class before meaning is even weighed.
- (b)mild — Mild reverses the sentence. Heat waves called mild are not what 'extreme weather events' bring, and the neighbouring modifiers all point the other way.
- (d)minor — Minor downgrades in the same direction, and it clashes with the passage's own claim, two lines later, that the impact on human health is increasing.
Concept
A vocabulary blank in a cloze is decided by the words around it, not by which option looks hardest. Two filters do the work here.
First word class: the slot is an attributive adjective standing before 'heat waves and droughts', which removes any verb on the list without further thought.
Second direction: the passage escalates throughout — extreme, devastating, increasingly powerful — so a modifier that softens the noun would contradict the sentence containing it.
Reading the sentence to its end, rather than only the words touching the blank, is what separates 'intense' from 'mild'.
The set here rules out one option on word class and two on direction, so both filters are needed to get down to a single answer. A candidate who applies only the meaning test still has to notice that maximise cannot modify a noun.
Key facts
- Intense means extreme in degree or strength.
- Maximise is a verb meaning to make as great as possible, and it cannot modify a noun directly.
- Mild and minor both scale a noun down, which is why either contradicts 'extreme weather events'.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing 'maximise' because it looks like the most technical word on the list, without testing whether a verb fits the slot.
- Filling the blank from its immediate neighbours alone, when the phrase that decides it, 'extreme weather events', sits earlier in the sentence.
The same mild-against-severe axis is tested as a straight vocabulary item asked 17 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.12, where the antonym of 'chronic' keys Mild. In a cloze the axis is hidden inside a sentence, so the escalating modifiers around the blank carry the signal.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.