SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 20 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.

The following sentence has been divided into four segments. Identify the segment that contains a grammatical error. My sister and I / work very hard / nevertheless my brother does not do / any task assigned to him.

(a)work very hard
(b)My sister and I
(c)nevertheless my brother does not do
(d)any task assigned to him.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Nevertheless is a conjunctive adverb, not a coordinating conjunction, so it cannot join two independent clauses by itself.

'My sister and I work very hard' and 'my brother does not do any task assigned to him' are both complete sentences. With only 'nevertheless' between them, the result is a run-on.

Repair it with a coordinator — 'but my brother does not do' — or with punctuation: 'work very hard; nevertheless, my brother...'. The faulty segment is option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
work very hard — 'work' is right. The compound subject My sister and I is plural, so the plural verb form is the one required.
(b)
My sister and I — 'My sister and I' is the subject of the sentence, so the subject pronoun 'I' is correct — 'me' would have been the error.
(d)
any task assigned to him. — 'any task assigned to him' is a noun phrase with a reduced passive participle, short for 'any task that is assigned to him', which is standard English.

Concept

Conjunctive adverbs — nevertheless, however, therefore, moreover — link two ideas in meaning but have no grammatical power to join two clauses.

A coordinating conjunction (and, but, so) can hold two independent clauses together after a comma. A conjunctive adverb needs a full stop or a semicolon in front of it, and usually a comma after it.

So 'We work hard, however he does not' is a splice, while 'We work hard; however, he does not' is correct.

Error-spotting items are decided segment by segment. Read each of the four as though it stood alone and ask what work it is doing, rather than whether the whole sentence sounds odd.

Key facts

Nevertheless, however and therefore are conjunctive adverbs, not conjunctions.
Two independent clauses joined by nothing but a conjunctive adverb form a run-on sentence.
A conjunctive adverb joining two clauses takes a semicolon before it and a comma after it.

Study next

Conjunctive adverbs against coordinating and subordinating conjunctionsComma splices and run-on sentencesSubject-verb agreement with compound subjects joined by and

Common traps

Flagging 'My sister and I' because 'me' feels more natural — there is no preposition or verb here for an object pronoun.
Accepting 'nevertheless' because the sentence makes perfect sense — the fault is grammatical, not logical.

Error-spotting also runs at English Q.8 of this section, where 'bad injured' should read 'badly injured'.

Both are one-word faults planted inside an otherwise clean sentence, and in both the surrounding segments are deliberately correct.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.