SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 19 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 9 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Fill in the blank with the correct option: He spoke so ___ that the audience was mesmerized.

(a)fluently
(b)fluent
(c)fluented
(d)fluency

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The blank describes how he spoke, so it modifies the verb spoke. A word that modifies a verb is an adverb.

In so ___ that, so is a degree word and needs an adjective or an adverb after it. With an action verb it must be the adverb: spoke so fluently that.

Fluently is the adverb → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
fluent — Fluent is an adjective. It needs a noun or a linking verb: a fluent speaker, he was so fluent. It cannot describe how someone spoke.
(c)
fluented — Fluented is not a word. Fluent is an adjective, not a verb, so it has no -ed form.
(d)
fluency — Fluency is a noun, and a bare noun cannot follow the degree word 'so'. With a noun you need such: he spoke with such fluency that the audience was mesmerized.

Concept

Adjective or adverb is decided by what the word describes. Adjectives describe nouns: a fluent speaker. Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives and other adverbs: she speaks fluently.

Linking verbs such as be, seem and become take an adjective: he was fluent. Action verbs take an adverb: he spoke fluently.

The so ... that frame shows a result: so plus an adjective or adverb, then a that-clause saying what followed. Its noun partner is such ... that.

The blank has to fit two things at once, the degree word so and the action verb spoke. Fluently is the form that satisfies both.

Key facts

An adverb, not an adjective, modifies an action verb: he spoke fluently.
Linking verbs such as be and seem take an adjective: he was fluent.
So is followed by an adjective or adverb, such by a noun phrase: so fluently, such fluency.
Fluent has no verb form, so fluented is not a word.

Study next

So ... that versus such ... that in result clausesAdjective-adverb pairs that get confused: good and well, real and really, quick and quicklyLinking verbs that take adjectives: feel, look, seem and become

Common traps

Choosing fluent because so fluent sounds natural, without checking that the verb is spoke
Choosing fluency because with such fluency is correct, forgetting the blank follows so, not such

A one-sentence blank with four forms of one word is a word-class test: work out what the blank modifies, then pick the matching form.

The same adverb-after-verb rule is also tested at 15 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.21, a sentence-improvement item on He speaks English good, keyed well.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.