Sentence Completion Home Exercise – 01, Directions for questions 1 to 5

Directions for questions 1 to 5: Each sentence in this part has one or two missing elements, as indicated by a series of dashes. Following the sentence, you will see lettered words or sets of words. Choose the word or set of words that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

1.       In their preface, the collection’s editors plead that certain of the important articles they – --- were published too recently for inclusion, but in the case of many such articles, this _____ is not valid.

A.      Discussed ---- replacement      B. omitted ----- excuse    C. revised  ------- clarification               D. disparaged ----- justification

2.       Although their initial anger had ____ somewhat, they continued to _____ the careless worker who had broken the machine.

A.      Blazed ----- assail           B. diminished ----- appease      C. abated  ------ berate                            D. subsided   ------condone

3.       There is something ______about the way the building of monasteries proliferated in eighteenth – century Bavaria, while in the rest of the Western world religious ardor was _____ and church building was consequently declining.

A.      Enigmatic ------- coalescing     B. destructive ----- changing.    C. immutable -------- dissipating   D. incongruous -------- diminishing

4.       Observable as a tendency of our culture is a ______ of ____ psychoanalysis: we no longer feel that it can solve our emotional problems.

A.      Divergence ----- certainty about      B. confrontation ------enigmas in      C. withdrawal ------ belief in     D. defense ------- weaknesses in

5.       For centuries animals have been used as _____ for people in experiments to assess the effects of therapeutic and other agents that might later be used in humans.

A.      Surrogates     B. companions     C. examples   D. precedents

Sentence Completion HE- 01

 

1.       B   The excuse of the editors is not valid, because all the articles that were omitted were not omitted solely because they were published late. This is the essence of the sentence; hence the correct option is “omitted …. Excuse.”

2.       C     Focus on the second blank first. The “careless worker who broke the machine “will obviously not be appeased or condoned. And the first blank is something akin to reduced , because “ initial anger…. They continued” construction. Hence the first one can’t be blazed or intensified.

3.       D    The end of the sentence gives a vital clue “church building was consequently declining”, so the religious ardor must be running low. Hence the second blank can be either dissipating or diminishing. And the first blank can’t be immutable (something that cannot be changed) since it doesn’t fit in the context here.

4.       C     “we no longer feel that it can solve your emotional problems”, hence it is logical to assume that we would not believe in it any more. This is expressed in “withdrawal …. Belief in”. No other option fits here.

5.         A      The moment you see “animals” and “experiments” the first word that comes to mind is “surrogate.”