18 February 2025 · Shift 2

Adverb usage error The sentence needs an adverb that tells us HOW the situation was handled, and that adverb must also suit the sense of the sentence. 'Brightly' means 'with strong light' or 'cheerfully'; it can describe a lamp, a colour or a smile, but it cannot describe the manner of dealing with a difficult situation. The adverb the sense demands is 'bravely' (or 'patiently'): 'Lily and her mother bravely handled the difficult situation.' The other three segments are sound - 'Lily and her mother' is a correct compound subject, and 'the difficult' with 'situation' forms a normal adjective-noun pair. Hence the segment carrying the adverbial error is 'brightly handled', option (c).

Antonym of 'construct' 'Construct' means to build something by putting parts together. The exact reversal of building is pulling down, and that is 'Demolish' - to destroy a structure completely. 'Detect' (to discover), 'Compensate' (to make good a loss) and 'Proceed' (to move on) name unrelated actions; none of them undoes an act of building. Hence option (c) is correct.

Antonym in context 'Antiquated' describes something that belongs to an earlier age and is no longer in use - old-fashioned. The sentence supplies the clue itself: it pairs 'both modern and antiquated', so the two words are deliberately set against each other. 'Contemporary' means belonging to the present time, so it is the true opposite of 'antiquated'. 'Obsolete', 'Ancient' and 'Outdated' are all synonyms of 'antiquated', not antonyms - that is the trap in this question. Hence option (b) is correct.

Adjective vs adverb Part (B) reads 'she draws the diagrams very careful'. Rule: a word that modifies a VERB must be an adverb. 'Careful' is an adjective and can qualify only a noun, as in 'a careful teacher'. Here the word tells us HOW she draws, so the adverb 'carefully' is required: 'she draws the diagrams very carefully'. Part (A) 'While teaching,' is a correct participial phrase and part (C) 'on the board.' is a correct prepositional phrase, so neither holds the error and 'no error' is ruled out. The faulty part is B, which is option (a).

Idiom substitution The underlined words say the team stayed hopeful in spite of setbacks, so the idiom must mean 'stayed cheerful and hopeful'. 'Keep one's chin up' means exactly that - to stay cheerful and optimistic while things are going badly. 'Keep a stiff upper lip' is the tempting choice, but it means to hide one's feelings and show no emotion in trouble; it says nothing about being hopeful. 'Keep a close eye' means to watch something carefully, and the real idiom behind option (d) is 'keep at bay', to hold something off - neither describes a mood. Hence option (a) is correct.

Antonym of 'arrogant' 'Arrogant' means proud and overfull of one's own importance. The sentence sets the two brothers against each other - 'One is arrogant whereas the other one is ___' - so the blank must take the opposite quality. 'Humble' means modest, with no sense of one's own superiority, which is that opposite. 'Rude' is bad manners rather than pride, while 'honest' and 'better' contrast with quite different qualities (dishonesty, inferiority). Hence option (a) is correct.

Meaning of an idiom 'The cat's pajamas' is American slang from the 1920s for a person or thing that is wonderfully good. So its meaning is 'excellent and outstanding'. E.g. 'Her new song is the cat's pajamas.' The wrong options all tempt you to read the words literally - pyjamas suggesting something soft and soothing, a cat suggesting something quiet or sly - but an idiom's meaning is never the sum of its words. Hence option (d) is correct.

Contextual word choice Two clues fix the blank: 'Much to his astonishment' and 'the ONCE chaotic office'. 'Once chaotic' says the disorder is over, and astonishment is possible only if the new state is the opposite of chaotic. 'Organized' means arranged in a neat, orderly way, so it supplies that contrast. 'Tumultuous', 'hectic' and 'disorganised' merely repeat the idea of chaos; with any of them nothing would have changed and there would be nothing to be astonished at. Hence option (b) is correct.

Adverb collocation A collocation is the word English habitually pairs with another; here we need the adverb that regularly follows 'waved'. The man is drowning and desperate to be seen, so the waving is wild and urgent. 'Wave frantically' is the established collocation for exactly that - hurried, panic-stricken movement. 'Softly' and 'poorly' contradict the urgency, and 'wave strongly' is simply not idiomatic English. Hence option (d) is correct.

Antonym of 'despair' 'Despair' is the complete loss of hope. Its opposite must therefore carry hope or confident belief, and 'Faith' - firm trust that things will turn out well - supplies exactly that. 'Appear' (to become visible), 'Clumsy' (awkward) and 'Incline' (to lean) belong to different fields of meaning altogether; none of them reverses a loss of hope. Hence option (a) is correct.

Antonym in a blank 'Bleak' means dreary and without hope; a bleak outlook is a gloomy one. The bracketed word is the one to be reversed, so the blank needs a word meaning bright and hopeful. 'Cheerful' - full of good spirits and optimism - gives that sense: 'a pretty cheerful outlook on old age'. 'Clean' is the opposite of dirty and 'blank' of full, neither of which is the sense of 'bleak'; 'stony' (showing no feeling) is close to 'bleak' in mood rather than opposite to it. Hence option (d) is correct.

Sentence improvement The original ends 'the engine part is no longer produced and that I require it', which tacks a second 'that' clause on after the statement is already complete. The sense wanted is: the part I need is not made any more. So 'that I require' must sit immediately after 'the engine part' as a relative clause, and the main verb must follow it. Option (b) gives 'the engine part that I require is no longer made' - one relative clause, one main verb, and the meaning kept intact. (c) 'has absent' is not a possible verb form; (d) 'which I needs' breaks subject-verb agreement (it must be 'I need'); (a) drops 'that I require' altogether and so loses the point that the speaker needs the part. Hence option (b) is correct.

Spelling correction The sentence spells the word 'cemetarry', which is wrong. The correct spelling is 'cemetery' - c-e-m-e-t-e-r-y, with 'e' in all three vowel positions and a single 'r'. Memory aid: it comes from the Greek 'koimeterion', a sleeping place - think cEmEtEry, three e's and no 'a'. 'cemetary' and 'cematery' each slip an 'a' into one of those positions, and 'cemmetarry' doubles both the 'm' and the 'r'. Hence option (d) is correct.

Doubling rule before -ing The sentence writes 'grantting'; the correct form is 'Granting'. Rule: the final consonant is doubled before -ing only when the verb ends in a single vowel + a single consonant (stop - stopping, plan - planning). 'Grant' ends in two consonants, 'n' followed by 't', so nothing is doubled: want - wanting, plant - planting, grant - granting. 'Grannting', 'Grainting' and 'Grenting' change the base word 'grant' itself, so none of them can be right. Hence option (c) is correct.

Phrase substitution 'A bold move' means a brave, risk-taking action, and the substitute must keep exactly that sense. 'Daring step' carries it word for word - 'daring' matches 'bold' and 'step' matches 'move' - so the sentence's meaning is untouched. 'Cautious approach' and 'timid action' turn boldness into carefulness or fear, and 'predictable response' calls the decision ordinary, which is the opposite of bold. Hence option (d) is correct.

Cloze: collocation Blank (76) follows 'the climate', so we need the noun English regularly pairs with it in this context. 'Climate crisis' is that fixed collocation - the accepted term for the emergency the planet faces. It also fits the logic of the passage: only a crisis could be 'deeply entangled' with social and racial issues, and only a crisis can be called 'the problem' later in the paragraph. 'Climate chapter', 'climate context' and 'climate case' are not established phrases and name no problem at all. Hence option (a) is correct.

Cloze: relative pronoun Blank (77) comes straight after the preposition 'in', and it refers back to 'issues' - things, not people. In the pattern preposition + relative pronoun, only 'which' may be used for things: 'the issues in which it is deeply entangled'. 'That' can never follow a preposition directly (we cannot say 'in that'), 'whom' is used only for people, and 'whose' shows possession and would need a noun after it. Hence option (a) is correct.

Cloze: fixed term Blank (78) again follows 'climate', and the sentence speaks of impacts that fall unequally on low-income and BIPOC communities. The standard term for the process that produces those impacts is 'climate change'. The phrase 'least responsible for the problem' confirms it: people are held responsible for an ongoing process, not for a 'challenge' or a 'measure', which are responses to it. 'Climate controlling' is not even grammatical after 'impacts of'. Hence option (c) is correct.

Cloze: fixed preposition Blank (79) follows the adjective 'responsible'. 'Responsible' takes the fixed preposition 'for' when it names the thing one is answerable for: 'least responsible for the problem'. Note the contrast: 'responsible to' is used for the PERSON one answers to ('responsible to the manager'), while 'in', 'by' and 'at' never follow 'responsible' at all. Hence option (b) is correct.

Cloze: superlative degree Blank (80) sits between 'the' and the past participle 'impacted', and the definite article before a describing word signals a superlative. A long word or a participle forms its superlative with 'most', so 'the most impacted' is the required phrase: these communities suffer the greatest impact of all. 'Big', 'drastic' and 'easy' are ordinary adjectives; none of them can stand before 'impacted' to describe a degree, and 'the big impacted' or 'the easy impacted' is not English. Hence option (c) is correct.