Passage Completion Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Correct answer: stars

What early observers studied, and what the next clause calls heavenly bodies… fixed in the sky, are the stars. Sun and earth are single objects and would not explain the contrast between fixed and wandering lights.

Answer: A

Correct answer: bodies

Heavenly bodies is the established term in astronomy, and the passage needs it because it must cover both the fixed stars and the wanderers. Objects, things and entities are all possible English but none forms the standing phrase.

Answer: C

Correct answer: move

The wanderers are contrasted with what seemed fixed, and the very next clause explains the name planets or wanderers. Move about is the phrase that matches wandering; jump and run are too abrupt for slow drift across the sky, and roam about is a redundancy.

Answer: C

Correct answer: modern

The sentence turns from the ancient observers to the astronomers who found out what the outer planets are made of, so the blank marks the shift to the present day. Future astronomers could not already have discovered anything, and new and upstart describe the astronomers rather than their era.

Answer: B

Correct answer: and

The blank joins the last two items of the list Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and a list in English closes with and. Or would make the four alternatives, and nor requires a negative before it.

Answer: A

Correct answer: cold

The clause that follows is that any living thing… would instantly be frozen to death, and so… that requires the adjective to be the cause of the freezing. Cold is that cause; lukewarm and dull contradict it, and frigid, though close in meaning, is not used with so… that in this plain register.

Answer: B

Correct answer: land

The living thing is imagined arriving on a planet, and what one does on arrival at a planet's surface is land on it. Walk and stay presuppose it has already got there, and squat belongs to a different sense altogether.

Answer: C

Correct answer: planets

Nine planets are in question, four have just been dealt with, so of the five remaining must refer to planets. Stars and constellations are not planets, and meteors were never in the count.

Answer: C

Correct answer: resembles

Venus is being compared with the Earth in size, and resembles is the verb for being similar to something. Imitates would credit Venus with copying, identifies takes a different construction, and negates reverses the sense.

Answer: C

Correct answer: simple

The blank stands before truth that no two individuals are…, and a simple truth is the ordinary collocation for something obvious and unarguable. Clear and direct are used of statements rather than of truths, and a real truth is a redundancy.