Passage Correction Questions and Answers

Answer: C

It should read how the thief made.

The clause after we don't know is a noun clause, not a question, so it takes statement word order with no auxiliary: how the thief made his escape. Did also cannot stand beside the past tense made.

Answer: E

Correct answer: were

In a hypothetical or contrary-to-fact condition, the verb be takes the subjunctive form were for every subject, including I, he, she and it. Hence if I were in your position. This is the second conditional, whose pattern is if + past tense in the condition and would + bare infinitive in the result - and the result clause here, I would accept, is already correct. The subjunctive is used only where the situation is imagined or known to be untrue. Where the condition might genuinely be so, the ordinary past is correct: if he was at home yesterday, he must have heard the news. The same form survives in a handful of set expressions: if I were you, I wish I were taller, he talks as if he were the owner, and were it not for your help. Had been would move the sentence into the third conditional and change its meaning to a lost past opportunity.

Answer: C

Correct answer: was

As well as is a parenthetical phrase, not a conjunction joining two subjects. The subject remains the chief guest, singular, so the verb is was. The family of phrases that behaves this way is worth learning together: as well as, along with, together with, with, besides, in addition to, accompanied by, including and no less than. None of them changes the number of the subject. The deletion test is decisive: strike out the phrase and read what remains - the chief guest was served refreshments. The contrast is with and, which genuinely creates a compound plural subject: the chief guest and the students were served is correct. Examiners rely on the plural noun standing immediately before the verb, which pulls the ear towards the plural even when the grammar does not.

Answer: C

Correct answer: were

With neither…nor, the verb agrees with the subject nearer to it. The nearer subject here is his colleagues, plural, so the verb is were. This is the proximity rule, and it applies equally to either…or, not only…but also and to two subjects joined by or. Reversing the order reverses the answer: Neither his colleagues nor he was informed is also correct. Careful writers place the plural nearer the verb for exactly that reason, since a singular verb after a plural noun grates even when it is right. Keep this apart from the different construction neither of, which is always singular because the subject is neither itself: neither of the two proposals is acceptable. The proximity rule also does not touch and, which always yields a plural, or the parenthetical as well as, which leaves the number unchanged.

Answer: B

Correct answer: returned

Return already means to come or go back, so adding back repeats the idea. The correct form is simply he returned to his village. This is pleonasm - using more words than the sense requires - and English has a familiar set of such redundancies that examiners draw on: revert back, repeat again, reply back, join together, enter into a room, ascend up, descend down, connect together, final conclusion, free gift, new innovation, past history and advance planning. Most of them arise because the Latin prefix already carries the sense that the English particle repeats: re- means back, ad- means to, de- means down. Note that give back, come back and go back are perfectly correct, since those verbs carry no such prefix - the objection is to doubling, not to the word back itself.

Answer: C

Correct answer: has increased

The number of is singular and takes a singular verb: the number of applicants has increased. It contrasts directly with a number of, which means several and is plural: a number of applicants have withdrawn. The article alone decides the agreement, which is why this pair appears so often in examinations. The logic behind it is that the number names a single quantity - one figure - while a number of is simply a way of saying many, and the real subject is the plural noun that follows. A related pair works the same way: the majority of the work is done but the majority of the workers are absent - there the verb follows the noun after of, because majority takes its number from what it refers to.

Answer: A

It should read it was not until many years.

The idiom is it was not until X that Y - the negative is essential, since the sentence means Gandhi did not become a rebel for many years. Without not the sentence says the opposite of what it means.

Answer: C

Correct answer: No correction required

The sentence is already correct, so no improvement is required. The verb needed is lie, meaning to rest or recline, whose forms are lie – lay – lain – lying. It is intransitive: it takes no object, and the book simply rests where it is. The verb it is confused with is lay, meaning to put something down, whose forms are lay – laid – laid – laying. It is transitive and always needs an object: she laid the book on the table. The overlap that causes the trouble is that lay is both the base form of one verb and the past tense of the other. Laying on the table would therefore require something being put there; lied belongs to a third verb altogether, lie – lied – lied, meaning to tell an untruth.

Answer: B

Correct answer: that

After the same, the relative pronoun is that or as, not which. Here, since the very book is meant, that is correct: the same book that I lost. The choice between that and as carries a distinction worth knowing. The same…that means the identical thing; the same…as means one of the same kind. This is the same book that I lost is the book itself recovered; this is the same book as I lost is another copy of it. That is also the required relative after superlatives and after all, only, any, none, nothing and who - the best film that I have seen, all that glitters. What is wrong because it cannot follow an expressed antecedent: it already means the thing which, and would duplicate book.

Answer: E

Correct answer: have we

When a sentence opens with a negative or restrictive adverb, the subject and auxiliary are inverted, taking the word order of a question: rarely have we seen. The adverbs that trigger this are worth learning as a set: rarely, seldom, never, hardly, scarcely, barely, little, nowhere, no sooner, not only and phrases such as under no circumstances and at no time. The inversion happens only when the adverb is fronted. In normal order no inversion occurs: we have rarely seen such a performance is equally correct and needs no rearrangement. Did we have fails on a second count - the sentence already has the auxiliary have, and do is only supplied where no other auxiliary is present. A related pattern is not only…but also, which inverts the first clause: not only did he arrive late, but he also left early.