Sentence Improvement Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: knows

Know is a stative verb, describing a state rather than an activity, and stative verbs are not used in continuous tenses. The simple present is required: he knows the answer. The group is worth learning, since the error is extremely common in Indian English: know, believe, understand, remember, forget, want, like, love, hate, prefer, own, belong, contain, consist, seem and need. A few verbs are stative in one sense and dynamic in another, and then the continuous becomes correct: I am thinking about it means considering, while I think it is true expresses an opinion; he is having lunch means eating, while he has a car means possessing. The test is whether the verb describes something you do or something that simply is.

Answer: B

It is sturdy ... strong.

Fragile means easily broken, so both blanks must name qualities a fragile thing lacks, and the pair must agree with each other. Light and heavy contradict each other, which neither ... nor cannot accommodate.

Answer: B

It is complicated ... easy.

Although signals a contrast, so the two blanks must pull against each other. Confusing and hard, or difficult and lengthy, both point the same way and leave the although with nothing to do.

Answer: D

It is final ... conclusion.

A long-awaited conclusion belongs in the final book of a series, and the two words support each other. A plot or a hero can appear in any volume, and a conflict comes at the start rather than the end.

Answer: A

It is popular.

Having many friends is what popular means, so the second sentence explains the first. Intelligent, busy and talkative might each be true of her but none follows from having many friends.

Answer: C

It is apologized.

The blank needs a finite verb in the past, since the rude behaviour has already happened. Apologetic is an adjective and apologising a participle; neither can stand as the main verb of the sentence.

Answer: C

It should read to whom I sold.

Whom is the object form, and a preposition takes the object form - to whom. Sold is the past tense; sell would clash with was, and selled is not a word.

Answer: A

It is accepted.

To accept is to acknowledge or receive. To except is to leave out or exclude - a quite different verb that merely sounds alike, as the noun exception does beside acceptance.

Answer: D

It is charges.

A doctor's fees are the charges made for a consultation. Prices belong to goods, attacks and recrimination to the second sentence's accusations, not to what a practitioner asks.

Answer: C

It should read have been waiting.

Since the afternoon fixes a starting point, and an action continuing from a point in the past to now takes the present perfect continuous. The present continuous says nothing about when the waiting began.