Fill in the Blanks Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The blanks are filled, in order, by birth, soul, he, sown, it, to.

Read the passage with them in: 'Our country gave birth to a mighty soul, and he shone like a beacon. And yet he was done to death. It could only occur because the seed for it was sown in the poison of hatred and enmity... it is the duty of all of us to fight this poison.' Each word is forced by the grammar. 'Gave birth' is the idiom and 'soul' is the noun a person can be called. 'And he shone' needs a subject pronoun for the one who was killed. 'Seed ... sown' is the standard pairing. 'It is the duty' needs a dummy subject, and 'to fight' is the infinitive after 'duty of all of us'.

Option A has 'berth' (a sleeping place) and 'sole' (a fish or a foot part). Option B has 'shoal' and 'shown', and 'this' cannot be the subject of 'shone'. Option C has 'they', which does not agree with the singular 'he' who was killed, and 'two' for 'to'. These are the homophone traps the question is built on.

Answer: C

The answer is could: 'When I was a child, I could understand adults but now I don't.'

'Could' is the past form of 'can' and expresses ability in the past, which is what the sentence contrasts with the present ('but now I don't').

'Do' is present tense and does not fit 'When I was a child'. 'Should' expresses obligation or advice, and 'must' expresses necessity; neither describes a past ability.

Answer: D

The answer is may: 'He may be lazy, but he is not stupid.'

'May' here makes a concession: it admits something may be true before the contrast introduced by 'but'.

'Needn't' expresses lack of necessity, 'mustn't' prohibition, and 'shall' future or obligation; none of them fits the pattern of conceding a point before 'but'.

Answer: D

The answer is must: 'He must have escaped by this window because it has been broken open.'

'Must have' with a past participle expresses a confident deduction about the past from present evidence: the broken window is the evidence.

'Need have' is used mainly in negatives and questions, 'dare have' is not used this way, and 'ought have' is ungrammatical (it would need 'ought to have', which expresses obligation, not deduction).

Answer: C

The missing word is ones.

The blank stands in for a plural noun already used in the sentence: 'litigation cases' contrasted with 'corporate cases'. To avoid repeating 'cases', English uses the pronoun ones, which must agree in number with the noun it replaces, so the plural ones is needed: 'You can do litigation cases but you also have to do the corporate ones.'

'One' is singular and would not agree with 'cases'. 'Too' is an adverb and cannot follow 'the corporate' as a noun. 'Those' is a demonstrative that cannot take the article 'the' and an adjective before it.

Answer: A

The answer is at, in: Look at the sportsman in the picture, who is he?

The verb look takes at before the thing being looked at. Something shown within a picture, photograph or painting is in it: the man in the photo.

Look on means to watch without taking part, and on the picture would mean on its surface, like a mark. Look in means to look inside something, and at the picture would describe the position of the sportsman next to it.

Answer: C

The answer is in: You may write in ink.

When naming the medium or material of writing, English uses in: write in ink, in pencil, in capitals, in English.

With goes with the instrument rather than the medium: write with a pen. By and on are not used with ink in this sense; one writes on paper.

Answer: A

The answer is with: They will be extremely vexed with me.

Vexed (annoyed) takes with before a person and at or about before a thing: vexed with someone, vexed at the delay.

Since the object here is a person, me, with is correct. Vexed of and vexed from are not used. At is the near-miss, but it belongs with a situation, not a person.

Answer: D

The answer is up: She was able to conjure up the spirits of the dead.

Conjure up is a phrasal verb meaning to call up a spirit by magic, or more loosely to bring something to mind: the music conjured up memories of home. (The paper prints sprits for spirits.)

Conjure for, conjure upon and conjure on are not idiomatic. The old use conjure alone (to appeal to someone solemnly) does not fit this sentence either.

Answer: B

The answer is for: Paul always had a knack for a good story.

A knack is a natural skill or talent, and it takes for (a knack for languages) or, in an older pattern, of before a verb in -ing (a knack of making friends).

Before a noun phrase like a good story, for is the natural choice. Knack with and knack at are not standard.