Three Wrong Answers in the English Sectional
Priya has finished a 25-question English Language sectional and is reviewing the three items she got wrong. Item 7 asked her to pick the odd sentence out of five. The sentences were: (1) India's insurance penetration has hovered near 4 per cent of GDP for a decade. (2) Life insurance accounts for the bulk of this, while non-life remains thin by global standards. (3) Regulators have therefore pushed for wider distribution through bank branches and digital channels. (4) The monsoon arrived late in Kerala this year, delaying paddy sowing. (5) Yet distribution alone cannot help if products stay poorly understood by first-time buyers. Priya chose (3). Item 12 was a double blank - 'Although the scheme was widely ______, its benefits remained largely ______ among rural policyholders' - with options (A) publicised … unrealised, (B) criticised … unclear, (C) applauded … enormous, (D) launched … visible. She chose (B). Item 19 read: 'One of the main reasons for the low uptake of micro-insurance products are the absence of simple documentation.' Priya marked it as having no error.
1. Which sentence in Item 7 is the odd one out, and by what reasoning? Explain why sentence (3) is not the answer.
Read the worked answer
The odd sentence is (4), the monsoon sentence.
Test the paragraph by cohesion, not by topic-matching:
- (1) and (2) set up a single idea - penetration is low and life-heavy - with (2) beginning 'this', which points straight back to the 4 per cent figure in (1).
- (3) opens with 'therefore', a conclusion marker. It is structurally dependent on (1)–(2): wider distribution is the response because penetration is thin. A conclusion marker cannot stand on its own; it is evidence that (3) belongs.
- (5) opens with 'Yet', a contrast marker that pushes back against (3)'s distribution push. The (3)–(5) contrast is the paragraph's argumentative spine.
- (4) shares no lexical field with any of them - monsoon, Kerala and paddy link to nothing, and no connective in (1), (2), (3) or (5) refers forward or back to it. Remove (4) and the paragraph reads without a seam.
Priya chose (3) presumably because a sentence about regulators felt like a change of subject. That is a topic-level judgement. The right test is whether the sentence is tied in by a cohesive device: 'therefore' is a link, and links are exactly what an odd sentence lacks. A sentence that begins with a connective almost never is the odd one.
2. Resolve Item 12 and explain why Priya's choice fails, ruling out each option.
Read the worked answer
Correct answer: (A) publicised … unrealised.
'Although' signals a contrast between what was done and what resulted. The first blank must therefore describe a positive or at least earnest effort, and the second must describe a disappointing outcome in the same domain - with collocations that actually occur in English.
- (A) 'widely publicised' is a standard collocation; 'benefits remained largely unrealised' is the matching let-down. The contrast is effort versus outcome. ✓
- (B) 'widely criticised' is negative and 'unclear' is negative. Two negatives in the two halves do not generate the concession 'although' demands; the sentence reads as if the criticism and the uncertainty are the same fact. ✗
- (C) 'widely applauded' is positive, but 'benefits remained largely enormous' is incoherent - benefits cannot 'remain enormous' as a disappointing result, and 'enormous' cannot be hedged by 'largely' in this frame. ✗
- (D) 'widely launched' is acceptable, but 'benefits remained largely visible' collapses the contrast: visible benefits are exactly what a launch would produce, so 'although' has nothing to work against. ✗
Priya's error is a rule-of-thumb substitution. She has been taught that 'although' is followed by a negative idea, so she hunted for a negative first word and stopped at (B). The rule is really about opposition between the two halves, not the polarity of the first word. In double-blank items, always test the pair as a unit and check the second blank against the collocation the sentence demands - 'benefits remained largely ______' wants unrealised, unavailed, unknown - not simply a word of the right sign.
3. Item 19 was marked as having no error. Identify the error, state the rule precisely, and explain the specific mis-cue that made Priya miss it.
Read the worked answer
The error is 'are', which should be 'is'.
Rule: in the construction one of + plural noun + relative clause, the head of the subject noun phrase is 'one', which is singular. Everything from 'of' onwards is a prepositional string modifying 'one' and cannot govern the verb.
Parse it: subject = One … of the main reasons … for the low uptake of micro-insurance products. Strip the prepositional strings and the skeleton is 'One … is the absence of simple documentation.' Note that the complement, 'the absence of simple documentation', is itself singular, which independently confirms 'is'.
The mis-cue is proximity. The words immediately before the verb are 'micro-insurance products', plural, and before that 'reasons', also plural. English subject-verb agreement is not decided by the nearest noun but by the head of the subject - a mistake the paper deliberately engineers by stacking two plurals between 'One' and the verb.
Two practical checks Priya should adopt:
- Bracket the prepositional phrase. Read the sentence with 'of the main reasons … products' deleted. If the verb now sounds wrong, it is wrong.
- Watch 'one of the' specifically. It is the single most common agreement trap in this exam and always takes a singular verb in this frame - 'One of the reasons is', never 'are'.
Also note the sentence would be fully correct with 'is'; no other change is needed.