Direction: Choose the word that is closest in meaning (synonym) to the…

Concept: A synonym question asks for the word that carries the same core sense as the underlined word, so that substituting it preserves the sentence’s meaning. “Alleviate” means to make a problem, hardship, or burden less severe or intense — to lessen its degree, not to remove it fully.

Application: In “The government introduced several measures to alleviate poverty in rural areas,” alleviate describes the intended effect of the measures on poverty: making its severity smaller. Substituting “reduce” — “measures to reduce poverty” — keeps this exact sense of lessening a problem’s extent, so the sentence’s meaning is preserved.

Cross-check: Checking each remaining word against this same sense of lessening severity rules them out:

• “Increase” denotes a rise in quantity, size, or degree — the reverse of lessening something — so substituting it would flip the sentence’s meaning.

• “Observe” denotes watching, noticing, or remarking on something, with no sense of a change in magnitude at all.

• “Ignore” denotes deliberately disregarding something; disregarding a problem does not make it less severe.

So “reduce” is the word that keeps “alleviate”’s sense of lessening severity intact in this sentence.