In the following passage, there are blanks each of which has been numbered.…
2024
In the following passage, there are blanks each of which has been numbered. These numbers are printed below the passage and against each, four words have been suggested, one of which fills the blank appropriately.
Recently the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) (___1___) separate reports on poverty. The World Bank raised its benchmark of extreme poverty by 25 cents from $1 per person per day to $1.25 per person a day. The ADB announced an even (___2___) benchmark of $1.35 per person a day. These new benchmarks are based on surveys in the world’s poorest countries. Experts often like to claim that poverty has declined because of economic growth in India and China. This is wrong and (___3___). In the past twenty-five years the poverty rate in India has (___4___) by less than one percentage point a year. Whether we use a poverty line of $1 per person per day or $1.25 per person per day makes little difference. The number of poor in India is large. The purpose of these statistics is not to dispute them but to (___5___) whether the benefits of economic growth are being shared with the poor.
Find out the appropriate word in 1st case.
- A.
released
- B.
edited
- C.
printed
- D.
issue
Attempted by 2 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept: In a cloze passage, a candidate word must clear two independent gates. First, FORM: its grammatical form must agree with the sentence frame and with the tense the narration has established. Second, COLLOCATION: the word must be the one a fluent writer naturally pairs with the sentence’s actual object. Words from the same family are separated by which object each one licenses, so identify the object first, then test each word against it.
Application: The blank’s object is “separate reports on poverty”, and the narration is past tense throughout (“announced”, “raised”). The sentence reports two institutions making their poverty findings public. “Released” is the standard collocation for an official body making a document publicly available for the first time — an organisation releases a report — and its past form agrees with the surrounding narration. So the sentence reads: “Recently the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released separate reports on poverty.”
Contrast — testing the other words against the same object:
“Edited” pairs with a draft or manuscript: it names the internal act of revising and correcting written material, a step that happens before anything reaches an audience. It does not describe an institution’s public act.
“Printed” pairs with pages and paper: it names the mechanical reproduction of a document. A report can be printed and still never leave the building, so this word describes the medium rather than the institutional act the sentence reports.
“Issue” fails at the FORM gate before meaning is even reached: it is the base/present form, while the narration is consistently past. A base form cannot occupy this slot.
Cross-check: substitute the chosen word back into the passage — “the World Bank and the ADB released separate reports on poverty” — and read the next sentences. They discuss the reports’ benchmarks and findings as already known to the public, which presupposes that the reports have been made public. The passage’s own later verb “announced” confirms the same past-tense, public-disclosure register.