There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Yet each day the flock produced eggs with calcareous shells though they apparently had not ingested any calcium from land which was entirely lacking in limestone.
Paragraph: Early in this century a young Breton schoolboy who preparing himself for a scientific career began to notice a strange fact about hens in his father's poultry yard. ___(1) ___. As they scratched the soil they constantly seemed to be pecking at specks of mica, a siliceous material dotting the ground. ___(2)___. No one could explain to Louis Kervran why the chickens selected the mica, or why each time a bird was killed for the family cooking pot no trace of the mica could be found in its gizzard. ___(3) ___. It took Kervran many years to establish that the chickens were transmuting one element into another. ___(4)___.
Sentence: Yet each day the flock produced eggs with calcareous shells though they apparently had not ingested any calcium from land which was entirely lacking in limestone.
Paragraph: Early in this century a young Breton schoolboy who preparing himself for a scientific career began to notice a strange fact about hens in his father's poultry yard. ___(1) ___. As they scratched the soil they constantly seemed to be pecking at specks of mica, a siliceous material dotting the ground. ___(2)___. No one could explain to Louis Kervran why the chickens selected the mica, or why each time a bird was killed for the family cooking pot no trace of the mica could be found in its gizzard. ___(3) ___. It took Kervran many years to establish that the chickens were transmuting one element into another. ___(4)___.
- Option 3
- Option 2
- Option 4
- Option 1
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
Analyzing the Paragraph:
Option 1: This introduces Kervran's initial observation about the hens. Placing the sentence here would prematurely discuss the eggs and their calcareous shells before the hens' behavior (pecking mica) is mentioned, disrupting the logical flow.
Option 2: The paragraph discusses how hens pecked at mica and connects it to the mystery of mica disappearing from their gizzards. Placing the sentence here would shift the focus from the hens' behavior to eggs, which is not yet relevant.
Option 3: The paragraph discusses the unsolved mystery of mica and the hens’ behavior. Adding the sentence here introduces the mystery of eggs with calcareous shells, which is connected to the prior observation but not yet resolved. This placement builds a logical bridge to Kervran's later investigations.
Option 4: After discussing the unexplained observations (hens and their behavior), this is the appropriate place to introduce the specific observation about eggs with calcareous shells. It naturally leads into Kervran's conclusion about element transmutation in the following sentence.
So, the correct option is (C): Option 4.
Top CAT Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions
- The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The return to the tailor is the juxtaposition of three key things for the mindful Indian shopper. The first is the conscious shift away from the homogeneity of fast fashion, the idea of a hundred other people owning exactly the same Zara trench coat or H & M pleated skirt. The second is an actual understanding of the waste behind the fast fashion market, and wanting not to contribute to that anymore. The last is the shift toward customisation and fit—the idea of having imaginations brought to life and to have them fit exactly; without paying exorbitant rates for that bespoke tailoring. For the individual with a keen fashion sense and a genuine desire to move away from the waste and uniformity of fast fashion without paying the premium for it that indie brands would invariably demand, the tailor is the perfect crossover. - The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. "Literature on screen" suggests something more capacious and defining than citation: the possibility that literary adaptations are at once cinema and literature.
2. Even though a growing number of films eligible for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium borrow that material from print journalism, franchise characters, television series, comic books, video games and toys, academic studies of adaptation remain stubbornly attached to literature as cinema’s natural progenitor.
3. It is as if adaptation studies, by borrowing the cultural cachet of literature, sought to claim its institutional respectability and gravitas even while insuring adaptation’s enduring aesthetic and methodological subordination to literature proper.
4. Beneath this contradictory notion of film adaptations as not merely hybrid texts but texts holding dual citizenship in two modes of presentation is an even more pervasive legacy that haunts adaptation studies: the assumption that the primary context within which adaptations are to be studied is literature. - Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: Productivity gains, once expected to feed through to broader living standards, now primarily serve to enhance returns to wealth.
Paragraph: Economists now argue that inequality is no longer a by-product of growth but a condition of it. ____ (1)____. Unlike wages, wealth reflects not just income but also access to assets, favourable institutional conditions—such as low interest rates—and public policies like low taxes and housing shortages. ____ (2)____. In other words, wealth depends on political choices in ways that income currently does not. It’s not just the inequality itself that is the issue but the erosion of mechanisms that once constrained it. ____ (3)____. Wealth and income inequality are linked, but where wages have stagnated and collective bargaining has weakened, capital income—derived from profits, rents and interest—has been boosted by design. ____ (4)____.
Para-Jumble Arrange the sentences in a coherent order:
- Knowledge acquired early in life is often treated as fixed.
- Yet, true mastery requires continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning.
- In rapidly changing environments, old frameworks become obsolete.
- People often cling to outdated assumptions even when proven wrong.
Top CAT Para Completion Questions
- The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. "Literature on screen" suggests something more capacious and defining than citation: the possibility that literary adaptations are at once cinema and literature.
2. Even though a growing number of films eligible for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium borrow that material from print journalism, franchise characters, television series, comic books, video games and toys, academic studies of adaptation remain stubbornly attached to literature as cinema’s natural progenitor.
3. It is as if adaptation studies, by borrowing the cultural cachet of literature, sought to claim its institutional respectability and gravitas even while insuring adaptation’s enduring aesthetic and methodological subordination to literature proper.
4. Beneath this contradictory notion of film adaptations as not merely hybrid texts but texts holding dual citizenship in two modes of presentation is an even more pervasive legacy that haunts adaptation studies: the assumption that the primary context within which adaptations are to be studied is literature. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: Productivity gains, once expected to feed through to broader living standards, now primarily serve to enhance returns to wealth.
Paragraph: Economists now argue that inequality is no longer a by-product of growth but a condition of it. ____ (1)____. Unlike wages, wealth reflects not just income but also access to assets, favourable institutional conditions—such as low interest rates—and public policies like low taxes and housing shortages. ____ (2)____. In other words, wealth depends on political choices in ways that income currently does not. It’s not just the inequality itself that is the issue but the erosion of mechanisms that once constrained it. ____ (3)____. Wealth and income inequality are linked, but where wages have stagnated and collective bargaining has weakened, capital income—derived from profits, rents and interest—has been boosted by design. ____ (4)____.
- The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. As books age, the cellulose and lignin in the paper begin to break down, releasing a mix of volatile organic compounds into the air.
2. Old books carry a scent that many people instantly recognize—and even love.
3. These compounds are benzaldehyde, which gives off an almond-like scent, vanillin, which smells like vanilla, ethyl hexanol (floral scent), toluene (sweet), and furfural (which has a slightly bready scent).
4. This familiar aroma isn’t just dust or mildew; it’s actually a result of slow chemical changes happening inside the paper and ink. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: While taste is related to judgment, with thinkers at the time often writing, for example, about “judgments of taste” or using the two terms interchangeably, taste retains a vital link to pleasure, embodiment, and personal specificity that is too often elided in post-Kantian ideas about judgment—a link that Arendt herself was working to restore.
Paragraph: \(\underline{(1)}\) Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment in order to highlight what he believed was a crucial but neglected historical change. \(\underline{(2)}\) Over the course of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, across Western Europe, the word taste took on a new extension of meaning, no longer referring specifically to gustatory sensation and the delights of the palate but becoming, for a time, one of the central categories for aesthetic—and ethical—thinking. \(\underline{(3)}\) Tracing the history of taste in Spanish, French, and British aesthetic theory, as Denneny did, also provides a means to recover the compelling and relevant writing of a set of thinkers who have been largely neglected by professional philosophy. \(\underline{(4)}\)
- The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: In each of the affected males, the genetic defect was located to the X chromosome in the region of p11-12.
Paragraph: The first suggested evidence of a human genetic mutation associated with aggressive behaviour came from a study in 1993. ____ (1)____. Genetic and metabolic studies were conducted on a large Dutch family in which several of the males has a syndrome of borderline mental retardation and abnormal behaviour. ____ (2)____. The undesirable behaviour included impulsive aggression, arson and exhibitionism. ____ (3)____. A point mutation was identified in the eighth exon of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) structural gene which changes glutamine to a termination codon. ____ (4)____.
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