English MCQs – Page 47 (Q461-470)

The correct answer is ''junior than' should be 'junior to'' because 'junior', a Latin-derived comparative adjective, takes the preposition 'to' rather than 'than', following the same pattern as other Latin-origin comparatives like 'senior', 'superior', and 'inferior'. This exception to the standard English comparative-plus-than rule stems from these words retaining their original Latin comparison structure. Confusing 'junior to' with the ordinary 'than' pattern used for regular comparatives is a frequently tested error in competitive English grammar sections.

The correct answer is ''poors' should be 'poor'' because 'the poor', when used to refer to poor people as a group, is already an inherently plural expression formed by adding 'the' before the adjective, and it should never take an additional '-s' ending. This same pattern applies to other adjectives used generically for groups of people, such as 'the rich', 'the elderly', 'the unemployed', and 'the disabled', none of which are pluralized with '-s' despite referring to multiple people collectively.

The correct answer is ''is always late' should be 'are always late'' because in the construction 'one of those girls who...', the relative pronoun 'who' refers back to the plural antecedent 'girls', not the singular 'one', requiring the plural verb 'are' in the relative clause. This is a frequently tested and subtle agreement rule, since students often mistakenly match the relative clause verb to the nearer singular word 'one' rather than correctly identifying the true plural antecedent that the relative pronoun logically refers to.

The correct answer is ''have read' should be 'read'' because Present Perfect tense cannot be combined with a specific, definite past time expression like 'last month', which requires Simple Past tense instead. This is the same tense-incompatibility error seen whenever Present Perfect is mistakenly paired with words like 'yesterday' or 'in 2015', all specifying an exact point in the past that conflicts with Present Perfect's deliberately unspecified timing. Recognizing definite past time markers as signals for Simple Past is essential.

The correct answer is 'Not only was he late, but he also forgot his documents' because 'not only' at the start of a sentence triggers subject-auxiliary inversion in the first clause, 'was he late' rather than 'he was late', while the second clause follows standard word order paired with 'but...also'. The distractor options either fail to invert the first clause, misplace 'also' awkwardly at the sentence's end, or fail to invert while still attempting the correlative structure, all breaking this specific emphatic inversion pattern.

The correct answer is 'Rarely does she complain about her workload' because negative frequency adverbs like 'rarely', when placed at the start of a sentence for emphasis, trigger subject-auxiliary inversion using do-support, giving 'does she complain' rather than ordinary word order. This mirrors the inversion pattern required by similar adverbs like 'never', 'seldom', and 'hardly ever' when fronted. The distractor options scramble the required word order or fail to properly invert the auxiliary and subject.

The correct answer is 'So difficult was the exam that many students failed' because fronting 'so' plus an adjective for emphasis, 'so difficult', triggers subject-verb inversion in the clause that follows, giving 'was the exam' rather than 'the exam was'. This inversion pattern parallels the standard 'so...that' construction but adds emphatic fronting, a more advanced and formal stylistic variation frequently tested in inversion-focused grammar questions. The distractor options fail to invert the subject and verb correctly after the fronted adjective phrase.

The correct answer is 'Only after finishing his work did he go home' because restrictive adverbial phrases beginning with 'only', when placed at the start of a sentence for emphasis, trigger subject-auxiliary inversion with do-support, giving 'did he go' rather than 'he went' or 'he did go'. This inversion pattern applies to a range of 'only' expressions, including 'only then', 'only when', and 'only if', all requiring the same emphatic inverted structure when fronted at the beginning of a sentence.

The correct answer is 'Little did he know what awaited him' because the negative adverb 'little', when fronted at the start of a sentence for dramatic emphasis, triggers subject-auxiliary inversion with do-support, giving 'did he know' rather than ordinary word order, and the main verb remains in its base form 'know' since 'did' already carries the past tense. This is a distinctly literary inversion pattern, often used to build suspense in narrative writing, and is a favorite advanced structure tested in competitive English exams.

The correct answer is 'She returned home at 6 pm' because it avoids redundancy by using 'returned' alone without the unnecessary additions 'back' or 'again', both of which duplicate the meaning already built into the verb 'return'. The distractor options each add one or both of these redundant words, creating a pleonasm, an unnecessary repetition of meaning. Recognizing that certain verbs, like 'return', 'repeat', and 'revert', already contain a sense of repetition or backward motion is key to eliminating this common redundancy error.