IAE Academy

GATE 2018 EE GA Q.1: solution and answer

GATE 2018 · EEGA Q.1 · 1 mark · MCQ

“Since you have gone off the ______, the ______ sand is likely to damage the car.”

The words that best fill the blanks in the above sentence are

  1. (A)

    course, coarse

  2. (B)

    course, course

  3. (C)

    coarse, course

  4. (D)

    coarse, coarse

See the question in the paper
GATE 2018 EE GA question 1Tap to open full size

Answer and solution

ANSWER

(A) course, coarse

Official answer: ASource: Official answer key, GATE 2018 EE (IIT Guwahati)

  1. The options use two homophones, words that sound the same but mean different things. Course is a noun meaning a path, route or track. Coarse is an adjective meaning rough, or made of large grains.

  2. First blank: "gone off the ______" needs a noun after the article "the", because the phrase is the object of "gone off". To leave the path or track you were meant to follow is to go off the course. "Coarse" is an adjective and cannot stand alone as that object, so (C) and (D) are ruled out.

  3. Second blank: "the ______ sand" needs an adjective describing the sand. Rough, large-grained sand is coarse sand, and that is the kind likely to damage a car. "Course sand" makes no sense, so (B) is ruled out.

  4. Check the whole sentence: "Since you have gone off the course, the coarse sand is likely to damage the car." It is grammatical and it makes sense, so the answer is (A).

KEY IDEA

Homophones: tell them apart by what each blank needs grammatically. After "the" with nothing following, the blank needs a noun (course = path or track). Before a noun such as "sand", it needs an adjective (coarse = rough, large-grained).

WATCH OUT FOR

Picking by sound or by spelling habit, for example choosing (B) or (D) on the idea that the same word fills both blanks. Also mixing the two up and writing "coarse" for a route. Always ask whether the gap needs a noun or an adjective.

From the GATE 2018 EE paper. Every question of this paper · Download the full paper · All 32 Grammar & vocabulary questions, with notes

More Grammar & vocabulary questions