English: Cloze Test for upcoming exams – Set 78

Direction: In the passage given below there are 6 blanks, each followed by a word given in bold. Every blank has four alternative words given in options (A),(B),(C) and (D). You have to tell which word will best suit the respective blank. Mark (E) as your answer if the work given in bold after the blank is your answer i.e “No change required

It was this private pondering, rather than the actual possession of a secret, that seemed crucial to health and well-being. People who reported thinking about their secrets less often than once a week over the course of the previous month had an average health index of 66 out of 100, compared with 49 for those who thought about their secrets every day. Similarly, those who thought little about their secrets had well-being scores close to zero, while those who thought about them a lot scored -2.

The types and numbers of secrets kept by members of these two contrasting groups, those who thought regularly about their secrets and those who did not, were not materially different. That their reactions to those secrets differed is therefore puzzling. Dr Slepian favours psychological explanations for the damage secrets do, such as the idea that they sometimes (1)        (confidence) unresolved issues, which thus (2)       (withdraw)  on thinking. But that neither explains the different responses nor gets to the heart of the matter. If keeping secrets is beneficial—which, (3)    (conjecturally), it often is—evolution might have been expected to have weeded out those who suffer as a consequence of doing so.

Perhaps such weeding is a work in progress, for deep secrecy of the sort people engage in becomes both possible and necessary only once language has come into being, and language is, itself, a recent evolutionary phenomenon. In the meantime, at least one human organisation (4)      (fulfill)  how to benefit from the burden imposed by secrecy. The Roman Catholic sacrament of penance and (5)        (accordance), commonly called confession, is a perfect response. It offers to lift that burden in a procedure that, though not cost free to the (6)     (reverend) is, itself, completely secret.

Snipers point out that IMF forecasts have been far from perfect. Some glitches are excusable. In the spring of 1990, it predicted that Kuwait’s economy would grow by 0.8% that year. It actually (7)       (alightly) 26%. The IMF’s model did not allow for an Iraqi invasion. But other errors are less easily explained: between 1990 and 2007, the IMF’s spring forecasts underestimated global growth in 13 of the 18 years, in large part because it failed to (8)      (discerned)  the spectacular rise of China.

Since the financial crisis, however, the IMF (9)         (have had) to revise down its forecasts over time every year since 2010 (see chart). The fund’s spring forecasts for the coming year have turned out to be over-optimistic in the past three years.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s boss, recently (10)       (relinquish) that economic growth in the past six years has been “disappointing”, but held firm in her belief that the world economy was turning. Hence the positive revision to its global GDP forecast—albeit by just a tenth of a percentage point.

The global economy may still (11)       (fluctuated) for a number of reasons. Ms Lagarde worries the rich world will suffer “self-inflicted wounds” from poor policy choices, notably on trade. Political uncertainty abounds. Just hours before the IMF released the WEO came the surprising news of a/an (12)         (imminent) election in Britain. The known unknowns hardly help, either. Mr Trump’s fiscal policies, for example, are far from firm plans—Maurice Obstfeld, the IMF’s chief economist, calls them “a work in progress”.

1. A) firm
   B) distress
   C) serenity
   D) concern
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option D
   
2. A) infringe
   B) intrude
   C) interlope
   D) pry
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option B
3. A) theoretically
   B) perhaps
   C) ostensibly
   D) presumably
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option D
   
4. A) completed
   B) finished
   C) has completed
   D) has worked out
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option D
5. A) harmony
   B) pardon
   C) reconciliation
   D) arbitration
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option C
6. A) priest
   B) confessor
   C) victim
   D) pastor
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option B
7. A) short by
   B) sort by
   C) fell by
   D) dropped to
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option C
8. A) provide
   B) fear
   C) prognosticate
   D) forsee
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option D
9. A) has has
   B) has been
   C) has being
   D) has had
   E) No correction required
   
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     Option D
10. A) recognized
    B) conceded
    C) condoned
    D) conformed
    E) No correction required
    
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      Option B
11. A) stutter
    B) totter
    C) pause
    D) falter
    E) No correction required
    
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      Option D
12. A) coming
    B) close
    C) looming
    D) nigh
    E) No correction required
    
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      Option E