Sentence Structure & Transformation — Voice, Narration, Jumbles & Cloze

Simple statements are the easy half. The marks are decided by imperatives, questions, sentences with two objects, and the impersonal "It is said that…" pattern. Each has a fixed template — there is nothing to reason out, only to recognise.

Which verbs refuse the passive? Two families. (a) Intransitive verbs — they have no object at all, so there is nothing to promote: sleep, arrive, die, happen, occur, exist, rise, fall, seem, appear, come, go. "He slept" has no passive. (b) Stative verbs of possession, resemblance and measurement, even though they look transitive: have (= possess), resemble, lack, suit, fit, become (= look good on), cost, weigh (= measure), contain, comprise, consist of. "She resembles her mother" and "The bag weighs two kilos" have no passive.

Reporting somebody else's words changes four things and nothing else: the reporting verb, the tense inside the quotation, the pronouns, and the words of time and place. Work through them in that order and the answer builds itself. Also remove the inverted commas and the comma after the reporting verb.

Move one, the reporting verb. say with no listener stays said; say to a listener becomes told. So "He said to me, …" becomes "He told me that …", never "He said me that". Move two, the tense: if the reporting verb is in the past, every tense inside the quotation steps one pace back into the past.

The four changes above handle a plain statement. A command, a question or an exclamation additionally needs a new reporting verb and a new link word, and it stops being a quotation at all — it becomes an ordinary clause with ordinary statement word order. That last point is the single biggest source of wrong answers.

1. Exclamations lose their interjection and gain an intensity word: "What a beautiful bird!" → He exclaimed that it was a very beautiful bird. Alas becomes with sorrow, Bravo/Hurrah becomes with joy, Oh/What becomes with surprise.
2. A greeting is reported with its function, not its words: "Good morning, sir," he said. → He wished me good morning. "Thank you," she said. → She thanked me.
3. When one quotation holds two sentences of different types, each gets its own reporting verb joined by and: He said, "I am busy. Please come tomorrow." → He said that he was busy and requested me to go the next day.
4. Vocatives move into the reporting clause: He said, "Ram, come here." → He asked Ram to go there. The name becomes the object of asked, so you inside the quotation would follow it under the SON rule.

Transformation questions ask you to rewrite a sentence without altering its meaning. The test is mechanical: each pair of shapes has a fixed hinge word. Learn the hinges and you can convert in both directions. A simple sentence has one finite verb; a compound sentence joins two independent clauses with and, but, or, so, yet; a complex sentence has a main clause plus a subordinate clause beginning with that, because, as, when, though, if, so that.

• Assertive → exclamatory: "It is a very sad sight." → How sad a sight it is! or What a sad sight it is! Use How before an adjective, What before a noun phrase.
• Interrogative → assertive: "Who does not love his country?" → Everyone loves his country. A rhetorical question in the negative equals a strong positive statement.
• Compound → complex with so that: "He worked hard and so he passed." → He worked so hard that he passed.
• Never leave a double comparative or double superlative: more better, most best, more taller are all wrong. One marker of degree is enough.

The paper gives four or five sentences labelled A, B, C, D (sometimes with the first and last fixed) and four possible orders. Never assemble the paragraph from scratch — work with the options, because they narrow four factorial possibilities down to four. The method below takes under a minute.

1. Find the opener. An opening sentence has a full noun phrase as its subject, uses a / an for a first mention, and contains no backward-pointing word (he, this, such, therefore, however, also). Cross out every option whose first sentence fails this test.
2. Follow the pronoun chain. A pronoun or possessive must come after the noun it stands for. If sentence C says "He fixed a meter" and only sentence B names an engineer, then B must precede C — and any option with C before B is dead.
3. Follow the article chain. A committee comes before the committee; the indefinite article introduces, the definite article refers back.
4. Read the connectors as arrows. However, but, on the contrary point back to something they contradict. Therefore, hence, as a result, so point back to a cause. Moreover, also, in addition point back to a first item. For instance points back to a general claim.
5. Respect time order. At once, immediately precede within a month, which precedes within a year, which precedes today. Chronology beats intuition.
6. Spot mandatory pairs. Some sentences cannot be separated: on the one hand … on the other hand; a question and the sentence that answers it; not only … but also. Find one such pair and usually three options collapse at once.
7. Check the closer. Summarising language (in short, thus, perhaps the real question is) and the widest, most general statement belong at the end.

Worked example 1. Arrange A, B, C, D. A. The idea spread to three neighbouring buildings within a year. B. A young engineer in Pune noticed that his building was wasting water. C. He fixed a small meter to every tap and pinned the weekly readings in the lobby. D. Consumption fell at once, because the residents had never known how much they used. Options:
(1) B-C-A-D
(2) B-D-C-A
(3) B-C-D-A
(4) C-B-D-A.

Reasoning. Openers first: C begins with He, so option 4 dies immediately. B is the only sentence with a full indefinite noun phrase — A young engineer — so B opens. Pronoun chain: C's He is that engineer, so C follows B; option 2 (B-D-C-A) breaks nothing yet, so check the time words. D says the fall came at once, A says the spread took within a year — so D precedes A, killing option 1 (which puts A before D). Between 2 and 3: D reports a fall in consumption, which can only happen after the meters are fixed in C, so C must come before D. Option 3, B-C-D-A, is correct.

Worked example 2 (first and last sentence fixed). S1. Public libraries are often called a luxury that a poor country cannot afford. A. On the one hand, they cost very little compared with a school or a hospital. B. This description survives because the benefits of a library are hard to count. C. On the other hand, what they offer — a quiet room, a shelf of books, a free newspaper — is unavailable to most households at any price. D. Both facts point the same way, yet neither appears in a budget. S6. Perhaps the accounting, rather than the library, is what needs reform. Options:
(1) A-C-B-D
(2) B-A-C-D
(3) B-C-A-D
(4) A-B-C-D.

Reasoning. Start with the mandatory pair: on the one hand (A) must be immediately followed by on the other hand (C). Option 3 puts C before A — dead. Option 4 puts B between them — dead. Now the demonstrative chain: B's This description can only refer to the description in S1 ("a luxury… cannot afford"), so B must sit right after S1; that kills option 1, which opens with A. Option 2, B-A-C-D, is correct — and it also ends sensibly, since D's Both facts summarises A and C, and its mention of a budget hands the topic to S6's accounting.

A cloze passage removes five or so words and offers four candidates for each gap. Only three kinds of evidence decide a gap. Collocation — which word habitually keeps company with its neighbours (heavy rain, not strong rain; city after city). Grammar-fit — what form the slot demands (a bare infinitive after a modal, a gerund after a preposition, singular agreement after each). Discourse logic — whether the sentence continues, contradicts, illustrates or concludes what came before.

Worked cloze passage. "A city's traffic problem is rarely solved by building wider roads. Every new lane fills almost as soon as it opens, __(1)__ drivers who previously avoided the route come back to it. Engineers call this induced demand, and it has been observed in city __(2)__ city. The remedy lies not in supply but in __(3)__: making a car journey cost what it really imposes on everybody else. __(4)__, a road that is free at the busiest hour is a road that will be crowded at the busiest hour. Until such choices are made, road-widening will __(5)__ nothing but a costlier form of congestion."

1. Gap 1 — because / although / unless / whereas. The second half states why the lane fills, so a cause connector is needed: because. Although and whereas would demand a contrast that is not there.
2. Gap 2 — after / by / to / with. Pure collocation: the fixed English pattern for repetition is "city after city", like day after day. Nothing else fits the idiom.
3. Gap 3 — demand / distance / decoration / duration. The sentence sets up "not in supply but in ___", and supply pairs with only one of these words: demand. Vocabulary questions inside a cloze are usually solved by such a pair.
4. Gap 4 — However / For instance / Nevertheless / On the contrary. The next sentence is a narrower illustration of the general remedy just stated, not a contradiction of it: For instance. Every other option points backwards in opposition.
5. Gap 5 — produce / product / producing / produced. Pure grammar-fit: after the modal will only a bare infinitive can stand, so produce. Note that this gap needs no meaning at all — the form settles it.

Three question formats share one skill. Sentence improvement underlines a part and asks for the best replacement, with "No improvement" as one option. Fill in the blanks removes one word — usually a preposition, a connector or a verb form. Spotting the error splits the sentence into four labelled parts and asks which part contains the mistake, with "No error" sometimes offered. In all three, you are hunting for a violated rule, not for a nicer style.

1. Agreement. Find the real subject, ignore the words between: "The number of candidates who applied is large" — the subject is number, not candidates. With neither … nor and either … or, the verb follows the nearer subject.
2. Tense consistency. Since + a point of time needs a perfect tense; for + a length of time. "She has been working here for three years", not since three years.
3. Prepositions fixed by the verb. *prevent somebody from doing*, *look forward to doing*, *senior/junior to*, *superior/inferior to*, *insist on*, *comply with*, *married to*, *composed of*.
4. Pronoun case and reference. After a preposition and after let, use the object form: *between you and me*, *let him go*. A pronoun must have exactly one possible antecedent.
5. Parallelism. Items in a list must share a form: "She likes reading, writing and painting", never "reading, writing and to paint".
6. Redundancy. the paper punishes doubled meaning: return back, repeat again, reason because, more better, cousin brother, discuss about. Delete the extra word.
7. Countability and quantifiers. fewer / number for countables, less / amount for uncountables; each / every / one of takes a singular verb but one of takes a plural noun: "one of my friends".