CAT 2025 Lesson : Sentence Insertion - Solved Examples

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Even though paralinguistic cues can be subtle, they’re “humanizing” reminders that whoever you’re listening to “is a thoughtful, feeling person,” said Juliana Schroeder, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Paragraph: _____(1)_____ There’s scientific rationale for why people prefer voice messages to texts in some situations: We can understand each other better when we actually listen. Research has shown that by hearing someone’s voice, even for a matter of seconds, people can pick up on what’s called “paralinguistic cues,” which we don’t have over text. _____(2)_____ Those cues — like someone speaking a little more loudly when they’re excited — help people convey their intended message, especially when it comes to communicating complex emotions like sarcasm or humor. _____(3)_____ Schroeder’s research has shown that not only are people more likely to have “empathic accuracy,” or a better understanding of the mental state a person is in when they hear instead of read what they’re saying, but they seem to find the person more sharp and relatable, too. _____(4)_____

(1) Option 1
(2) Option 2
(3) Option 3
(4) Option 4

Solution

In this paragraph, we learn why people prefer voice messages to text messages. One of the reasons is paralinguistic cues, which is also referred to in the given sentence. As the sentence before blank (2) introduces this topic, we can eliminate blank (1) for the given sentence.

Contextually, blank (3) is preferable to blanks (2) and (4) – the sentence after blank (2) explains what linguistic cues are, and it should immediately follow the sentence before blank (2). After that, we can have the part about humanising reminders, which is followed by our impression of the person (the speaker).

Therefore, we can eliminate the other options and select option 3 for this question.

Answer: (3) Option 3

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: More than a particular ancient civilization, it served as a transhistorical metaphor for civilization in general.

Paragraph: ________(1)_______ A key feature that distinguished neoclassicism from other aesthetic genres was its explicitly political character. ________(2)_______ The Rome of the early modern imagination, the inspiration for the philosophies of Niccolò Machiavelli and the plays of William Shakespeare, was the theatre of elite power struggles and popular unrest that provided the foundation for the taxonomy of politics itself. ________(3)_______ This Rome’s highest virtue was patriotism, and its gravest sin treason, for, without the hope of a Christian afterlife, its people led lives dominated by earthly affairs, amid a cosmos governed by capricious and unsympathetic forces. Even its great philosophers were lawyers, its great poets propagandists, its great martyrs politicians. _______(4)________

(1) Option 1
(2) Option 2
(3) Option 3
(4) Option 4

Solution

This paragraph is about neoclassicism and how it is explicitly political. From here, the author mentions the early Roman days. This has to be the ancient civilization mentioned in the given sentence, so the sentence cannot be placed in blanks (1) or (2) before Rome is mentioned.

The sentence can be placed in blank (3), as the sentences following blank (3) explain why Rome was a metaphor for civilisation – people focused on patriotism and virtuous lives. We can eliminate blank (4) as this sentence is not a conclusive sentence and does not fit the sequence after the sentence preceding blank (4).

Therefore, we can select option 3 for this question.

Answer: (3) Option 3

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: They are like corks floating down a stream, and their motion is called the cosmic flow.

Paragraph: As the Universe expands, galaxies move away from each other. _____(1)_____ This movement is not in the way of shrapnel flying off from an exploding point — that is not what the Big Bang was. It happens because the galaxies are being carried along by cosmic expansion._____(2)_____ The expansion of the Universe is an expansion of space itself, which can be loosely considered as a sort of elastic medium completely intermingled with the matter and energy in it. If we look back in time, we see matter squeezed into smaller and smaller volumes. _____(3)_____ As this happens, temperature and pressure rise, and the bonds that hold stuff together into molecules, atoms, and atomic nuclei are progressively broken. Reach back far enough in time, to about one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, and the Universe is filled with a primordial soup of elementary particles, all zooming around and colliding furiously with each other. _____(4)_____

(1) Option 1
(2) Option 2
(3) Option 3
(4) Option 4

Solution

We can understand the key message of the paragraph and use the context to fit in the given sentence, as it is comparing somethings with corks.

The first part of the paragraph is about the universe expanding, and the galaxies moving away from each other. The word they in the given sentence could refer to the galaxies, but it is appropriate in blank (2) and not blank (1), as the sentences before and after blank (1) are in sequence. Placing this sentence in blank (2) continues the narrative about how galaxies are moving.

The rest of the paragraph is about looking back in time, which would be contraction (as the universe is expanding as time moves forward). The given sentence is not fitting in either of the remaining blanks, which is about the universe contracting with backward time.

Therefore, we can eliminate the other options and select option 2 for this question.

Answer: (2) Option 2