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CAT 2019 Slot 1 — VARC Question 30

Mixed PracticeEasy

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.

  1. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new idea as Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes.
  2. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, observed that men who are deaf are incapable of speech.
  3. People who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”
  4. Pushback against this prejudice began in the 16th century when Pedro Ponce de León created a formal sign language for the hearing impaired.
  5. For millennia, people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word.

Answer & solution

Correct answer: 2

Answer: 2

Solution

Easy

In an odd-one-out set, four sentences chain into one theme and one sentence sits outside it. Find the common thread first, build the chain, and the leftover sentence is your answer. Here the thread is the history of how the deaf were treated and the rise of sign language.

1

Spot the opener. Sentence 5 is the broad, scene-setting statement: for millennia the hearing-impaired were marginalised because language was thought to require hearing. This general historical claim is the natural starting point.

2

Build the chain. Sentence 3 gives a concrete consequence of that prejudice (the deaf were denied the right to sign a will). Sentence 4 then turns the corner: "Pushback against this prejudice…" — the phrase "this prejudice" points straight back to 3. Sentence 1 follows 4 by elaborating on de León's "idea to use sign language." So 5–3–4–1 forms a tight, coherent paragraph.

3

Test the leftover. Sentence 2 reports a single, isolated observation by Aristotle that deaf men cannot speak. It is an illustrative aside that breaks the cause-and-effect flow (prejudice → its effect → pushback → sign language) and has no connective tie to any of 5, 3, 4 or 1. It is the misfit.

The four sentences cohere as 5–3–4–1; sentence 2 is the odd one out.

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CAT 2019 Slot 1 VARC Q30: Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and c — Solution | TheCATExam