What should come in blank (1) ?

Passage

PASSAGE (Q101–Q105): In the following question, some of the words in the passage have been left out. Read the passage carefully and choose the correct word for each blank, out of the four alternatives and fill in the blanks.

After falling consistently (1) the U.S. dollar for a major part of the year, the rupee has (2) somewhat over the last few weeks. It has risen by almost 5% from its lowest levels (3) in October. Even with this recent improvement, the rupee is still down about 11% since the start of the year. The rupee’s performance has been closely (4) to global crude oil prices. This makes sense, as imported oil accounts for about 80% of India’s total demand. The value of the rupee dropped when oil prices climbed earlier this year, a trend that lasted until early October. Since then, as global crude prices have fallen, the rupee has (5) against the dollar.

Question

What should come in blank (1) ?

1. A. with
2. B. of
3. C. for
4. D. against (Correct answer)

Correct Answer

Option D — against

Detailed Solution & Explanation

The correct answer is against.

Key Points

• Currency movements are always expressed with against: a currency rises or falls against another.
• The sentence describes the rupee falling consistently in relation to the dollar, so "falling consistently against the U.S. dollar" is the fixed collocation.
• The alternatives are ungrammatical here — *with*, *of* and *for* are not used to compare currency values.

Additional Information

• The same preposition recurs throughout the passage, including in the final blank ("strengthened against the dollar"), which is a useful internal confirmation.
• Financial collocations worth knowing: appreciate/depreciate against, trade at, rise by a percentage, fall to a level, peg to another currency.
• Depreciation is a market-driven fall in a floating currency's value; devaluation is a deliberate reduction under a fixed-rate regime.
• In cloze tests, do the preposition blanks first — they depend on fixed usage rather than on the passage's argument, so they are the quickest secure marks.