Historical Turning Points

Respuesta correcta: A) exacerbate

• A) exacerbateCorrect. 'Exacerbate' means to make a problem or bad situation worse, which fits perfectly here.
• B) alleviateIncorrect. 'Alleviate' means to make something less severe, which is the opposite of what's needed.
• C) mitigateIncorrect. 'Mitigate' means to make something less severe, which doesn't fit the negative consequence implied.
• D) facilitateIncorrect. 'Facilitate' means to make an action or process easy or easier, which is not appropriate for a social divide.

Respuesta correcta: A) enumerated

• A) enumerated'To enumerate' is to list or count items one by one, and a census does exactly that. The clause 'still cited whenever anyone argues about who was...' keeps the count alive as the basis of later claims, which is what enumeration provides.
• B) emancipated'To emancipate' is to free someone from legal bondage, and nothing in the sentence describes liberation. The reclassification produced new administrative labels, not a change in anyone's legal status.
• C) naturalised'To naturalise' is to confer citizenship on someone, but a census records people who already hold that status. The sentence is about how people were classified and counted, not about who was granted nationality.
• D) alienated'To alienate' is to make someone feel isolated or to transfer property to another. Neither sense appears here: the passage concerns classification and numbers, and the categories persisted because they were usable for argument.

Respuesta correcta: B) underlying

• A) preliminary'Preliminary' describes something that comes first and is later revised, and the sentence is not comparing stages of drafting. The disagreement concerns motives rather than the sequence in which the document was produced.
• B) underlying'Underlying' means existing beneath the surface and not immediately visible, which is exactly what the clause sets up: the text of the convention is agreed on, while the purposes concealed behind it are what remain contested.
• C) subsequent'Subsequent' means coming after in time, so 'subsequent intentions' would mean purposes formed later. The dispute is about what the signatories wanted at the time of signing, which is a question of concealed motive.
• D) overarching'Overarching' means extending over everything below it, a sense of wide scope. Nothing in the sentence concerns breadth of coverage; the contrast at work is between what the document says and what lies behind it.

Respuesta correcta: D) watershed

• A) footnote'A footnote' is a minor explanatory note at the bottom of a page, and the phrase 'in the republic's history' rules that out. A treaty that later disputes keep returning to is a dividing point, not an aside.
• B) precursor'A precursor' is something that comes before and prepares the way for a later event. The sentence describes a treaty whose terms shaped everything after it, not one that merely anticipated what came next.
• C) landmark'A landmark' is a physical building or an easily recognised point of reference, and the term is usually used for places. The sentence is about a moment of change in a process, which is what a watershed marks and a landmark does not.
• D) watershed'A watershed' is an event after which everything changes direction, and the clause 'every later dispute returned to its terms' shows exactly that: the treaty became the reference point for everything after it. That is the sense the sentence needs.

Respuesta correcta: B) A political murder and its serious consequences for Colombia.

• A) The life and childhood of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.Incorrect. The text gives only one fact about Gaitán's popularity; it does not describe his life or childhood.
• B) A political murder and its serious consequences for Colombia.Correct. The text describes Gaitán's assassination, the riots that followed and how these events intensified the period known as La Violencia, so its focus is the event and its consequences.
• C) The history of public transport in Bogotá.Incorrect. Trams are mentioned only as an example of the destruction during the riots, not as the topic of the text.
• D) How the Bogotazo was the first violent event in Colombian politics.Incorrect. The text says the events "did not start the political violence" but made it worse, so this option contradicts it.

Respuesta correcta: C) Ordinary citizens played an important role in creating the 1991 Constitution.

• A) The séptima papeleta was an official part of the elections from the beginning.Incorrect. The text describes it as an "extra, unofficial ballot", so it was not part of the official elections.
• B) The 1991 Constitution was written only by university students.Incorrect. The students proposed the idea, but the constitution was written by an elected Constituent Assembly.
• C) Ordinary citizens played an important role in creating the 1991 Constitution.Correct. The process started with a students' proposal and millions of voters who added the extra ballot, and the text says the government "could not ignore the result", so citizens clearly influenced the change.
• D) The tutela can only be used by lawyers and judges.Incorrect. The text says the tutela allows "any citizen" to ask a judge for protection, so it is not limited to legal professionals.

Respuesta correcta: C) Because the viceroy had already left the city.

• A) Because the battle at the bridge lasted only two hours.Incorrect. The length of the battle is a separate detail; the text does not connect it with the lack of fighting in the city.
• B) Because José María Barreiro opened the gates for him.Incorrect. Barreiro was captured as a prisoner at the battle; the text does not say he helped Bolívar enter the city.
• C) Because the viceroy had already left the city.Correct. The text gives the reason with "because": Bolívar entered "without fighting, because the viceroy had already escaped".
• D) Because the war had ended in all the other regions.Incorrect. The text says the war "continued in other regions", so this reason contradicts the passage.

Respuesta correcta: A) a slow process that happened in several stages.

• A) a slow process that happened in several stages.Correct. The text describes a series of steps over thirty years: the law of 1821, people buying their freedom or escaping, and finally the abolition law of 1851, which shows a gradual process.
• B) a sudden event that surprised everybody.Incorrect. This is the opposite of the phrase; the text explains that slavery ended through steps that took decades.
• C) an event that happened at night.Incorrect. This reads "day" literally; the phrase refers to the length of the process, not to the time of day.
• D) something that never happened in Colombia.Incorrect. The text says that Congress "abolished slavery completely" in 1851, so slavery did end.

Respuesta correcta: B) The way an event was named at the time shaped the history that could be written about it afterwards.

• A) The strike of 1930 was the most violent event in the city's history.The word 'disorder' describes the framing used by reporters, not the scale of violence. Nothing in the sentence compares the strike to other events or ranks it by severity.
• B) The way an event was named at the time shaped the history that could be written about it afterwards.The contrast is between 'reported at the time' and 'described decades later', with the vocabulary changing from disorder to collective action. The report is showing that a contemporaneous label constrains later interpretation, since the same event reads differently once the actors are understood.
• C) Workers in 1930 lacked the vocabulary to describe their own actions.The report says the language of disorder was used in reporting, and that the description of collective action came later. The limitation is in the contemporary framing, not in the workers' ability to name what they were doing.
• D) Historians now agree completely about how to interpret the strike.Nothing in the sentence mentions agreement among historians, and the two different descriptions are presented as stages in interpretation rather than as a settled consensus. The report is explaining how meaning changed over time.

Respuesta correcta: A) To show how the process continued after the referendum was lost.

• A) To show how the process continued after the referendum was lost.Correct. The sentence begins with "Instead of abandoning the process", so it explains what happened after the "No" won: the agreement was revised and then signed.
• B) To prove that the referendum result was illegal.Incorrect. The text does not question the legality of the result; it reports that the "No" won and that the agreement was changed in response.
• C) To show that the FARC refused to hand over their weapons.Incorrect. The text says the opposite: thousands of fighters handed over their weapons to a United Nations mission.
• D) To explain why the negotiations took place in Havana.Incorrect. The location of the negotiations is mentioned at the beginning, but the meeting with the opponents happened later and is not connected to it.

Respuesta correcta: D) had

• A) hasIncorrect. The sentence refers to a past sequence, requiring the past perfect in inversion.
• B) wasIncorrect. 'Was' does not fit the past perfect structure required by 'Hardly'.
• C) didIncorrect. 'Did' would require the base form of the verb, not the past participle 'been'.
• D) hadCorrect. 'Hardly had...' is a classic C1 inversion structure used for sequential events.

Respuesta correcta: D) had not

• A) has notIncorrect. The present perfect connects the situation to now, but the period ended in 1998, when the archives were opened; a gap that ended in the past needs the past perfect.
• B) was notIncorrect. "Was not been documented" is ungrammatical: "been" can only follow a form of "have". The simple past passive would be "was not documented".
• C) did notIncorrect. "Did not" must be followed by a base verb, so "did not been documented" is impossible in English.
• D) had notCorrect. "Until" marks a past moment (1998) before which something was still missing, so the negative past perfect is needed: "the uprising had not been documented". It also fits the rest of the sentence, which describes conflicting accounts.

Respuesta correcta: C) had

• A) has'Has' would mean the assembly has not yet dissolved, which cannot be true if the factions are already reacting to its dissolution. The first event is complete before the second begins, which is the past perfect.
• B) did'Did' would give a past simple, and the clause would then say the assembly dissolved at a single moment rather than reaching the completion that the 'no sooner' construction marks with a perfect.
• C) had'No sooner' inverts the clause and takes the past perfect: 'no sooner had the assembly dissolved than...'. The 'than' clause then carries the ordinary word order and the past simple, so the two halves are deliberately mismatched in form.
• D) was'Was' would form a passive or a copula, and the assembly is the one that dissolved, not the one being dissolved. The inversion needs a perfect auxiliary before the subject, which 'was' cannot provide here.

Respuesta correcta: A) has

• A) has'Not since' points forward to the present moment and denies any occurrence since the 1930s, so the present perfect is used: 'not since the 1930s has a single municipal archive managed'. The sentence is about the current state of the record.
• B) had'Had' would place the failure in the past and close the period at some point before now. 'Not since' explicitly runs from the 1930s up to the present, so the perfect that reaches into now is the present one.
• C) was'Was' would give a simple past passive and would also fail to invert with the verb 'managed'. The clause needs a finite auxiliary in front of the subject, and only 'has' supplies one that reaches to the present.
• D) did'Did' would carry a past simple and require the base form, and it would say nothing about the period since the 1930s. The stretch of time named by 'not since' runs up to now, which is the present perfect's domain.

Respuesta correcta: C) did

• A) had'Had' would form a past perfect and need the participle 'become', but the sentence describes a single completed change in value at one point in the past, not a change completed before another past event.
• B) was'Was' would form a passive or a copula, and the chronicles are not being acted upon by anyone. An inverted clause with 'only' needs an auxiliary that inverts, which is 'did' in this past active sentence.
• C) did'Only after' fronted inverts the main clause, and 'did' is the auxiliary that carries the past tense: 'only after the printing press arrived did the local chronicles become worth consulting'. The main verb returns to its base form 'become'.
• D) does'Does' carries the present, but the clause refers to a completed historical development in the port city. The past is signalled by the auxiliary 'did', and the following 'only in oral form' confirms the change is over.

Respuesta correcta: D) had

• A) have'Have' would connect the accounts to the present moment, but 'by the time the second half of the century began' fixes an earlier point. The action was finished before that moment, which is the past perfect and not the present perfect.
• B) were'Were' would form a simple past passive, but the sentence says the accounts were replaced before the period began, not at the same time as it. A simple past would collapse the sequence that 'by the time' creates.
• C) are'Are' would put the accounts in the present, which contradicts both the 'had been' structure needed after the auxiliary and the historical period being discussed. The tense has to place the supersession entirely in the past.
• D) had'By the time' places a completed action entirely before the moment named in the main clause, so the past perfect is required: 'the accounts had been superseded'. The passive 'had been superseded' is what the blank completes, and the clause inverts because the adverbial is fronted.

Respuesta correcta: A) The class is focusing on the wrong way to understand the topic.

• A) The class is focusing on the wrong way to understand the topic.Correct. "Barking up the wrong tree" means looking for an answer in the wrong place; Daniela says that listening to witnesses matters more than memorising dates.
• B) They are literally looking for something in the trees of the city.Incorrect. This reads the idiom literally; the class is about history teaching, and no trees are involved.
• C) The discussion has become too noisy and aggressive.Incorrect. "Barking" here does not refer to noise; the idiom is about choosing the wrong target, as her second sentence shows.
• D) The class should study the history of Colombian forests.Incorrect. This takes the image of the tree as a proposal; Daniela proposes listening to witnesses, not studying forests.

Respuesta correcta: A) There were clear signs for a long time that the company would fail.

• A) There were clear signs for a long time that the company would fail.Correct. "The writing is on the wall" means that there are clear signs that something bad is going to happen; Martín lists those signs (lost ships, debts, partners leaving).
• B) Someone painted a message about the company on a wall.Incorrect. This is a literal reading of the idiom; Martín is explaining why the closure was predictable, not describing graffiti.
• C) The company closed suddenly and without warning.Incorrect. Martín answers "Not really" to the idea of a surprise, so he thinks the closure was expected.
• D) The company's partners wrote letters to save it.Incorrect. Martín says the partners had left; he says nothing about letters or attempts to save the company.

Respuesta correcta: B) He learned the lesson through a painful personal experience.

• A) He studied engineering at a difficult university.Incorrect. The grandfather does not mention formal studies; the expression refers to learning from experience.
• B) He learned the lesson through a painful personal experience.Correct. To learn something "the hard way" is to learn it by suffering the consequences of a mistake or bad experience; the grandfather learned it when the earthquake destroyed his home.
• C) He learned to build houses with hard materials.Incorrect. This reads "hard" literally as a property of materials; the idiom describes the way the lesson was learned, not what houses are made of.
• D) He found the lesson easy to understand.Incorrect. "The hard way" is the opposite of easy; it emphasises that the lesson came with a high cost.

Respuesta correcta: C) To show that the information may be incomplete and is based on his own knowledge.

• A) To show that he is certain the building is the oldest in Colombia.Incorrect. The guide avoids saying "the oldest" and says "one of the oldest", which, together with his hedge, shows he is not certain.
• B) To tell the visitor that the museum is far away.Incorrect. "Far" in this expression does not refer to distance; it refers to the limits of the speaker's knowledge.
• C) To show that the information may be incomplete and is based on his own knowledge.Correct. "As far as I know" signals that the speaker believes something but is not completely sure; the guide confirms this by saying he is not a historian and suggesting a better source.
• D) To refuse to answer the visitor's question.Incorrect. The guide does answer the question; he simply adds a limitation and recommends another source for more precise information.