🔗UGC NET English — Question Type Guide

Match the Following Questions

Match theorists to key works, critical concepts to their originators, authors to texts, and characters to plays. 50 List I / List II practice MCQs with full explanations.

🔗50 Practice MCQs📚Theorists → Works💡Concepts → Critics🌍Authors → Texts🎓UGC NET Pattern

The Question Format — List I / List II

Sample Question

Match List I with List II:

List I (Theorist)

A. Jacques Derrida

B. Michel Foucault

C. Roland Barthes

D. Edward Said

List II (Work)

i. Orientalism

ii. Of Grammatology

iii. Discipline and Punish

iv. Mythologies

The four options give different pairings — e.g., "A-ii, B-iii, C-iv, D-i". Your job is to find the one correct set.

📌 The Anchor Strategy (2-Step)

1
Find your most certain pair
Identify the one item in List I you can match to List II with complete confidence. No guessing — only use a pair you're sure about.
2
Eliminate options that misplace your anchor
If you know A goes with ii, cross out every option that says A-i, A-iii, or A-iv. Often only one option survives. Check one more pair to confirm.

You only need 2 confirmed pairs, not 4. Trying to verify all four wastes time and introduces uncertainty.

Quick Reference — Top 20 Must-Know Pairs

Theorist / Concept	Key Work / Text
Jacques Derrida	Of Grammatology (1967)
Michel Foucault	Discipline and Punish (1975)
Roland Barthes	Mythologies (1957) / 'Death of the Author' (1967)
Edward Said	Orientalism (1978)
Judith Butler	Gender Trouble (1990)
Gayatri Spivak	'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988)
Homi K. Bhabha	The Location of Culture (1994)
Frantz Fanon	The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
I.A. Richards	Principles of Literary Criticism (1924)
William Empson	Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930)
Cleanth Brooks	The Well Wrought Urn (1947)
Northrop Frye	Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
Terry Eagleton	Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)
Objective Correlative	T.S. Eliot — 'Hamlet and His Problems' (1919)
Dissociation of Sensibility	T.S. Eliot — 'The Metaphysical Poets' (1921)
Intentional Fallacy	Wimsatt & Beardsley (1946)
Defamiliarisation	Viktor Shklovsky / Russian Formalism
Dialogism	Mikhail Bakhtin
Habitus	Pierre Bourdieu
Interpellation	Louis Althusser

🎯 50 Practice MCQs — UGC NET Pattern

All questions follow the exact UGC NET format: List I with A–D items, List II with i–iv items, four matching options. Full explanations after each answer.

Match the Following — UGC NET MCQs

Match the Following

1/51

Match List I with List II:

List I

A. Jacques Derrida

B. Michel Foucault

C. Roland Barthes

D. Edward Said

List II

i. Orientalism

ii. Of Grammatology

iii. Discipline and Punish

iv. Mythologies

Choose the correct matching:

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 'Match the Following' question type in UGC NET English?▾

UGC NET 'Match the Following' questions present two lists — List I (usually theorists, authors, or concepts) and List II (usually their works, texts, or definitions) — each with four items labelled A, B, C, D (List I) and i, ii, iii, iv (List II). The options give four different pairings. You must identify the correct set of matches. This format tests associative knowledge — not just 'do you know Derrida?' but 'do you know which Derrida text goes with which concept?'

What strategy works best for Match the Following questions?▾

The anchor strategy: find the one pairing in List I that you know with complete certainty. Check which option in the answer list contains that pairing. If only one option has A matched to i, and you're certain A matches i, you can ignore all other options. Then verify one more pairing to confirm. You rarely need all four pairs to be certain — two confirmed anchors usually isolate the correct answer.

Which theorist–work pairs are most frequently tested in UGC NET English?▾

The most frequently tested pairs: Derrida → Of Grammatology; Foucault → Discipline and Punish / The Order of Things; Butler → Gender Trouble; Said → Orientalism; Spivak → 'Can the Subaltern Speak?'; Bhabha → The Location of Culture; I.A. Richards → Principles of Literary Criticism; Empson → Seven Types of Ambiguity; Brooks → The Well Wrought Urn; Barthes → Mythologies / 'Death of the Author'; Frye → Anatomy of Criticism; Fanon → The Wretched of the Earth. These ten pairs appear in virtually every cohort of UGC NET papers.

How are critical concepts tested in Match the Following?▾

UGC NET often asks you to match concept → theorist or concept → defining text. The most tested concept matches: Objective Correlative → Eliot ('Hamlet and His Problems', 1919); Dissociation of Sensibility → Eliot ('The Metaphysical Poets', 1921); Intentional Fallacy → Wimsatt & Beardsley (1946); Affective Fallacy → Wimsatt & Beardsley (1949); Defamiliarisation → Shklovsky / Russian Formalism; Dialogism → Bakhtin; Différance → Derrida; Habitus → Bourdieu; Interpellation → Althusser; Carnivalesque → Bakhtin.

What is the difference between Match the Following and Assertion-Reason questions in UGC NET?▾

Match the Following tests associative knowledge — can you correctly pair items from two lists? Assertion-Reason tests analytical knowledge — given that A is true and R is true, does R actually explain A? Match the Following favours memory and pattern recognition; Assertion-Reason favours logical analysis and understanding of cause-and-effect relationships. Both appear regularly in UGC NET English and are worth separate dedicated practice.