English is the study of the English language. The goal is to improve communication skills by practicing listening, speaking, reading, writing, and understanding language rules like pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
Choose the most appropriate stress pattern from the options. The stressed syllable are written in capital letters(s).
political
Options:Read each passage carefully and answer the questions that follow it
Olumba removed a small black amulet from his neck and substituted a bigger one. The former was for general protection at home, the latter for protection and luck whilst travelling. Ready at last he picked up his matchet and headed for the chief’s with Ikechi behind him.
Olumba worked ahead looking up as usual. Just what he was searching for in the sky Ikechi couldn’t tell. Perhaps his shortness accounted for his habit since, he often had to look up in the faces of his taller companions. What he lacked in height he made up in solid muscles and he looked strong. His wrestling pseudonym was Agadaga, a name which meant nothing but which somehow conveyed an impression of strength.
Eze Diali, the chief, sat at one end f his reception hall ringed by the village elders who he had called to a meeting. The rest of the hall was filled with much younger men.
‘People of Chiolu, the chief began’, I have learnt that poachers from Aliakoro will be at the Great Pond tonight. There is no doubt that they will try to steal from the Pond of Wagaba which as you know is rich in fish. Our plan tonight is to bring one or more of these thieves home alive and ask for very large ransoms. This line of action will have two effects. Firstly, it will prove our charges of poaching against the people of Aliakoro, and secondly, the payment of very large ransom will be a deterrent. We need seven men for this venture. I call for volunteers’
Who will head this party?’ the chief asked, looking round. Chituru, one of the elders, said’ ‘Eze Diali, let us not waste time. Olumba is the man for the job. We all know that he had led many exploits like this one’. We still need six men’, Eze Diali said. Eager youths came surging forward. Their well-formed muscle rippled as they elbowed one another. It was difficult to choose.
‘I suggest Olumba should choose his men He knows the boys very well and his judgment should be reliable’. It was Wezume, another village elder, who spoke.
The chief called meeting because Options:In the question below choose the most appropriate option opposite in meaning to the word(s) underlined:
Their high level of dishonesty has made that department infamous in the entire secretariat
Options:In many places in the world today, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer and the programmes of development planning and foreign aid appear to be unable to reverse this trade. Nearly all the developing countries have a modern sector, where the pattern of living and working are similar to those in developed countries. But they also have a non-modern sector where the patterns of living and working are not only unsatisfactory but in many cases are even getting worse.
What is the typical condition of the poor in developing countries? Their work opportunities are so limited that they cannot work their way out of their situation. They are underemployed or totally unemployed. When they do find occasional works, their productivity is extremely low. Some of them have land but often too little land. Many have no land and no prospect of ever getting any. There is no hope for them in the rural areas and so, they drift into the big cities. But there is no work for them in the big cities either-and of course no housing. All the same, they flock into cities because their chances of finding some work appear to be greater there than in the village, where they are nil. Rural unemployment then produces mass migration into cities, rural unemployment becomes urban unemployment.
The problem can be stated quite simply: what can be done to promote economic growth outside the big cities, in the small towns and villages which still contain 80 to 90% of the total population? The primary need is workplace, literally millions of workplaces.
The expression 'work their way out of their situation' means Options:There is a joke in a country that the closest anyone will come to experiencing eternity is the country’s court system. The problem is a strange aversion to settling cases. Judges pass them along to somebody else and rarely dismiss lawsuits, no matter how frivolous. The country’s lower courts have a backlog of about 20 million civil and criminal cases. An additional 2.3 million cases are pending before the high courts, while the Supreme Court has about 20,000 old cases on the docket. Many of those cases will take far longer than 16 years to resolve.
But now, experts say, the country’s new Prime Minister is committed to fixing the problem. And the judiciary itself, long criticize as insular and resistant to change, seems finally to have concluded that changes are needed. The chief Justice of the Supreme Court has declared that soon the country will reduce its massive case backlog. After that, ‘there will be no place for any corruption or indolence in the system’. His choice of words was telling. Whatever moral imperative exists, the chief reason that the country is getting serious about streaming the legal system is economic. Dysfunctional courts increase the risk of foreign investors, tortuous rules slow the rise of new enterprises and murky laws regarding land ownership and other issues stifle the growth of industries like construction and retail. The country’s business is lobbying for change; its Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, for instance, recently published a report that bemoaned the regulatory maze that confronts every commercial project, contributing to delays and cost overruns and providing one explanation why it receives only a tiny fraction of the foreign direct investment deposited in a neighbouring country. ‘Speedy judicial resolution will be one of the keys to making the country a competitive economy, conducive to growth and foreign investment,’ says an observer.
The reasons for the country’s judicial debacle are legion. For one thing, it has fewer judges per capital than almost any other country in the world. In 2007, it had fewer than three judges per 100, 00 people. And the state itself, which account for 60 per cent of court cases, is overly litigious.
one major reason for the delay in the country’s legal system is that Options:His eyes widened as they fell upon something strange. Something was moving slowly and cautiously along the gutter. The pale yellow and brown of the snake’s body glistened like a stream of flowing metal. By what mistake had the creature strayed into this unlikely place? Impossible to say. Yet there it was and its slow movements betrayed uneasiness and confusion.
As he watched it, his instinctive antipathy melted away. He could understand so well what the snake was feeling. He entered into the cold, narrow intelligence and shared its angry perplexity. Its movement were cramped, its advance difficulty and it was in constant danger of slipping over the edge. Now and then it lay still in dull reflection, nursing a cold anger that could find no vent.
Meanwhile the little plant bent downward by every puff of wind was beating its thin twings against the gutter like a birch. The snake seemed not to see the plant. It moved forward until a light touch from the twings fell upon its head. At this, it stopped and lifted its neck; the plant was now doing no more than lightly sway and dip. The snake, its head still reared, waited, flickering tongue. One could feel the angry heaving and straining in the sluggish brain-the dull red anger waiting to explode. Then came a strong gust sweeping along the wall and at once the twings thrashed down upon the furious head-thrashed down and beat it with a movement that seemed to osun both comic and dreadful. In a flash, the head reared itself higher, the neck drew back and there was a lunge at the twings and the empty air. O fatal act! To strike, the snake had been obliged to coil and its coiled body could not support itself upon the narrow ledge. No recovery was possible; it overbalanced and fell with a thud upon a small flat roof fifty feet below. There, osun saw the creature begin to writhe in agony. It could do no more than twist and turn upon the same spot
Osun was trembling but beneath his agitation there was a deep trouble wonder. Here was the little plants now waving with kind of jaunty cynicism and here was the snake writhing in agony. The world unquestionably was a place of mystery and horror. This was revealed in the writhing of the crippled snake in the jaunty waving of the innocent plant in the wind.
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage? Options:Fill in the blank spaces in the following sentences making use of the best of the five options:
He passed so well _____ he was awarded a scholarship
Options:In the question below choose the word or phrase which best fills the gap in each sentence:
The dull students took correspondence course as a means _____ his standard in the class
Options:Read each passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Obi: Let’s go to the Sport Club Cafeteria. One naira
per meal is a privilege in this country.
And God knows that I am too broke to afford
anything More
Olu: Got a membership identity card? Don’t forget
the place is for bona fide members
only.
Obi: Forget it. There are other types of
identity cards, remember. Just flash
something before the eyes of those men at the
gate, provided it looks like an identity card.
Olu: Ee…eh, I see. That is why the place is
always congested. I don’t think it
is even worth the trouble. I can’t stand a
queue.
Obi: That shouldn’t bother you. You don’t have to
join the queue. Just walk
straight to the serving point without fear
and be sure you shout your
order.
Olu: But only V.I.Ps have the right to break
queues.
Obi: Sure, but V.I Ps don’t wear badges on their
faces. Post man, pose. After
all this is Nigeria
Olu: You mean there are many impostors here?
Obi: Certainly, and many people with privileges
too. If you want to get
along, you must pose, and to get along
means getting what you want
if you choose to term it ‘privileges, it
suits me. It is all a question of
semantics.