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.
Recent literary researches reveal that Nigerians hardly have time to read . In essence, the reading culture in Nigeria is now at a low ebb. It is disturbing, however, that few Nigerians that read concentrate more on foreign books than indigenous productions. Most Nigerian authors of novels,storybooks, fictions and non-fiction series have decried, on different, occasions, their woes. The were bitter at the way most owners of bookshops and publishers treat them. It was gathered to stock foreign books. when contacted by DAILY INDEPENDENT, the general manager of a popular bookstore on Lagos lsland declared that most of the bookshops preferred to stock foreign books because of higher demands for them. The question that bothers most Nigerian authors is , while their overseas counterparts are being rewarded with great international honours, why are Nigerians not according them such recognition in their own country?
Recently, "Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, won the 2007 Orange Prize Award, the literary world's top award for fiction in English written by women. The award carries a prize tag of $30,000 it was reported in Publishers Weekly, Half of a Yellow Sun, the book that earned her the award, was profoundly gripping. According to the reviewer, the book is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its diction of the impact of war brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It is searing history in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. Chinua Achebe, 'Father of Modern African Literature, also won the second ever Man Booker International Prize of £60,000 with his first novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. When Professor Wole Syinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the fame confirmed the relevance of Nigerians in the world of classical excellence. Ben Okri won the 1991 Booker Prize with his work, The Famished Road, and the world celebrated Nigeria as the giant of Africa.
It was also , gathered that most of the publishers hurriedly produce books and in the process marred their good contents. Most of the books are not properly edited and eventually become substandard when compared with foreign products. The extent to which book publishing standard has fallen in Nigeria alarming. Often Nigerian publishers have been blamed for this. It is instructive that none of the books mentioned had been published in Nigeria. It was discovered that most students in tertiary institution depend on dictations from their lectures and /or handouts. A science lecturer in one of the Nigeria universities, who had been a victim of handout sales scandal, told DAILY INDEPENDENT the reality of campus challenges in relation to books; I was forced to dictate notes slowly to students who hung on my every word in the absence of textbooks in a library that had, to all intent and purpose, stopped buying new books when the local currency was devalued. But what other alternative does one have?
Adapted from DAILY INDEPENDENT, Monday, 20 August, 2007
The university science lecturer gives his reason for issuing handout as
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fill(s) the gap:
I would have been off to see Biola at Festac Town by the time you _____ tomorrow
Options:Complete each of the following sentences by choosing the option that most suitably fills the space;
He went abroad with a view _____ a business partner
Options:Choose the option opposite in meaning to the underlined word(s).
The dancing troupe put up a flawless performance?
Options:Choose the word or phrase from options A - E which has the nearest in meaning to the underlined word or words in each sentences:
When you go to a foreign country to study, you will discover that life is not always a bed of roses.
Options:Before any detailed analysis begins, the first thing to do with the data is to check through the field record book and questionnaires for any……..6……[A. records B. events C. odds D. mistakes], inconsistencies and incompleteness. In some cases, it may be possible to correct any discovered shortcomings. When it is possible to carry out these……..7……[A. plans B. possibilities C. corrections D. expectations].
In most scientific……8…..[A. experiment B. data C. conclusion D. questionnaires] such revisits are clearly impossible. This is true of many surveys too. A road traffic survey…….9……[A. conducted B. experimented C. classified D. precoded] to find out the amount and frequency of daily traffic between two towns cannot be expected to be……..10…..[A. reproducible B. undertaken C. observed D. produced]. There is no way of going back to check whether the number of vehicles reported for any particular hour is correct or not. With open-ended questions the……11…..[A. methods B. responses C. errors D. conclusion] have to be classified into relatively small number of groups. The process of classifying answers and of sometimes identifying them by number and letter is called…….12…….[A. recording B. recoding C. encoding D. coding]. When closed-ended questions are used, it is possible to code all the possible answers before they are actually received. This is called……..13…..[A. precoding B. coding C. encoding D. recoding]. What is done, a check through the answers for proper classification, numbering and lettering is still called for at this stage. This whole process of checking through questionnaires and notebooks is called……14…..[A. editing B. posting C. listing D. auditing]. Collected data will eventually have to be used in drawing……15…..[A. references B. examples C. conclusions D. analogies] and writing a report about the population from which it came.
Choose the option nearest in meaning to the underlined word(s).
Funnily enough, the priest prayed for the robber who shot him
Options: