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.
In 1973, Japanese sericulturists arrived in Malawi with a batch of 40000 silkworm eggs. They were taken to the Bvumbwe Agricultural Research Station in Thyolo District. In this station, work is being done to determine the favourable silkworm rearing conditions and areas where Mulberry trees whose leaves the worms feed on, could grow well. According to researchers, the silkworms which eventually develop into cocoons from which raw silk is produced do well in areas with warm climatic conditions.
Silk is one of the strongest of the fibres. In fact, for thousands of years, silk fabrics have been regarded as the most beautiful and durable materials woven by man. Many people call silk “the cloth of kings and queens”.
The weaving of silk originated in China. An old Chinese book, believed to be written by Confucius, tells us the wife of Emperor Huangi-ti was the first person to make fabrics of silk. Around 2640 B.C, Emperor Huangi-ti asked his wife His Ling-shih to study the worms that were destroying the mulberry trees in his garden. The Empress took some of the cocoons. She picked up the gauzy mass and found that one of the threads could be unwound almost without end from the cocoon. His Ling-shih had discovered silk! She was delighted with the discovery and even wove a ceremonial robe for the Emperor out of the cocoon threads. After that, the officials in the Emperor’s court wore brightly dyed robes on important occasions.
People in other countries regarded the new fibres as something rare and beautiful. A few traders went to China to learn about making cloth from silk, but the Chinese kept their Silk worms a closely guarded secret.
Choose the meaning which best fits the underlined phrase from the passage, Closely guarded secret
Options:Choose the option opposite in meaning to the underlined word(s).
Only those who are gullible fall victim to his trickery?
Options:fill in the blank spaces in the following sentences making use of the best of the five options :
A policeman stopped me and I ….to the police station.
Options:The passage below has gaps numbered 16 to 25. Immediately following each gap, four options are provided. Choose the most appropriate option for each gap. Each question carries 2 marks .
One of the most difficult and confusing aspect of English language is its spelling system. There is often ….16…. [A. discrepancy B. discord C. a similarity D. concord] between the punctuation of a word and its spelling. One cannot always tell how to spell a word ….17…. [A. throughout B. by C. as to D. as from] its pronunciation.
In order to understand the peculiarity of English spelling ….18….[A. difficulty B. confusion C. system D. code], it is good to know something about the history of the language. First, it is helpful to realize that English was originally spoken by people who could neither read nor write. While the ….19…. [A. middle-class B. educated C. less enlightened D. uneducated] people spoke English, the literate upper classes spoke French and wrote in Latin, later when English became a ….20…. [A. literary B. romantic C. written D. coded] language, there was no system for spelling its words. Moreover, the first writers of English were French speaking ….21… [A. newscasters B. scribes C. orators D. interpreters] who knew English only slightly: therefore, they carried many French spelling ….22…. [A. habits B. attitudes C. idiosyncrasies D. mannerisms] into English. In addition, these first writers of English, who were used to writing in Latin, often ….23…. [A. inserted B. interjected C. interpolated D. juxtaposed] letters into words even when they were not pronounced because the ….24…. [A. antecedent B. opposing C. corresponding D. synonymous] word in Latin was spelled that way. Finally, the confusion increased when the ….25…. [A. diction B.morphology C. orthography D. pronunciation] of certain words changed while the spelling remained the same.
In question number 19 choose the best option from the letters A-D that best completes the gap Options:It is possible to have a glimpse of life after death. Man has always believed in an afterlife but only today do we have scientific reports of people who seem to have experienced the sensation of dying but lived to tell about it. On-going research is documenting hundreds of cases each year of the near-death experience (NDE), and scientists think they are finding a clearly identifiable pattern: usually a man is dying and as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment and he sees his own body from a distance as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a ‘body’, but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon after, things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warming spirit of a kind he has never encountered before-a being of light- appears before him. This being asks him a question, non-verbally- to make him evaluate his life- and helps him along by showing him a panoramic instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. Then he finds that he must go back to earth that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.
Life is often difficult to describe. Men of wisdom in every society often find time to discuss life in order to explain it to the younger generation. I had been present in some meeting s a number of times. One topic that was discussed in one of them was beginning of life. ‘When did life begin?’ asked one of the men of wisdom. It was such an open-ended question. None of us could say precisely what happened when he was born. If he was born poor, he hardly would be very rich, particularly, if he was born honest in a corrupt society. If he was born rich, he might lose all his riches in one day. So, we often gather to tell one another about life. Recently, a statement was introduced into the vocabulary of English-Language – ‘The rich also cry’. The statement demonstrates, to a large extent, that even the rich people have their own period of time when life may prove very difficult and even meaningless to them. Have you not heard the experience of a very rich family whose vast business empire crumbled, in just one day? I have heard of a very rich man who lost his wife and three children in just one accident. Another rich man lost his thriving manufacturing company in an inferno. The compensation from his insurer could not solve half his financial problem. When one is poverty-stricken, that is a difficult dimension to the story of life. The poor person may prefer to die. Imagine when members of a family eat once a day! The quality of food becomes a different kettle of fish in such a circumstance. The dietician’s prayer that every normal human being must have a balance diet is cock and bull story to the poor. It is either that the poor do not have any opportunity that serves as recourse for them to be rich or that they are lazy people. Provisions must be made to create opportunities for self-development and self-realization. A lazy person cannot have his cake and eat it. People like him are not just only a problem to themselves but also to others in society.
At times, such people are dangerous to their communities.
Finally, what can one say about people who are terminally ill or insane? Perhaps silence becomes golden in that respect.
which of the following explains the writer’s conception Options:Questions below are based on Bolaji Abdullahi's "Sweet Sixteen"
It may be argued that Chapter Two is titled, "The Drive" particularly because...?
Options:Choose from the option the word that has the same consonant sound as the represented by the letter(s) underlined.Past?
Options:In the question below, choose the expression or word which best completes each sentence:
The car owner does not think about the _____ of his vehicle and the other payments involved in owning it
Options: