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.
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.
As the narrator watched the snake, his feelings changed to those of Options:A wolf, seeing a lamb drinking from a river, wanted to find a pretext, for devouring him. He stood higher up the stream and accused the lamb of muddying the water so that he could not drink. The lamb said that he drank only with the tip of his tongue, and that in any case he was standing lower down the river, and could not possibly disturb the water higher up, ‘when this excuse failed him, the wolf said: ‘Well, last year you insulted my father .’I wasn’t even born then, ‘replied the lamb.
You are good at finding answers, ‘said the wolf, ‘but what do you mean by taking up so much of the path where I am walking? The lamb, frightened at the wolf’s angry tone and terrible aspect, told him, with all due submission, that he could not conceive how his walking on such a wide path could occasion him any inconvenience. ‘What! Exclaimed the wolf, seemingly in great anger and indignation. ‘You are as impudent as your father who seized me by the throat last year, and caused me to be kept in a cage for three months.
If you will believe me, ‘said the lamb, my parents are poor simple creatures who live entirely by green stuff; we are none of us hunters of your species. ‘Ah! I see it’s no use talking to you, ‘said the wolf, drawing up close to him. ‘it runs in the blood of your family to hate us wolves, and therefore, as we have come so conveniently together, I’ll just pay off a few of your forefathers scores before we part. ‘so saying he leapt at the lamb from behind and garrotted him.
So far I have been speaking of science in its universality, viewed from the perspective of the world at large. For the context of our own country and our sister developing countries, many of the factors mentioned earlier are not very important. For example, pollution, deterioration of the environment and population explosion are not yet serious problems for us in this country.
Let me now turn to a more specific area, namely the question of scientific choice for developing countries. There is no doubt that role which science s and technology have played in the upliftment of the material and economic well-being of the developed nation will, and does, influence the criteria that the Third World nations must choose in order to establish their science policies and priorities.
But the criteria to be used by this nation do not have the same as those which have brought the developed countries to their present stage of evolution. For while human beings have the same problems, their solutions, to be meaningful will have to be sought within some relevant frame of reference, such as the available resources and expertise, social values, place and time in the historical scale.
frame of reference' in this passage (line 11 means) Options:The word in capital letters has the emphatic stress. Choose the option to which the given sentence relates.
Taiwo SAILED to London.
Options:In the past, learning English as a separate subject seemed relatively easy. The textbook selected and graded items of language which were put into context and then practiced intensively. New items were carefully controlled do that the student could cope quite easily. Now that English used as a medium of instruction, however, all this has changed. Unknown items of grammar and vocabulary appear in texts which attempt to explain new and often difficult information. Difficulties with the language interact with difficulties as regards the subject matter. The student’s reading in his own subject slows down and his comprehension becomes less secure. He expresses himself slowly and often fails to convey his ideas exactly. He is disappointed to find that under pressure he makes a lot of unnecessary mistakes in area where he knows the correct language forms. His social relation are difficult as he cannot find the right phrase quickly enough to keep a conversation going; so his language often betrays him into dullness, coldness, or worst of all rudeness. Instead of the students being in control of the language, the language seems now to be in control of the student.
All of this can be very depressing and the student can start to feel very anxious. Working in a foreign language is also very tiring, and the concentration and self-discipline required to correct one’s mistakes is very great indeed.
The expression 'his language often betrays him into dullness,coldness,or worst of all, rudeness' means that Options:Choose the option that has a different stress pattern from the others.
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 20 choose the best option from the letters A-D that best completes the gap Options:Choose the option opposite in meaning to the underlined word(s).
The labour leader's recalcitrant stance was applauded?
Options: