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.
To listen properly is hard job and probably one of the toughest skills in the art of communication. Good listening has nothing to do with proper functioning of one’s auditory organs, which is assumed to be inevitable. Good listening in the sense we are interested in is not a biological factor, but a psychological one. Your auditory orangs may be in perfect order, when actually you cannot use them creatively. Creative listening implies your being efficient in the art of concentration; in other words, you concentrate on what one is saying so as to make sure that you hear all that is said. At the same time you are concentrating to hear all that is being said, you are also thinking fast, digesting what is being said, allowing your mental faculties and your memory to accept that which you understand and to reject that which you do not understand, sorting out what you do not understand and storing them somewhere in your brain for future discussion and all at the same time rationalizing what you hear, accepting that which you find rational and rejecting that which you do not find rational.
After you must have listened creatively to what you have been told, then you can respond if the need arises. It is quite proper that you respond because the process of response enhances the art of communication. But your response ought to be only a necessary response; a response that will improve your understanding. This response should involve your mentioning some things you have been told but which do not understand, or politely questioning the rationality of some of the speaker’s argument. But your response must be constructive; must enhance the communicative worth. It should not be an unnecessary argument, or an opportunity for you to express dissatisfaction. The ability properly aids communication and understanding
The tone of the passage is Options:Questions below are based on Bolaji Abdullahi's "Sweet Sixteen"
The novelist noted that stereoscopic people should be
Options:Music plays a vital role in human society. Good music provides entertainment and emotional release, and it accompanies activities ranging from dances to religious ceremonies. Music is heard everywhere; in auditoriums, homes, elevators, schools, sports arenas and on the streets. Recorded performance is a sensational innovation elevation of the twentieth century. Thanks to modern technology like compact disc (CD) digital video disc (DVD) and the MP 3 player, music can now be heard in divers places. Such places include living rooms and cars, jogging paths can also function as new kinds of concert halls where we can hear what we want as often as we want.
Live performances provide a special excitement. In a live performance artistes put themselves on the line. To avoid embarrassment, the artiste must train before hand and ensure that technical difficulties are avoided and that the listeners are actively involved. What is performed, how it sounds to the excitement of such a moment and feelings are exchanged between stage and hall.
Our response to a musical performance or an artiste is subjective and rooted in deep feelings. Even professional critics can differ strongly in their evaluations of a performance. There is no one ''Truth'' about what we hear and feel. Does the performed project a concept, an overall idea, or an emotion? Do some sections of a piece, but not others, communicate something to you? Can you figure out why? It is up to us as listeners to evaluate performances of music so that we can fully enjoy it. People listen to music in many different ways. For instance, music can be a barely perceived background as in a film or a totally absorbing experience as in a concert.
Adapted from Roger, K. (1990) An Appreciation Music: Fourth Brief Edition, McGrow-Hill Higher Education.
According to the writer, live performance provide a special excitement because they are Options:From the options, choose the word nearest in meaning to the underline word:
By working hard, Benjamin outshone his elder brother instead of being _____.
Options:The emergence of a standard dialect produces the phenomenon known as ‘accent’ which is quite different from dialect. In the process of learning a foreign language, it is normal to transfer the patterns of an indigenous language to those of the foreign language. With time, however those of form and most of orthography and phonology gradually get eliminated. This is because these can easily be identified and corrected. They are easy to correct because they do not involve patterns of muscular movement. It is necessary to correct them because otherwise they could seriously impair intelligibility.
With phonetic patterns, on the other hand, there is a great deal of intelligibility tolerance because muscular patterns are involved thus making correction difficult when observed. Besides, phonetic patterns do not impair intelligibility much. Hence the transference of phonetic habits from one language to another is both easier to tolerate and more difficult to avoid than transference at the lexico-grammatical level. It follows that a speaker who is learning a second dialect does so with an accent since the muscles of his speech organs would have crystallized in response to the phonetics of his native language which he learnt first. The speaker therefore speaks the second dialect with the phonetic features of his native dialect. The learning of a standard language is simply the learning of a second dialect- that which has been standardized.
Members of a language community control at least two dialects and use both dialects in different situations. In the rural areas, the native dialect is used in most situations since there is less movement. Therefore, rural dwellers tend to be parochial and maintain the homogeneity of their dialect. In the urban community, on the other hand, there is more demand on the standard dialect than on the rural one. This is because people from different regions converge here. In order to ensure mutual intelligibility resulting from the pressure of communication, a great deal of demand is made on the standard dialect which now becomes the lingua frenca amongst them.
Choose the word or phrase from options A - E which has the nearest in meaning to the underlined word or words in each sentences:
You can talk to her.
Options:Choose the option nearest in meaning to the underlined.
The exhibition was an eye opener to all.
Options: