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 each of the following questions, the main or primary stress is indicated by writing the syllable on which it occurs in capital letters.
From the words lettered A to D, choose the one that has the correct stress
Calculator
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.
From the words lettered A to D, choose the word that rhymes with the given word.
Breeze
Options:Choose the best option to fill the gaps in the following sentences:
The prices _____ are too high for us
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fill(s) the gap(s):
Although i am watching television. I _____ what you are saying.
Options:In the question bellow choose the expression or word which best completes each sentence:
The principal remarked that it was the high standard of discipline that was instrumental _____ the high percentage of passes in the school
Options:I was to remember my first day at Freedom University for a long time. On arrival on campus, I expected to be met by some stale students (as was the practice in my secondary school) but every student around was new like myself. I asked the way to Grant Hall but not one could tell me. I asked a number of other questions about issues that bothered me, such as where and how to pay the fees, the way to the dining hall and so on but no help was forthcoming. So in the midst of so many people, I am all alone, I mused to myself. The prospect was not in the least cheerful and all the elation I had felt at gaining entry into a renowned university at sixteen been to disappear. Then so if propelled by an unknown benevolent force, I walked a little bit down the corridor in the direction of notice board at which some ten young men and women were peering. For want of something to do, I decided to stop and look at the notice board. Alas! I had opened on the key to all the riddles that had dribbled me since I set foot on campus that morning. On the board there was a big campus map in which I was able to locate Grant Hall and other places of interest, there were details of various activities lined up for the three days of orientation for freshmen and a comprehensive list of those offered admission into various courses. How blissful I felt to see the light of knowledge , having been wallowing in the darkness of ignorance. Even then I was not able to escape the thought that I could not be sure how much of the responsibility for the darkness was mine, the fact that something had not been done to draw attention to 5that apocalypse of the notice board had contributed clearly to my initial predicament. All that notwithstanding, I learnt from the incident an importance of reading notice boards and handbills if one is to be informed about places and events in the university.
The writer says that the prospect was not cheerful because 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.