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.
Fill the blank spaces with the most appropriate of options A-E:
_____ any good films lately?
Options:There are many indicators with which to assess or measure corruption. One of them is the affluent living habit of the public official compared to his/her income. Corruption occurs when a public official expects to be induced to perform an act which that public official is ordinarily required to do by law.
Corruption can slow down development. One of the most widely discussed consequences of corruption is the distortion of governmental expenditure. This often results in public money being wasted on white elephant projects, rather than people-oriented services such as health and education. As a result, more opportunities are presented for corrupt use or diversion of funds. Raising the ethical standards of governance can lead to many benefits especially for the economic, political and social development of a country.
Fighting corruption and promoting governance is therefore crucial to developing an environment that facilitates the social, political and economic development of the people. However, while there are often general statements made about the effects of corruption on poverty and development, there is not an explicit recognition that corruption is more than just wealth misappropriation or abuse of power. Corruption impoverishes countries and deprives their citizens of good governance. It destabilizes economic system. When organized crime and other illegal activities flourish, basic public functions are eroded and the quality of life of the people is reduced. Bribery, for example is universally regarded as a crime, but it also reflects socio-economic problems that require broad-based preventive measures and the involvement of the society at large.
Another implication of global measures against corruption is making government work better by improving the economy. Finally, redesigning political and regulatory structures will reduce corruption and other anti-system players that encourage corrupt practices.
From the passage, one of the consequences of corruption is that Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fill(s) the gap(s):
The soldiers were sufficiently equipped with _____
Options:Developments in electronic science have transformed the art of record keeping to the modern age. Traditionally, records of events were kept only in people’s minds. It depends very much on the retentive power of the human memory. This was extremely dangerous as people either forgot events wholly or in part or deliberately falsified details to suit their various interests. Interminable arguments were thus order of the day. Even writing which replaced mental recording was not entirely free from these shortcomings as untruths could be written as true either willingly or inadvertently. With the advent of the electronic memory, however these dangers have been largely overcome. Recording on audio and video cassettes now show not what happened, but also who did or said what including how and when
How many stages of development did the writer mention while discussing the art of record keeping? Options:At the time of trouble in Ireland, a priest said, ‘Man is half beast’, A diplomat replied, ‘Yes. And the beast is the half I like the best’. The priest meant that beasts behave as badly as man when man makes up his mind to behave badly. If you look at the folly and cruelty of today’s world, it is hard to disagree with the diplomat or the priest. But human nature can be changed. Anybody, if that is what they most want to do, can change the most difficult person they know. The art of changing people has been lost in the modern world. That is why the modern world has lost its way.
There are two ways of looking at human nature. One is to make the best of it and it is assume that it is the raw material of life which cannot be altered. That is what most people in the free world to today. In these circumstances, if you expect the worst, you are seldom disappointed. Faith today has become irrelevant to the everyday needs, of so many people in positions of responsibility because they do not expect faith to change men.
Another way of dealing with human nature is to exploit it. All materialistic s, whether of the right or the left, do this. All over the world vanity, fear, ambition, lust and greed are used to control the life of men; and if the control breaks down, man does not hesitate to use force, or to destroy life. The end, he says, justifies the means and men are only of value in so far as they are a means towards the achievement of his ambition. If they cannot be bribed or forced to play their part, then they must be liquidated.
The modern world has lost its way because Options:It is normal in Nigeria to use proficiency in the use of English language as a barometer for evaluating the height of any person's educational attainment. Today, many teachers resort quite often to the use of vernacular in the teaching of their subjects. One is often dismayed at the incompetence of many teachers, even graduates in the use of English language. Throughout the colonial period, up to 1960, Nigerian formal education was patterned after the English system. The "accent" was on English and an educated Nigerian was one who was only African in colour but English in thought and culture. The ability to speak English fluently and if possible with an Oxford accent was the hallmark ofexcellence even if the speaker was empty of thought and ideas. In those days it was a serious offence for a secondary school boy or girl to "laugh in the vernacular". But we now swung to the other extreme. Nigeria would say they are not English people, some would say they did not specialise in English in the university. But thecountry has adopted the English language as its official, the language of instruction at schools, parliamentary proceedings, conduct of official business and indeed the lingua franca. If the language is to continue to be used, then it is imperative that we all agree on the pattern of correctness in the language so that communication can be effective.
A suitable title for the passage is
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fill(s) the gap(s):
Let's have a cup of coffee, _____
Options: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
Creative listening involves all the following EXCEPT 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.