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 gap with the most appropriate option from the list following the gap.
I hereby declare and _____ that, to the best of my knowledge, this statement is true in all respects?
Options:choose the option nearly opposite in meaning to the word(s) underlined
One hundred and forty kilometres per hour is a reasonable speed limit.
Options:May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dust green trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute blue bottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun. The nights are clear but suffused with sloth and sullen expectations.
But by early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spilt across the flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars. And small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways. It was raining when Rahel came
back to Ayemenem.
Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, ploughing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives.In the undergrowth, a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf-strewn driveway. The house itself looked empty. The doors and windows were locked. The front verandah bare. Unfurnished.
But the sky blue Plymouth with chrome tail fins was still parked outside, and inside, Baby Kochamma was still alive. She was Rahel's baby grand aunt, her grandfather's younger sister. Her name was really Navomi, Navomi Ipe, but everybody called her Baby. She became Baby Kochamma when she was old enough to be an aunt. Rahel hadn't come to see her, though.
Neither niece nor baby grandaunt laboured under any illusions on that account. Rahel had come to see her brother, Estha. They were two-egg twins. "Dizygotic' doctors called them. Born from separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs. Estha Esthappen-was the older by 18 minutes.
What rubbed itself against a glistening stone?
Options:Choose the option that best completes the gap(s).
The principal said that he was pleased _____ my effort.
Options:If our thoughts is to be clear and we are to succeed in communicating it to other people, we must have some method of fixing the meaning of the words we use. When we use a word whose meaning is not certain, we may well be asked to define it. There is a usual traditional device for doing this by indicating the class to which whatever is indicated by the term belongs and also other particular property which distinguishes it from all other members of the same class. Thus we may define a whale as a ‘marine animal that spouts’. ‘Marine animals’ in this definition indicates the general class to which the whale belongs and ‘spouts’ indicates the particular property that distinguishes whales from other such marine animals as fishes, seals, jellyfish and lobsters. In the same way, we can define an even number as a finite integer divisible by two or a democracy as a system of government in which the people themselves rule.
there are other ways, of course of indicating the meaning of words. We may for example, find it hard to make a suitable definition of the word ‘animal’, as we say that an animal is such a thing as a rabbit, dog fish or goat. Similarly, we may say that religion is such a system as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. This way of indicating the meaning of a term by enumerating examples of what it includes is obviously of limited usefulness. If we indicate our use of the word ‘animal’ as above, our hearers might for example be doubtful whether a sea-anemone or a slug was to be included in the class of animals. It is however, a useful way of supplementing a definition if the definition itself id definite without being easily understandable. Failure of an attempt at definition to serve its purpose may result from giving as distinguishing mark one which either does not belong to all the things the definition id intended to include, or does belong to some members of the same general class which the definition is intended to exclude.
In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fills the gap(s):
One of the ladies who _____ in the premises _____ been asked to withdraw.
Options:Theatre in the recent past used to be a very popular art in traditional African society. It used to be a point of intersection where members of the community not only cometo entertain themselves, 'but join heads together'. In the traditional context of African drama, therefore, theatre was popular and respectable institution which preserved the people's culture and tradition. Theatre was popular with the people because it emphasized community participation, peace and progress. The presentations focused on the people's lives, their aspirations, fears, and hopes. But today, the situation is different. Theatre is becoming very unpopular.
Africa of the present age is pre-occupied with many problems yearning for immediate solutions. The continent is facing hydra-head challenges - challenges on the political, social, and economic scenes. In a world where Science and Technology are seen as the solutions to these problems, little attention is paid to the arts. Literature generally, and drama in particular is often rated very low on the utility-scale. Many Africa today look at drama and theatreas a mere thing of fun, a joke so to say.
Elitism is another barrier that militates against the appreciation of theatreas a communal art. Folktheatre is appreciated by a negligible number of people, contemporary focus is on literary theatre. Unfortunately, literary theatre only pretends to serve the interest of its society while in reality, it has a foreign audience in mind. The use of European and American theatricalconventions by our academic playwrights can bear witness to this anomaly.
The popularity of the literary African theatre is further marred by the medium of communication as most literary dramas in Africa are written in foreign languages which are not understood by many Africans. The question often asked is whether the artist should climb down to the level of his community of stay at his exalted height and wait for the community to gradually move up to him.
One of the reasons why theatre is unpopular in modern Africa is that it_________
Options: