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.
She usually works hard, but _____ she could be very lazy?
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fills the gap(s).:
The students went on whispering in _____ of the teacher
Options:Choose the most appropriate option nearest in meaning to the underlined word.
Do this job while I am away, but take your time?
Options:''I want to know you intimately''
What was the recipient's response?
Choose the option that has the same consonant sound as the one represented by the letter(s) underlined.
bushes
Options:From the words lettered A to D, choose the word or group of words that best completes each of the following sentences.
My brother graduated fromuniversity last year; he will soon_________
Options:Gossip! Yes gossip is universal. In some language, it may have an outright negative connotation but in English, it basically means ‘idle talk’, chat about trivial things or matter. When moderated and kind, ‘casual talk’ may serve to exchange useful information as a means of updating one’s knowledge. The whole neighborhood may grow gossipy with who got married, pregnant, died, or it may just be a humorous chi-chat devoid of malicious intent.
However, idle talk more often than not, degenerates beyond the bounds of property and good taste. Facts get embellish, exaggerated or deliberately distorted. Humiliation is made the source of humor. Privacy is violated, confidence betrayed and reputations injured or ruined. Condemnation takes the place of commendation, murmuring and fault finding are extolled. The end result is like the mud thrown on a clean piece of white cloth. It does not stick but it leaves a dirty and sometimes permanent stain behind.
Gossip has been blamed for sleepless nights, headache and indigestion. Certainly, it must have caused you some personal anguish at one time or the other that is someone must at some times have tried getting a knife between your shoulder blades. Negative gossip is almost universally frowned upon. Among the Indians in the United States, gossiping about someone is classified with lying and stealing. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria, the tale bearer is detested and often avoided. Indeed, throughout history, measures have been taken to curb this ‘deadly’ disease. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the ducking stool was popularly used in England and Germany and later in the United States.
The gossip was tied to a chair and repeatedly ducked in water. In modern times, the war against gossiping has also been fought. Rumor control centers have been established to even respond to rumors that were potentially harmful to government activities. Law have been passed to curb gossip. Nicknames have been given to those who peddle the trade. Ever heard of ‘Amebo’!
Such efforts notwithstanding, gossip survives. It is alive and flourishing. Gossip is everywhere. There is neighborhood gossip, office gossip, party gossip, family gossip and funnily enough, religious gossip. Gossip transcends all cultures, race and civilizations, and it has flourished and it is still flourishing at every level of the society. Gossip is deeply a part of human nature. Yet gossip is not inherently evil. There is a positive side to casual talk. Knowing where to draw harmless and harmful gossip is the key to avoiding victimizing others and being victim yourself.
When gossip ‘degenerates beyond the bounds of propriety and good taste’ it becomes 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.
Before any detailed analysis begins, the first thing to do with the data is to check through the field record book and questionnaires for any……..6……[A. records B. events C. odds D. mistakes], inconsistencies and incompleteness. In some cases, it may be possible to correct any discovered shortcomings. When it is possible to carry out these……..7……[A. plans B. possibilities C. corrections D. expectations].
In most scientific……8…..[A. experiment B. data C. conclusion D. questionnaires] such revisits are clearly impossible. This is true of many surveys too. A road traffic survey…….9……[A. conducted B. experimented C. classified D. precoded] to find out the amount and frequency of daily traffic between two towns cannot be expected to be……..10…..[A. reproducible B. undertaken C. observed D. produced]. There is no way of going back to check whether the number of vehicles reported for any particular hour is correct or not. With open-ended questions the……11…..[A. methods B. responses C. errors D. conclusion] have to be classified into relatively small number of groups. The process of classifying answers and of sometimes identifying them by number and letter is called…….12…….[A. recording B. recoding C. encoding D. coding]. When closed-ended questions are used, it is possible to code all the possible answers before they are actually received. This is called……..13…..[A. precoding B. coding C. encoding D. recoding]. What is done, a check through the answers for proper classification, numbering and lettering is still called for at this stage. This whole process of checking through questionnaires and notebooks is called……14…..[A. editing B. posting C. listing D. auditing]. Collected data will eventually have to be used in drawing……15…..[A. references B. examples C. conclusions D. analogies] and writing a report about the population from which it came.