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 in the blank spaces in the following sentences making use of the best of the five options:
When John reported the incident, the teacher remarked that he _____ a responsible boy.
Options:This question is based on the novel, The Life Changer.
Who were the people in the car?
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:The appearance of comparative peace which Max’s house presented to me that morning proved quite deceptive. Oh perhaps some of Chief Nanga’s ‘queen bee’ characteristics had rubbed off on me and transformed me into an independent little nucleus of activity which I brought with me into this new place. That first night I not only heard of the new political party about to be born but got myself enrolled as a foundation member. Max and some of his friends having watched with deepening disillusion the use to which our hard-won freedom was being put by corrupt, mediocre politicians had decided to come together and launch the Common People’s Convention.
There were eight young people in his room that evening. All but one were citizens of our country, mostly professional types. The only lady was a very beautiful lawyer who, I learnt afterwards, was engaged to Max whom she had first met at the London School of Economics. There was a trade-unionist, a doctor, another lawyer, a teacher and a newspaper columnist
Max introduced me without any previous consultation as a ‘trustworthy comrade who had only the other day had his girlfriend snatched from him by minister who shall remain nameless’. Naturally I did not care for that kind of image reputation. So I promptly intervened to point out that the woman in question was not strictly speaking my girlfriend but a casual acquaintance who both Chief Nanga and I knew.
‘So it was Chief Nanga, yes?’ said the European and everyone burst out laughing.
‘Who else could it be?’ said one of the others.
The Whiteman was apparently from one of the Eastern Bioc countries. He did not neglect to stress to me in an aside that he was there only as a friend of Max’s. He told me a lot of things quietly while the others were discussing some obscure details about the launching. I was as much interested in what he said as the way in which he said it. His English had an exotic quality occasionally – as when he said that it was good to see intellectuals like Max, myself and the rest coming out of their ‘tower or elephant tusk’ into active politics. And he often punctuated whatever he was saying with ‘yes’ spoken with the accent of a question.
The speaker was attentive to the European because Options:Choose the word that has an opposite meaning to the one in bracket for questions below.
The sick man is now [ambulatory]
Options:You would think that common cold should be easy enough to study, but it is not as easy as it looks. Colds often seem to spread from one person to another, so it is often assumed that the cold must be infectious but there are some puzzling observations which do not fit with this theory. An investigator in Holland examined some eight thousand volunteers from different areas and came to the conclusion that in each group the colds all appeared at the same time-transfer of infection from case to case not account for that. Yet at the common cold research unit in Salisbury the infection theory has been tested out, two series of about two hundred people each were inoculated, one with salt water and the other with secretion from known cold victims. Only one of the sail-water group got a cold compared with seventy-three in the other group.
In the British Medical Journal the other day, there was a report of a meeting. ‘The common cold-fact and fancy’, at which one of the speakers reported a study of colds made in Cirencester over the last five years. Three hundred and fifty volunteers had kept diary records of their colds and on an average each had seven every year with an annual morbidity of seventy days. So nearly one-fifth of our lives are spent in more or less misery, coughing and sneezing. Some widely held beliefs about the common cold have turned out to be true. It seems that old people are just as liable to cold as the young. Sailors in isolated weather ships have just as many colds while on board and not in contact with the outside world as when on shore. It is truism that common illnesses pose more problems than the rare. The rare disease is by comparison much easier to handle. There are not so many cases and all of them have been intensively studied. Someone has read up all the literature about the disease and published a digest of it. There will be more facts and fewer fancies.
This book consist of lectures given by me at Cambridge. Though they have been largely rewritten, I have kept a good deal of their original lecture-form, as being (I hope) rather less formal and less dogmatic. For to dogmatism, those who write on language seem, for some reason, particularly prone; and I should like to make clear at once that, if at times I have put my view strongly, I do not forget that such matters of taste must remain mere matters of opinion.
In addition I have included a good many specimen passages from various authors. Perhaps I have quoted too much. But a book on style without abundant examples seems to me as ineffectual as a book on art, or biology without abundant illustrations. Many of these passages are in French. That may be Gallomanian on my part and I must apologize if they trouble some readers. But some ability to read French prose does seem to me most desirable for anyone who would write well in English. I have tried to choose pieces not too difficult in syntax or vocabulary. And in these days less than ever can we afford to be better insular.
According to the author (in this preface) the book is Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase which best fills the gap:
We later on discovered that some members _____ another meeting before the one advertised.
Options:Fill each gap with the most appropriate option from the list provided.
If you would do me this favour, I ______ be very grateful?
Options: