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.
Choose the word that is opposite in meaning to the underlined word.
It is inconceivable that the son shone in the night.
Options:Fill the gap with the most appropriate option from the list following the gap.
Some motorist _____ Sokoto and Kano?
Options:In the question below choose the option nearest in meaning to the word(s) or phrase(s) Underlined:
The senior prefect had to carry the can because he refused to identify the culprit
Options:Choose the option nearest in meaning to the underlined word.
The man described his son a a wilful character?
Options:In the question below choose the most appropriate option opposite in meaning to the word(s) underlined:
The decision we have taken is irrevocable
Options:Choose the best option to fill the gaps in the following sentences:
Why does a flamingo stand on one leg? Because if it lifted the other one, it would _____
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.