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.
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.
The author says that writers on language are Options:This question is based on the novel, The Life Changer.
Who was the narrator of the life changer?
Options:Read each passage carefully and answer the questions that follow it.
It was summer, early afternoon. Jim ran into the station. The 4.30 train was about to leave. As he ran along the platform he saw a girl just ahead of him. She was young-about his age. He followed her into a carriage and set down opposite her. She took out a magazine and was reading it. He took out a book and pretended to do the same. After a minute he looked up and smiled at her. She didn’t smile back but gave him an encouraging look. Both returned to their reading but this time she was pretending too.
He found her attractive and wanted to see her again. But how to arrange it? _____ He had an idea. He took an old envelope out of his pocket and wrote the following wrote the following words: ‘Hello! My number is 123-4567 and my name is Jim. I would very much like to see you again. Ring me at nine.
The train arrived at the terminal. Without looking at the girl, he handed her the envelope or rather threw it at her and jumped off the train.
When he got home he made himself a cup of coffee and wondered …perhaps she was one those naturally friendly people who smile at everybody. He was listening to the radio when the telephone rang……..it was only Umaru. Nine o’clock arrived, then 9.30- and no telephone call from the girl. Feeling miserable he went to bed early.
It was a foggy morning. ‘Hello, is that Jim? This is Joan. You……it was two minutes past nine
On the train Jim was Options:Mathematics is the language in which the Book of Nature is written: Mathematics is the queen of the Sciences. It is universally agreed that Mathematics is the backbone of Science and Technology. For without Mathematics the engineer is but an artist or sculptor. He can build his bridge, attest to its from and beauty, but without Mathematics he cannot guarantee its reliability to serve the purpose for which it is built. Mathematics is indeed the science of sciences. It is also art of all arts. It is right, legitimate and defensible to consider Mathematics as an Art. The poet, the musician, the artist and the Mathematician have a lot in common. Fundamental to all their studies and works is their common interest in the logical study of related concepts and objects from patterns which will produce beauty, harmony and order. Thus the poet arranges words to produce a pattern called poetry: the musician arranges sounds to produce a pattern called music, the artist arranges colours to produce pattern called painting and the Mathematician arranges abstract ideas into a pattern, using symbols, to produce equations. Each of these patterns- the poem, the music, the painting and the equation must stand up to the test of some order, harmony and beauty. So if Mathematics is not an art what is art?
Mathematics can be considered as a form of art because Options:fill in the blank spaces in the following sentences making use of the best of the five options :
The guests _____ breakfast by the time the bus arrives.
Options:Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say ‘Bang’. Now, they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by firearms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill most teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the ages of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost double for white males, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics.
Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced these statistics ‘frightening and intolerable?’. In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives’ in Ms Shalala’s words, an often-asked question seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television, the surrounding environment for most children and young adults make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying?
It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer of fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted-that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effects. This is the reasonable hypothesis held, by 80 per cent of the respondents to a recent Time Mirror [poll who think that violent entertainment is ‘harmful’ to the society. Witness enough mimed shootouts; see enough ‘corpses’ fall across the screen and the taking of a human life seems no big deal. Even if a simple causal relationship cannot be established between watching violence and acting it out, is not this numbed sensitivity reason enough for cutting back on the overkill in films and TV?
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.
Rachel had come to see_______.
Options:Select the option that best explain the information conveyed in the sentence:
The man's Achilles' heel is women _____.
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fills the gap(s):
The small girl is _____ than her elder sister
Options: