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.
How old is Bint?
Options:This passage sums up the problems peculiar to the book trade make it different from any other trade-the problem of selection and the problem of sticking. How is the bookseller to tell what, in an enormous output, will prove sale-able before the full weight of unsold items affects the balance of his business and how is he at the same time to hold a stock large enough to enable the public to choose freely? He may seek to escape from this dilemma by becoming the passive sales representative of large publishing houses or distribution networks but he is then no longer a book seller. He may take refuge in the sale of items to a restricted circle of customers but he thereby cuts himself of from all that is vital in his trade and dooms himself to mediocrity and stagnation. On the other hand, he may protect his business from the danger of idle stock by speculating on the latest publication but this is a dangerous game in that it implies a constantly changing clientele: readers remain faithful to their own discoveries and failure to follow up a book an author or a type of literature means dismissing the public responsible for their success.
This brings us back to the fact that books are indefinable. The story is told of a certain country with a great many generals where it was decided to present a rare and valuable edition of an old book to a general about to retire. The old soldier looked at the volume and remarked, ‘A book? What’s the point? I’ve already got one!’
The story of the old soldier and a book in the passage is an illustration of the point that Options:In the question below choose the option nearest in meaning to the underlined word or phrase:
Victor will not attend the dinner party tonight; he is afraid of his own shadow
Options:Choose the appropriate stress pattern from the options. The syllables are written in capital letters.
association?
Options:There are one or two things this country can teach others, one of them is the art of writing obituaries. One suspects that the reason why some of our newspapers still manage to break even is because of the great amount of revenue they derive from obituaries. It is not unusual for about one quarter of the volume of an average daily to be constituted of obituaries and in in memorial alone. One possible explanation for this, it has been argued, is that Nigerians value their dead greatly. And there is a saying amongst us that you do not say evil things against the dead. This is obviously the philosophy behind the large dose of encomiums with which our dead are bestowed. From evidences of these obituaries and in memorial, every dead Nigerian must have been something of a saint while alive. This would explain why the death of most Nigerians is attributed to the evil Machinations of the wicked. Only very few people in our country die natural death, and even when they do, the obituaries, etc always give the impression that such deaths constitute the saddest loss to befall the deceased family. And that is why writers of these obituaries and their allied advertisements are experts on ‘mortuary stylistics’. This ‘mortuary stylistics’ the study in the art of eulogizing the dead and making their loss sound so heart breaking, is one of the commodities we can export to other countries.
One suspects that the reason why some of our newspaper still manage to break even _____suggests that some Nigerian newspapers Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fill(s) the gap:
It was difficult to _____ a man walking on the moon two centuries
Options:The passage below has gaps. Immediately following each gap, four options are provided. Choose the most appropriate option for each gap.
PASSAGE IV
With the most profound respect to the members of the Senate, I do not think that it is within the competence of that ...1... body to pass a motion to ...2... the executive action of the President. The Senate is ...3... of the National Assembly. But it is not by itself alone the National Assembly. One can imagine the confusion, which would be created if the ...4... were to take a view diametrically opposed to that reflected in the Senate resolution. The strongest objection to the action of the Senate in passing the resolution is the fact that it constituted itself the ...5... as well as the judge of the constitutionality of the action of the President. The function of the Senate is to ...6... laws. But the Senate has no authority or ...7... to control the President in the exercise of his ...8... powers. It cannot by a mere resolution or motion give any directive to the President regarding the exercise of his powers nor can it undo what the President has done in the exercise of those powers. The only way in which the exercise of the powers of the President can be ...9... is by ...10... of the National Assembly.
Adapted from The Guardian of July 8, 1999, p. 8.
...10...
Options:What was Talleguilty of?
Options:The root of problem which bedevil rural dwellers in Nigeria can be traced to the sad fact that work opportunities are so restricted that they cannot work their way out of poverty and misery. Though a great number of Nigerians still live in the villages and small towns, work opportunities exist mainly in the big cities where development efforts are concentrated. The reason usually given for his obvious lapse is that it is easier to establish industries and to find finance and markets to keep them going in the big cities and towns than in the rural areas where productivity is low because of mass illiteracy and poverty.
As capital is the product of human work, rural dwellers who are desperate enough to overcome poverty often leave the villages in search of some kind of existence in the big cities and towns. Therefore, rural unemployment in Nigeria produces mass migration into the cities, leading to a rate of urban growth which seriously taxes the resources of even the biggest cities like Ibadan, Lagos, Abuja and Kano. Form the sad experience of these cities; it is easy to see how rural unemployment can become urban unemployment with the attendant social problems like robbery, overcrowding and the growth of shanties or slums.
Such problems cannot be wished away but will remain with us until deliberate efforts are made to bring health to economic life outside the big cities in order to check the migration of destitute rural dwellers into town and cities that cannot absorb them.
It is necessary; therefore, that at least an important part of the development effort should bypass the bid cities and be concerned with the provision of viable infrastructure in the small town s and villages. In this connection, it is necessary to emphasize that the primary need is workplaces. The task should be to bring into existence thousands or millions of new workplaces in the rural areas and small towns in order to maximize work opportunities for rural dwellers.
For this proposition to make sense, first, the work opportunities should be created in the rural areas where the majority of the people live, not where they tend to migrate for lack of opportunities. Second, the production method employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimized not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organization, raw material supply, financing, marketing and so forth. Third, production should be mainly from local materials and for local use. Lastly, rural workplaces should be cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers. These four requirements together meet the description of what is usually called ‘cottage industry’. Millions of them are needed for rural transformation in Nigeria and to check the dangerous process of mutual poisoning between urban and rural areas in the country.
The writer describes the features of a 'cottage industry' as Options:"Money moves Mountains"
This statement was made by _________
Options: