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.
The land was ready and ploughed, waiting for the crops. At night, the earth was alive with insects singing and rustling about in search of food. But suddenly, by mid-November, the rain fled away: the rain-clouds fled away and left the sky bare. The sun danced dizzily in the sky, with a strange cruelty. Each day the land was covered in a haze of mist as the sun sucked up the drop of moisture out of the earth. The family set down in despair, waiting and waiting,. Their hopes had run so high; the goats has started producing milk, which they had eagerly poured on their porridge, now they ate plain porridge with no milk. It was impossible to plant the corn, maize, pumpkin and water-melon seeds in the dry earth. They sat the whole day in the shadow of the huts and even stopped thinking, for the rain had fled away. Only the children were quite happy in their little girl world. They carried on with their game of making house like their mother and chattered to each other in light, soft tones. They made children from sticks around which they tied rags, and scolded them severely in an exact imitation of their own mother. Their voices could be heard, scolding all day long: ‘You stupid thing, when I send you to draw water, why do you spill half of it out of the bucket? ‘You stupid thing! Can’t you mind the porridge pot without letting the porridge he burn? ‘Then, they would beat the rag-dolls on their bottoms with severe expressions.
The adults paid no attention to this; their nerves were stretched to breaking point waiting for the rain to fall out of the sky. Nothing was important, beyond that. All their animals had been sold during the bad years to purchase food and of all their herd only two goats were left. It was the women of the family who finally broke down under the strain of waiting for rain.
'Game of making house' means Options:In the question below, fill the gap with the most appropriate option:
They spent the last holiday with their _____
Options:Choose the option nearest n meaning to the word or phrase underlined.
His taciturnity amazed everyone in the court during the legal tussle
Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fills the gap(s).:
You could see that Akpan did not give his evidence _____
Options:From the alternatives provided in the question below select the one which most appropriately completes the sentence:
I am sure that my mother will not find out. She is so _____ that she will accept anything i tell her
Options:They hung around together, the boys from the school up on the hill, School was over. They were expecting the result. One or two got teaching job on St. Alban’s College. It is one of the post-war secondary schools that sprang up in the city because serious people felt the educational need of the country, and possessed a sharp nose for smelling quick money. Boys from up country who were eager to learn, whose parents had a little money, but who could not get into the big school like Achimota and Mfantsipim in Cape Coast, rushed to the new schools, secured lodgings with distance relatives , and bought for a relatively cheap amount some sort of education. His friend Sammy was the history master from Form one to Five and was also put in charge of sports in the distant hope that the school would one day get its own playing field near the mental hospital. There were six hundred students who were all day boys; classes were held in Dr. Dodu’s house. The house was originally built by a man of wealth and a large family. The bedrooms, of which they were eight, were turned into classrooms; toilets were knocked into pantries to provide additional classrooms for the ever growing population of the school. Mr. Anokye, a retired pharmacist, owned the school. He laid great emphasis on science, being a science man himself. He wrote a small-rimmed pair of glasses which made him looks like one of those little black cats on Christmas cards. He had a small voice which squeaked with akpeteshie and a breath a breath like the smell of gun powder. He had spent many years at Kole Bu Hospital where he drank the methylated spirit meant to be supplied to laboratory assistants. He was dedicated to learning, in scholar in many ways. He knew Archimedes’ principle. Whenever he shouted, during terminal examinations, his battle cry of Eureka! Eureka! Then he had caught someone cheating, someone looking over his mate’s answer sheet. Mr. Anokye came from a long line of scholars. He claimed his grandfather went to England with Reverend T.A Barnes, D. D., who was the Anglican Bishop of Cape Coast Diocese from 1896 to 1909. He was dedicated to his work. He interviewed Sammy himself, questioned him about his parentage and religious background, listened to him carefully, and decided to appoint him on a salary or six pounds per month pending the outcome of his Cambridge School Certificate examination. He questioned him closely on history, especially the Glorious Revolution, and Oliver Cromwell.
Which of the following statement about Mr Anokye is false? Options:The young are not listening to their elders, and perhaps they never have. But now it happens that, with many of them, the reason may be medical. The young aren’t listening because they can’t hear. Just as nagging parents have long suspected, otologists (hearing specialist) now report that youngsters are going deaf as a result of blasting their eardrums with electronically amplified rock ‘n’ roll.
The hearing specialists used to worry about loud noise as a cause of deafness only in industrial and military situations. They knew that eight hours of daily exposure, year in and year out, to the din of the proverbial boiler factory, would eventually result in permanent hearing loss. Riveters were particularly susceptible. Then they learned that the same thing happened to aviators. After the advent of jets, the hazard applied to the ground crews at airport and flight-deck personnel aboard aircrafts – hence the introduction of insulated noise absorbing plastic earmuffs.
In discotheques and rock ‘n’ roll joints, the trouble is not so much in the instrument themselves, or the close quarters. The blame goes to the electronic amplifiers. An old-fashion military ban, playing a march in Ramat Park, generated as much sound. But the sound was not amplified and was dissipated in the open air. A trombonist sitting in front of a tuba player might be a bit deaf for an hour or so after a concert, and then his hearing returns to normal. A microphone hooked up to a public address system did not appreciably increase the hearing hazard. What he did was multiple microphones and speakers, and the installation of internal microphones in such instruments as guitars and bouzoukis.
What is the difference between an old - fashioned military band on the one hand and discotheque and rock 'n' roll joints on the other? Options:In the question below choose the word(s) or phrase(s) which best fills(s) the gap(s):
I would have been surprised if you _____ the orange
Options:Over the years there has been this hue and cry by government and the public policy advisers against the phenomenon of the rural-urban drift. Researches have been conducted on various aspects of this phenomenon which have resulted in the identification of the various causes and consequences of drift. In addition, prescriptions have been given for controlling the rural-urban drift.
Among the causes most often mentioned are population pressures in some rural areas resulting in dwindling farm lands; increase in school enrollment and the resultant rise in education levels which qualify many people for urban employment, higher wages in the urban centres relative to rural centres and the rather naïve one of the ‘bright lights’ in the cities so much touted by early foreign sociologists.
The most often mention consequences of this rural-urban migration includes depopulation of the rural area leading to overcrowding of the cities and the resultant housing and sanitation problems; decline in the agricultural population resulting in less food crops being grown and high food prices in the cities, and increasing urban unemployment. The results of the phenomenon are seen largely as negative
Measures to control the rural-urban drift includes the establishment of essential amenities like water, electricity, hospitals, colleges, and cinema houses; the location of employment generating establishment and the building of good interconnecting roads.
The sum total of these prescriptions in essence, unwittingly or paradoxically, is for the rural areas to be transformed into urban centres. This is so because to industrialize the rural areas would draw many more people out of agriculture than if industries were restricted to urban centres
When industries are located in the rural areas, it involves much less cost for the prospective rural-urban migrant to change to a non-agricultural job, than is involved in his leaving a rural abode for a distance urban centre.
Therefore, rural industrialization holds a higher potential for the de-agriculturalization of the rural population than when industries are concentrated in urban areas.
The phenomenon of rural-urban migration has been intensively and extensively researched and studied, but it would seem that it has largely been misinterpreted and misunderstood. Consequently public policies on the subject have been misdirected.
The consequences of the rural-urban drift are shown in the above passages as being Options: