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 passage below has gaps numbered 16 to 25. Immediately following each gap, four options are provided. Choose the most appropriate option for each gap. Each question carries 2 marks.
Drought is a word that invokes strong emotions. This is not surprising as the...16...[A. ideology B. phenomenon C. idea D. component] is usually accompanied by a number of unpleasant developments. These developments have ……..17…..[A. feedback B. results C. implication D. outcomes] for all citizens, starting from the peasant farmers to the state and federal governments which may be plunged into emergency and crisis situation which, if not successfully ……18…..[A. managed B. manipulated C. examined D. studied] could result in social unrest.
The timeliness of the onset of the rains in various regions of the country and their adequate distribution thereafter have become…..19…..[A. objects B. subjects C. issues D. topics] of considerable anxiety to all people. The fact, however, is that periodic reduction in the normal…..20…..[A. amount B. supply C. size D. flood] of rainfall in the country is not new.
Since large areas of the country are drought prone, the consequence are ……21…..[A. effective B. disastrous C. evident D. inevitable]. Dry spells could be very severe. There are two aspects of coping with drought. One has to do with emergency measures and the other with ……22…..[A. routine B. organized C. urgent D. delayed] measures. An immediate consequence of any drought would be famine. In addition, where whole populations are forced to abandon their lands or pastures in search of food, there are bound to be other lasting and…..23…..[A. longitudinal B. objective C. simultaneous D. parallel] consequences such as distress, sales of cattle by livestock owners in order to buy food.
Government should provide farmers with agricultural inputs and ensure that they have easy access to these inputs under the relief…..24…..[A. action B. process C. scheme D. plan]. Emergency measures will be much more……25…..[A. normal B. correct C. idealistic D. effective] if a mechanism is established to ensure adequate preparedness and defence against the occurrence of drought.
In question number 23 above, choose the best option from letters A-D that best completes the gap. Options:The medical definition of miscarriage is the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before twenty-four weeks. Miscarriage is very common, occurring in ten to twenty per cent, of confirmed pregnancies. Most of those feature ...16... twelve weeks of pregnancy. The most common ...17... is vaginal bleeding, which can range from light spotting to heavier than a period. You may see blood clots, brown discharge or other tissues that are not ...18... identifiable. Sometimes a sac-like structure is seen. Often, there is cramping with pelvic or back pain. You may find that the usual symptoms of pregnancy, such as breast tenderness, feeling sick and having to pass urine more ...19... than usual stop unexpectedly. Sometimes there are no signs or symptoms of miscarriage and pregnancy symptoms continue, and the miscarriage only ...20... in a routine scan . About half all early miscarriages happen because of a problem in the way the genetic material from the egg and sperm have combined during ...21... it can be difficult to find out why this has ...22... , but it is more likely to be due to random chance than to any underlying problem with either parent. Imbalances in pregnancy hormones, problems in the immune...23... ,and some serious infections are also thought to make miscarriages more likely. The risk of miscarriage ...24... with age because the quality of eggs deteriorates . If a woman drinks too much alcohol or smokes heavily, the risk of miscarriage is higher. It is also increased with ...25... pregnancies such as twins.
Adapted from Saturday punch, 13 October 2007
Choose the most appropriate answer in the gap numbered 22 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 1973, Japanese sericulturists arrived in Malawi with a batch of 40000 silkworm eggs. They were taken to the Bvumbwe Agricultural Research Station in Thyolo District. In this station, work is being done to determine the favourable silkworm rearing conditions and areas where Mulberry trees whose leaves the worms feed on, could grow well. According to researchers, the silkworms which eventually develop into cocoons from which raw silk is produced do well in areas with warm climatic conditions.
Silk is one of the strongest of the fibres. In fact, for thousands of years, silk fabrics have been regarded as the most beautiful and durable materials woven by man. Many people call silk “the cloth of kings and queens”.
The weaving of silk originated in China. An old Chinese book, believed to be written by Confucius, tells us the wife of Emperor Huangi-ti was the first person to make fabrics of silk. Around 2640 B.C, Emperor Huangi-ti asked his wife His Ling-shih to study the worms that were destroying the mulberry trees in his garden. The Empress took some of the cocoons. She picked up the gauzy mass and found that one of the threads could be unwound almost without end from the cocoon. His Ling-shih had discovered silk! She was delighted with the discovery and even wove a ceremonial robe for the Emperor out of the cocoon threads. After that, the officials in the Emperor’s court wore brightly dyed robes on important occasions.
People in other countries regarded the new fibres as something rare and beautiful. A few traders went to China to learn about making cloth from silk, but the Chinese kept their Silk worms a closely guarded secret.
Sericulture is
Options:In the question below choose the option nearest in meaning to the word(s) or phrase Underlined:
Your extreme patience sometimes infuriates me
Options:Choose the option that best completes the gap(s).
Of the three girls, Uka is the _____.
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.
Which of the following can be deduced from the passage? Options:Fill in the gap with the most appropriate option from the list provided?
His chances in the games _____ seriously jeopardized?
Options: