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.
Stress is by far the most common cause of ill health in our society and may be the underlying cause of as many as 70-80 per cent of all visits to family doctors. It is also the problem that every doctor shares with patients. Experts note that stress is an issue everyone can relate to experimentally. In studying and better understanding about stress, we can derive personal as well as professional benefits.
Stress can be overcome without undergoing duress. They often say anyone who wants to help someone deal with his/her stress should learn to handle his/her first. The manifestation of stress is legion. It can contribute or mimic just about any symptom you can think of. However, the main symptoms are physical, mental, emotional and behavioural. The cause of stress are multiple and varied but they can be classified into external and internal. External stressors can include relatively getting sick or dying, jobs being lost or people criticizing or one becoming angry. However, most of the stress people experience is self-generated.
Experts tell us that we create the majority of our upsets indicating that because we cause most of our own stress, we can do something about it. This gives us a measure of choice and control that we do not always have when outside forces act on us. This also leads to a basic premise about stress reduction. To master stress-change, you have to figure out what you are doing that is contributing to your problems and change it. These changes fall into behaviour, thinking, lifestyle choices and/ or situations you are in. by getting to the root causes of your stress, you can prevent recurrences.
As a way of draining off stress energy, nothing beats aerobic exercise. To understand why, we need to review what stress is. People often think of stress as pressure at work, a demanding boss, a sick child or rush-hour traffic. These may be trigger but stress is actually the body reaction to factors such as these. Stress is the fight-or-fight response in the body, mediated by adrenaline and other stress hormones and comprised such physiologic changes as increased heart rate and blood pressure, faster breathing, muscle tension, dilated pupils, dry mouth and increased blood sugar. In other words, stress is the state of increased arousal necessary for an organism to defend itself at a time of danger.
Exercise is the most logical way to dissipate the excess energy. It is what our bodies are trying to do when we pace around or tap our legs and fingers. It is much better to channel it into a more complete form of exercise like a brisk walk, a run, a bike ride, or a game of squash.
Just as we are all capable of mounting up and sustaining a stress reaction, we have also inherited the ability to put our bodies into a state of deep relaxation called the ‘relaxation response’. In this state, all the physiologic events in the stress reaction are reversed. Pulse slows, blood pressure falls, breathing slows and muscles relax.
According to the passage, the major step in controlling stress is Options:In the question below which of the following options express the same idea as the one in quotes?:
'An open secret' means
Options:Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.
Curiosity is as clear and definite as any of our urges. We wonder what is in a sealed telegram or in a letter which someone else is absorbed or what is being said in the telephone booth or in low conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy. Suspicion or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved in. But there appears to be a fair amount of personal interest in other people's affairs even when they do not concern us except as a mystery to be unravelled or a tale to be told. The reports of a divorce suit will have news 'value' for many weeks, They constitute a story like a novel, a play or a moving picture. This is not an example of pure curiosity. However, since we readily identify ourselves with others' their joys and despair then become our own concern.
Adapted from Harris, W. and L.G Wilson (1963) The University Handbook,New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston
Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?? Options:Fill in the gap with the most appropriate option from the list provided?
You would be well _______ to listen to what the teacher says?
Options:After many weary weeks of matching . Nzinga and her attendants arrived at the white wall of Luanda. The guards at the city gates led them through the winding streets and up to the governor’s palace. A pompous courtier, sweating and dirty in his thick clothes ordered them to wait amongst a crowd of people who had come to beg favours of the governor.
Nzinga waited patiently, ignoring this insult to her royal dignity. She knew that her chance would come. The hot sun beat down on the white walls of the palace, yet Nzinga stood straight and proud as the crowd of Portuguese merchants mopped their sweating faces with damp lace handkerchiefs.
Much later the courtier came back. He knocked on the floor with his staff, and then announced in a loud voice, ‘His Excellency Joao Correia de Souza, the Governor in Angola of His Most Royal and Catholic Majesty, the king of Portugal’. The tired soldiers stood to attention and the courtiers and merchants bowed.
Nzinga became very impatient. Was she to stand here like a servant all day, waiting for this man to make up his mind to hear her? She stepped forward, walked into the middle of the room and faced the governor. The guards and the courtiers were so amazed that they could o nothing but gasp in amazement at this boldness. ‘Well, ‘murmured one of the merchants to his neighbor. ‘Now she will learn what trouble is! Don Joao will be very angry. It is an insult to his dignity’. ‘What do you mean by this, asked the governor when he had recovered from his surprise. ‘Who are you? Come, woman, state your business!’
But Nzinga was not afraid. In a clear, calm voice she answered him. ‘My first business is a chair,’ she said. The governor laughed. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘You are seated, ‘she replied, ‘And you are only a governor, a slave of your king. I am a princess and men do not sit where I stand. I will state my business seated!’
But Nzinga had learnt the strength of her enemy. She knew that she was already winning this contest of wills. E
Whatever happens now, this man would not think that she has been sent by a beaten people to beg favours. Without another word, she turned and made a sign to her maid. When the girl came to her, Nzinga ordered her to kneel down. Then, with a flash or triumph in her eyes, Nzinga sat down on the girl’s back, Nzinga got her treaty. Pride in herself and in her people had saved the day for the Mbundu.
This story shows that Options:Fill the blank spaces with the most appropriate of options A-E:
When we were coming back from the picnic last Friday, there …. on EKO bridge.
Options:Although our aim is to nurture healthy children, Nigerian children are still subjected to severe physical and mental stress as they develop.
So far our interest and activities have been to ensure their physical well-being through the reduction of high mortality and morbidity rates, still inadequate as this may be. But we need to examine from time to time the other needs of the Nigerian child which will ensure a totally healthy development.
We are split between two cultures – our traditional and the Western, a relic of our colonial past. This also affects our child-rearing practices. Therefore, these practices must have a very important bearing on how the child is prepared for our world of today so that he fits into our disturbed cultural milieu.
Different styles of child-rearing and education can produce different personalities in terms of motivation, aggressiveness, achievement and integration of the individual into the community socially and culturally. It is important that, while we struggle with the visible organic disease, we fix our gaze on the other important measures to attain this end – a healthy child.
The process of social adjustment begins from the moment of birth. Many of our traditional birth practices ensure that the mother either carries or suckles her child immediately after birth. The baby therefore comes into close contact with the mother at this critical time.
Moreover she is forced to stay indoors with the baby for varying periods of time. By this means, the attachment of the baby to the mother, so essential for the child’s ability to relate to her in future is secured.
This crucial moment in the baby’s life is now being recognized in the Western countries, whilst birth practices in some hospital and maternity homes separate mother and child immediately after birth to the extent that their ability to develop a close relationship may be jeopardized.
Our Nigerian child of today may, therefore, be worse off than that of yesterday. As we move towards the training of our traditional birth attendants with a view to incorporating them into our health services, healthy practices such as the one described above must be maintained and encouraged
It is said that differences in ways of bringing up children and educating them Options:If we examine the opportunities for education of girls or women in less developed countries, we usually find a dismal picture. In some countries, the ratio of boys to girls in secondary schools is more than seven to one. What happens to the girls? Often they are kept at home to look after younger siblings and to perform a variety of domestic chores. Their education is not perceived as in any way equal in importance to that of boys. When a non-literate or barely literate girl reaches adolescence, she has little or no qualification for employment, even if her community provides any opportunity for the employment of women. The solution is to get her married as soon as possible, with the inevitable result that she produces children too soon, too often and too late. With no formal education, she is hardly aware that there is any alternative. In a study made in Thailand, it was noted that the literate woman marries later and ceases childbearing earlier than her non-literate counterpart. But the latter is so chained to her household by the necessities of gathering fuel, preparing food and tending children that she is very difficult to reach, even if health services, nutrition, education, maternal and child health centres are available in her community. She does not understand what they are intended to do.
According to the writer, most girls in less developed countries are not in school because Options:This question is based on the novel, The Life Changer.
Salma and her roommates were _________
Options: