You were an eye-witness to a fire outbreak which completely destroyed the main market in your town. Write an article suitable for publication in a national newspaper describing the incident and suggesting measures that could be adopted to prevent a recurrence.
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
Do the present policies on those who commit crimes reflect a class war? For long, people have alleged that certain laws discriminate against some members of the society while such laws favour others. Besides, some sociologists also claim. that .some members of the society are more prone to some specific crimes than others. So, our opening question is pertinent.
When we realize that armed robbery and similar offences require the use of brute force, it immediately becomes clear that these are offences almost exclusive to the masculine world. The offences are thus sex bound. Besides, the need to be physically strong and agile tends to exclude the upper middle-age and the elderly; so, age is also a factor, Moreover, members of the working class, who at least have some financial returns to rely on, hardly ever have the urge to resort to violence.. This tends to limit violent crimes to the unemployed, poor and desperate males in their late teens, twenties, or early thirties. Indeed, if elderly citizens are involved, they function as the barons, the financiers, who sit back at home while they let loose the dogs of vandalism and death. They provide the money and tools for the front line criminals.
Similarly, drug pushing tends to be more prevalent among the weaker sex, especially ladies in their twenties. They are biologically more attractive, and hence more likely to wade through the airport and border post while hiding deadly gramms of hard drugs within one or other of their bodily crevices. Again if older citizens are involved it is more as the barons, shielding the carriers from prosecution if they are caught. So, this is another crime that is largely sex-bound.
Punishments for offences limited to the citizens on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder appear to be harsher. So, robbery with violence attracts death, and pushing hard drugs attracts long jail terms. Meanwhile, pen robbery and large-scale fraud, offences which are invariably specific to the high class officials, do not attract severe penalties. Indeed, most culprits at this level manage to wriggle out of the net of the law.
There thus appears to be sufficient reasons to answer our original question in the affirmative.
(a) Mention any two yardsticks used by the writer to categorize those who commit violent crimes.
(b) What two roles do the barons of the identified crimes play?
(c) Among what group of people are violent crimes most common?
(d) (i) Does the writer consider the punishment for the various crimes mentioned in the passage as fair?
(ii) Support your answer with a brief description of the writer's argument.
(e) ...they let loose the dogs of vandalism and death. (I) What figure of speech is the above expression?
(ii) What does the expression mean?
(f) For each of the following words, find another word or phrase which means the same and can replace it as used in the passage: (i) pertinent: (ii) agile; (iii) desperate; (iv) prevalent; (v) severe.
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
Marriage as a human institution is facing its greatest threat ever in the twentieth century. Never, since the first man and woman were joined together, has the institution been beset by as many problems as it is now. And this trend, which started in the Western World, has spread and is spreading to all parts of the globe.
The most disturbing problem is the high rate of divorce. It is no longer a social stigma for women to fill in forms indicating that they are divorced; men. too, proclaim their liberty from the shackles of matrimony somehow with pride. Little wonder that young couples resort to separation and eventually divorce. at the slightest disagreement.
The availability of an alternative aggravates the seriousness of the problem. Instead of entering into matrimony, very many couples simply decide to live together. Even the courts now recognize such common law marriages, and respect the rights of partners in such associations. The great advantage this accords the partners is the fluidity of the association, the ease with which one or both can call off the union.
Besides, very many countries now enact laws that recognize the rights of children born out of wedlock. This singular factor has helped to shoot up the number of such children in many civilized communities. A recent survey in an urban college shows that about forty percent of the students were born out of wedlock.
Not less among the factors hastening the death of the marriage institution is the progressively rising cost of living. Nowadays, it is essential for both partners to be gainfully employed to be sure of a reasonable decent level of existence. The marriage ceremony itself costs so much that the young men simply remain single, raising one or two children from ladies who themselves are often willing collaborators against the institution of marriage.
(a) What does the author mean by referring to marriage as an institution?
(b) What do the words liberty and shackles mean, as used in the passage?
(c) (i) What, according to the passage, is a common-law marriage?
(ii) Mention one advantage of this system
(d) Mention any two factors that are seriously threatening the marriage institution.
(e) ... who themselves are willing collaborators against the institution of marriage.
(i) What grammatical term is used to describe the above expression as used in the passage?
(ii) What is its function?
(f) For each of the following, find another word or phrase that means the same and which can replace it as used in the passage:
(i) globe; (ii) stigma; (iii) an alternative; (iv) enact; (v) survey.
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
On a global basis, no statistics are adequate to suggest the magnitude of the revolution in education today. In the United States Information Services libraries in the third world, about thirty million people annually use the facilities provided. The agency distributes eight million books every year. The Soviet Union also distributes over one hundred and fifty million books to developing countries all over the world. But together, these programmes do not come near to meeting the world demand.
Mere facts and figures cannot convey the human passion for learning. In the English-speaking teaching programmes mounted for children in Latin-American countries, children have been known to have sold the shoes off their feet to pay their way to classes. In Africa, a tribal chief was turned away from enrolling in a class because there were no more chairs. The next day, he and a contingent of his fellow chiefs were waiting outside the door, each carrying his own chair.
This revolution is not limited to the developing world. In the United States there are more than fifty million students attending more than 185,000 public and private schools at all levels. There are more students today in the United States than there were city residents only forty years ago. We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury which gives some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex industrialized society. Levels of education which were once regarded with awe have now become Commonplace. And jobs which once could be filled with possession of strength and native intelligence now call for a college degree. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.
It is a mistake, however, to confuse skill with education. A man who has been taught only to hold a job has not been educated; he has only been trained. And the man who has merely been trained is not fully qualified to take his p a free society as a fully participating citizen. An all-round education should equip the learner for any challenges he may encounter.
Education, of course, is not something that is acquired just in college. It is a life-long task and when I think of death, I think of it as the moment when the brain ceases to inquire and expand.
(a) In four sentences, one for each, summarize the instances given by the writer to show that education is spreading at a very rapid rate.
(b) In two sentences, one for each, state the reasons given by the writer to support the view that education is changing fast.
A youth club in your country is organizing an essay competition for final year Senior Secondary School students on the topic: The lingua franca question: problems and prospects. Write your entry.
