2018 OOU English Comprehension

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You all know how friendly we are with Okperi. Do you think that any Umuaro man who goes to prison there will come back alive? But that apart, do you forget that this is the moon of planting?

Do you want to grow this year’s crops in the prison house in a land where your fathers owe a cow? I speak as your elder brother. I have travelled in Olu and I have travelled in Igbo, and I can tell you that there is no escape from the white man. He has come.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie a cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape.

As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we every eight day… Unachukwu’s opponents were now shouting that this was a meeting of an age group, that they had not assembled to join with him in chewing the seed of follishness which they called their new religion.

‘We are talking about the white man’s road’, said a voice above the others.

‘Yes, we are talking about the white man’s road, the roof and walls of a house falling, the ceiling is not left standing. The white man, the new religion, the soldiers, the new road-they are all part of the same thing.

The white man has a gun, a bow and carries fire in his mouth. He does not fight with one weapon alone. (Taken from Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God)

‘There is no escape from the white man’ in the passage means that the

Read the following passage and answer question

You all know how friendly we are with Okperi. Do you think that any Umuaro man who goes to prison there will come back alive? But that apart, do you forget that this is the moon of planting?

Do you want to grow this year’s crops in the prison house in a land where your fathers owe a cow? I speak as your elder brother. I have travelled in Olu and I have travelled in Igbo, and I can tell you that there is no escape from the white man. He has come.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie a cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape.

As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we every eight day… Unachukwu’s opponents were now shouting that this was a meeting of an age group, that they had not assembled to join with him in chewing the seed of follishness which they called their new religion.

‘We are talking about the white man’s road’, said a voice above the others.

‘Yes, we are talking about the white man’s road, the roof and walls of a house falling, the ceiling is not left standing. The white man, the new religion, the soldiers, the new road-they are all part of the same thing.

The white man has a gun, a bow and carries fire in his mouth. He does not fight with one weapon alone. (Taken from Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God)

Unachukwu’s speech in this passage shows that he

Read the following passage and answer the question

Insects can be classified into fourteen separate groupings, or orders. Butterflies and moths belong to the Lepidoptera order. Lepidoptera mean “scale wings”, from the Greek word “lepido” which means “scale” and “ptera” which means “wings”.

Lepidoptera is one of the largest and most diverse insects’ orders. The only order with more different species is coleopteran, that of beetles. So far, scientists have observed approximately 150,000 different species of butterflies and moths. Each species is distinguished by the unique arrangement, colour and pattern of its scales. Worldwide, there are about 28,000 butterfly species. The rest of the species comprising Lepidoptera are species of moths.

Though butterflies and moths both have scaled wings, there are some important differences between them. Butterflies are distinguished by their brightly coloured wings. Moths’ wings are usually less bright. Butterflies are usually active during the day, while moths’ are active at night. A butterfly’s antennae are swollen at the tip, while a moth’s antennae are feathery.

How many insect orders are there?

Read the following passage and answer the question

Insects can be classified into fourteen separate groupings, or orders. Butterflies and moths belong to the Lepidoptera order. Lepidoptera mean “scale wings”, from the Greek word “lepido” which means “scale” and “ptera” which means “wings”.

Lepidoptera is one of the largest and most diverse insects’ orders. The only order with more different species is coleopteran, that of beetles. So far, scientists have observed approximately 150,000 different species of butterflies and moths. Each species is distinguished by the unique arrangement, colour and pattern of its scales. Worldwide, there are about 28,000 butterfly species. The rest of the species comprising Lepidoptera are species of moths.

Though butterflies and moths both have scaled wings, there are some important differences between them. Butterflies are distinguished by their brightly coloured wings. Moths’ wings are usually less bright. Butterflies are usually active during the day, while moths’ are active at night. A butterfly’s antennae are swollen at the tip, while a moth’s antennae are feathery.

Which of the following is true?

Read the following passage and answer the question

Insects can be classified into fourteen separate groupings, or orders. Butterflies and moths belong to the Lepidoptera order. Lepidoptera mean “scale wings”, from the Greek word “lepido” which means “scale” and “ptera” which means “wings”.

Lepidoptera is one of the largest and most diverse insects’ orders. The only order with more different species is coleopteran, that of beetles. So far, scientists have observed approximately 150,000 different species of butterflies and moths. Each species is distinguished by the unique arrangement, colour and pattern of its scales. Worldwide, there are about 28,000 butterfly species. The rest of the species comprising Lepidoptera are species of moths.

Though butterflies and moths both have scaled wings, there are some important differences between them. Butterflies are distinguished by their brightly coloured wings. Moths’ wings are usually less bright. Butterflies are usually active during the day, while moths’ are active at night. A butterfly’s antennae are swollen at the tip, while a moth’s antennae are feathery.

You would expect to find the kind of information in this passage in

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In America, the amendment to the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” This amendment was passed to protect our right to express our opinions without fear. Yet, we must stop using the first amendment as a justification to say whatever we want, wherever we want. No speech is “free” when it has detrimental effect on the well-being of the other, the protection of our privacy, the safety of our orders, or quality of our thinking.

While censorship is not the way of tis land, we must take into account the effect of musical lyrics that influence young listeners. How often do we find ourselves singing a tune or repeating a phrase from a song instinctively, without stopping to ponder the meaning of the words? When these words are demeaning to any group of people or when they incite violence, we are unknowingly repeating phrases of hate. How long does it take until those phrases become worn into patterns of thought and we find ourselves believing the words we mindlessly hummed?

As used in the passage, the word demeaning most nearly means

Read the following passage and answer question

In America, the amendment to the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” This amendment was passed to protect our right to express our opinions without fear. Yet, we must stop using the first amendment as a justification to say whatever we want, wherever we want. No speech is “free” when it has detrimental effect on the well-being of the other, the protection of our privacy, the safety of our orders, or quality of our thinking.

While censorship is not the way of tis land, we must take into account the effect of musical lyrics that influence young listeners. How often do we find ourselves singing a tune or repeating a phrase from a song instinctively, without stopping to ponder the meaning of the words? When these words are demeaning to any group of people or when they incite violence, we are unknowingly repeating phrases of hate. How long does it take until those phrases become worn into patterns of thought and we find ourselves believing the words we mindlessly hummed?

The author implies that the most important aim of the right to free speech is

Read the following passage and answer question

In America, the amendment to the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” This amendment was passed to protect our right to express our opinions without fear. Yet, we must stop using the first amendment as a justification to say whatever we want, wherever we want. No speech is “free” when it has detrimental effect on the well-being of the other, the protection of our privacy, the safety of our orders, or quality of our thinking.

While censorship is not the way of tis land, we must take into account the effect of musical lyrics that influence young listeners. How often do we find ourselves singing a tune or repeating a phrase from a song instinctively, without stopping to ponder the meaning of the words? When these words are demeaning to any group of people or when they incite violence, we are unknowingly repeating phrases of hate. How long does it take until those phrases become worn into patterns of thought and we find ourselves believing the words we mindlessly hummed?

The author attempts to persuade the reader with

Read the following passage and answer question

In America, the amendment to the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” This amendment was passed to protect our right to express our opinions without fear. Yet, we must stop using the first amendment as a justification to say whatever we want, wherever we want. No speech is “free” when it has detrimental effect on the well-being of the other, the protection of our privacy, the safety of our orders, or quality of our thinking.

While censorship is not the way of tis land, we must take into account the effect of musical lyrics that influence young listeners. How often do we find ourselves singing a tune or repeating a phrase from a song instinctively, without stopping to ponder the meaning of the words? When these words are demeaning to any group of people or when they incite violence, we are unknowingly repeating phrases of hate. How long does it take until those phrases become worn into patterns of thought and we find ourselves believing the words we mindlessly hummed?

This passage is most likely from

Read the following passage and answer question

In America, the amendment to the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” This amendment was passed to protect our right to express our opinions without fear. Yet, we must stop using the first amendment as a justification to say whatever we want, wherever we want. No speech is “free” when it has detrimental effect on the well-being of the other, the protection of our privacy, the safety of our orders, or quality of our thinking.

While censorship is not the way of tis land, we must take into account the effect of musical lyrics that influence young listeners. How often do we find ourselves singing a tune or repeating a phrase from a song instinctively, without stopping to ponder the meaning of the words? When these words are demeaning to any group of people or when they incite violence, we are unknowingly repeating phrases of hate. How long does it take until those phrases become worn into patterns of thought and we find ourselves believing the words we mindlessly hummed?

The passage seems to imply that

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow

Those who are familiar with it will tell you that Ludo, like human life itself, is a game both of chance and skill.  You need skill in deciding how to make the most advantageous use of the figures, which turn up on the die when you cast it. Since each player has at least four alternative ways of using his figures, two players with equal luck may fare differently, depending on how cleverly each one uses his figures. The element of luck, again as in human life, plays a dominant role however. For no matter how skillful a player may be in using the figure he gets on the die, he has a slim chance of winning if he continually throws low figures. While a combination of ones and twos may be useful in checking the advance of one’s opponents, it will not take one home fast enough to win. On the other hand, consistent throws of sixes and fives, with even the very minimum of skill will help a player to home all his four counters before any of the three other players, unless, of course, he has no idea of the game at all.

It is implied in the passage that two players may fare equally if they

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow

Those who are familiar with it will tell you that Ludo, like human life itself, is a game both of chance and skill.  You need skill in deciding how to make the most advantageous use of the figures, which turn up on the die when you cast it. Since each player has at least four alternative ways of using his figures, two players with equal luck may fare differently, depending on how cleverly each one uses his figures. The element of luck, again as in human life, plays a dominant role however. For no matter how skillful a player may be in using the figure he gets on the die, he has a slim chance of winning if he continually throws low figures. While a combination of ones and twos may be useful in checking the advance of one’s opponents, it will not take one home fast enough to win. On the other hand, consistent throws of sixes and fives, with even the very minimum of skill will help a player to home all his four counters before any of the three other players, unless, of course, he has no idea of the game at all.

It is implied in the passage that in Ludo threes and fours are

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow

Those who are familiar with it will tell you that Ludo, like human life itself, is a game both of chance and skill.  You need skill in deciding how to make the most advantageous use of the figures, which turn up on the die when you cast it. Since each player has at least four alternative ways of using his figures, two players with equal luck may fare differently, depending on how cleverly each one uses his figures. The element of luck, again as in human life, plays a dominant role however. For no matter how skillful a player may be in using the figure he gets on the die, he has a slim chance of winning if he continually throws low figures. While a combination of ones and twos may be useful in checking the advance of one’s opponents, it will not take one home fast enough to win. On the other hand, consistent throws of sixes and fives, with even the very minimum of skill will help a player to home all his four counters before any of the three other players, unless, of course, he has no idea of the game at all.

According to the passage, a player with consistently high throws will

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow

Farming is the most important aspect of agriculture that has attracted attention within the last few years. Agriculture has several other aspects like fishery, livestock and poultry. All these are also important in that they have to do with the production of food items which human beings consume for survival. In many parts of the world today, farming has been regarded as the mainstay of the economy. Crops such as coca, rubber and cotton have been produce in such commercial quantity that they are sold to other countries.

Some countries have better comparative advantage in producing certain farm crops than other countries. In these other countries, there is the need to spend a lot of money on agriculture, particularly farming.

Most farmers use outmoded tools. A lot of them have no place to store their crops, most of which are always destroyed by insects and pests before harvest time. All these have adverse effects on their productivity. The government can do a lot to help farmers. Farmers’ co-operative societies can be encouraged and loans can be made available to farmers through government institutions like banks and finance corporations. Farmers can be taught how to build good storage structures for their produce. All these and a lot more can help to improve the conditions of farmers in these countries.

A lot of crops harvested are wasted because farmers

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It is customary nowadays among fashionable ladies and gentlemen to acquire strange and sometimes quaint clothes which are scarcely ever used: Sometimes it may be an approaching festival; sometimes a two hours’ ceremony and sometimes to honour a dead colleague- Something triggers off the modern craze to sew new materials whose use does not outlast the moment of craze. And so, people who just occupy small apartments in their parents’ homes, or have rented one room in a densely-peopled house find that more that two-thirds of their rooms are filled with bongo trousers which they cannot wear, worn out jeans which stink, or specially made clothes for occasions that are not recurrent.

Although plagued by the problem of school fees for their children, parents have had to swallow their own phlegm and humour of their children who need special clothes for important events. Newly employed youths soon find that their comrades are getting married, and new and special attire must be used to grace the occasion. University students see matriculation ceremonies or induction ceremonies into club membership as special reasons to make new attire which –you may be sure- they would not wear on another occasion that parallels the one for which these clothes were made.

Medical doctors may soon find another cause for the incidence of high blood pressure among the youth. The desire to acquire new clothes is one strong possible cause, but a more subtle one which haunts like a ghost is the problem of choice of what to wear. The youths have so stuffed their apartments, wardrobes, drawers and trunks with so many clothes that the greatest problem they face is the choice of what to wear.

A suitable title for this passage is

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It may be argued that museums as an institution and an agency for transmitting cultural heritage are an artificial creation, so far as objects are removed from their natural or proper environments and put into museums which are different environment altogether. However, it seems that museums themselves have come to be accepted and recognized as the best equipped institutions devised by man for the assemblage of cultural objects and their presentation and preservation for the present and future generations.

The artificial character of museums is however being gradually transformed into a cultural reality. Thus as one goes to the theatre for plays and other performing arts; the library for the printed word; today, it is the museum one goes to see evidence of man’s material outfit. For, no other institution or place so readily comes to mind as museums do when evidence of material culture is sought. Herein lies the importance of museums as cultural institutions and an agency for transmitting culture.

Museums are an artificial creation because

Read each passage carefully and answer the questions that follow

It may be argued that museums as an institution and an agency for transmitting cultural heritage are an artificial creation, so far as objects are removed from their natural or proper environments and put into museums which are different environment altogether. However, it seems that museums themselves have come to be accepted and recognized as the best equipped institutions devised by man for the assemblage of cultural objects and their presentation and preservation for the present and future generations.

The artificial character of museums is however being gradually transformed into a cultural reality. Thus as one goes to the theatre for plays and other performing arts; the library for the printed word; today, it is the museum one goes to see evidence of man’s material outfit. For, no other institution or place so readily comes to mind as museums do when evidence of material culture is sought. Herein lies the importance of museums as cultural institutions and an agency for transmitting culture.

According to the passage, which of the following is NOT part of the main functions of museums?

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You would think that the common cold should be easy enough to study, but it is not so easy as it looks. Colds often seem to spread from one person to another, so it is often assumed that the cold must be infectious, but there are some puzzling observations which do not fit in with this theory. An investigator in Holland examined some eight thousand volunteers from different areas, and came to the conclusion that in each group the colds appeared at the same time. Transfer of infection from case to case could not account for that. Yet at the Common Cold Research Unit Salisbury the infection theory has been tested out; two series of about two hundred people each were inoculated, one with salt water and the other with secretions from known cold victims. Only one of the salt-water group got a cold, compared with seventy three in the other group.

In the British Medical journal the other day, there was a report of a meeting ‘The Common Cold-Fact and Fancy’, at which one of the speakers reported as study of cold made in Cirencester over the last five years. Three hundred and fifty volunteers had kept diary records of their colds and on an average each had seven every year, with an annual morbidity of seven days. So nearly one-fifth of our lives is spent in more or less misery, coughing and sneezing. Some widely held beliefs about the common cold have turned out not to be true. It seems that old people are just as liable to colds as the young. Sailors in isolated weather ship have just as many colds while on board and not in contact with colds as the young. Sailors in isolated weather ships have just as many colds while onboard and not in contact with the outside world as when on shore. It is truism that common illnesses pose more problems than the rare. The rare disease is by comparison much easier to handle. There are not so many cases and all of them have been intensively studied. Someone has read up all the literature about the disease and published a digest of it. There will be more facts and fewer fancies.

The Cirencester volunteers kept a record of their colds through

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Whenever I have had to ask myself the question why I have not left this country for good, many answers rush to my mind, each striving to be recognized of the popular slogan that ‘this country belongs to us all’, for which reason every Nigerian must join hands in trying to salvage it. I try to dismiss the argument by reasoning that it is foolhardy attempting to lend a helping hand where one’s services are apparently not required. Then I am reminded that if I left the country in a hurry just because of our political instability and economic hardships, my commitments to my family and extended family at home would suffer. I reply by saying that as soon as I got settled abroad; I would arrange for my family to join me. Other financial problems at home would be taken care of by my regular remittances. Would I then never think of going back Home in future? Not until the situation in the country improved considerably, I would answer. And who did I expect to carry on with the task of national rehabilitation when the likes of me are all out of the country? Those who messed up the country in the first place, I would argue. And so on. This dialogue of self has been going on for the last ten years or so; meanwhile, I am yet to leave the country.

When I wonder how many people share my kind of mental experience, I realize that we must be very few. For not many have the slightest opportunity of absconding from the country; they do not have the place to run to nor do they have the means of escape. Even among the elite who consider this possibility, the uncertainty of a future outside their fatherland intimidates. And so we all end up staying and mumbling.

The expression ‘each striving to be recognized as being the most cogent’ means each

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It was part of her nefarious plot! Of that I had no doubt. She would slowly deprive me of my delicious slumber until finally, exhausted, I gave in to her wretched demands. She would claw her ways into my dreams, she could growl and complain, but no, I would not give in. I pulled the covers close over my head and rolled over. I was the stronger of we two. I was the determined one. I was the human, and she the beast. She must have understood my determination, for mercifully, the whining stopped. My breathing grew deeper and I returned to my wonderful sleep. Until moments later a crash awakened me. I bolted out of bed and there she was, in the kitchen guiltily lappily kitty treats off the floor. The mischievous beast had jumped onto the countertop and knocked the bag of food onto the floor. “Bad kitty!” I scolded, pushing her away from the mess of chow. But the sweet face, that little sandpaper tongue licking her chops somehow softened me.

The word “nefarious” as used in the first sentence in the passage means