English
Read the Passage Carefully and Answer the Following Questions:-
1. How you can best improve your English depends on where you live and particularly on whether or not you live in an English speaking community. If you hear English spoken every day and mix freely with English speaking people, that is, on the whole, an advantage. On the other hand, it is often confusing to have the whole language, poured over you at once. Ideally, a step-by-step course should accompany or lead up to this experience. It will also help a great deal if you can easily get the sort of English books in which you are interested.
2. To read a lot is essential. It is stupid not to venture outside the examination ‘set books’ or the textbooks you have chosen for intensive study. Read as many books in English as you can, not as a duty but for pleasure. Do not choose the most difficult books you find, with the idea of listing and learning as many new words possible: choose what is likely to interest you and be sure in advance that it is not too hard. You should not have to be constantly looking up new words in the dictionary, for that deadens interest and checks real learning. Look up a word here and there, but as a general policy try to push ahead, guessing what words mean from the context. It is extensive and not intensive reading that normally helps you to get interested in extra-reading and thereby improves your English. You should enjoy the feeling which extensive reading gives of having some command of the language. As you read you will become more and more familiar with words and sentence patterns you already know, understanding them better and better as you meet them in more and more contexts, some of which may differ only slightly from others.
3. Some people say that we cannot learn to speak a language better with the help of a book. To believe this is to believe that the spoken language and the written language are quite different things. This is not so. There is a very great deal in common between the two. In learning the patterns and vocabulary of the written form, we are learning to a considerable extent those of the spoken form too. We are, in fact, learning the language and not merely one form of the language.
Questions
(a) On the basis of your reading of the above passage make notes on it, using headings an an r-and sub-headings. Use recognizable abbreviations (wherever necessary—minimum 4) d mat you consider suitable. Also, supply an appropriate title to it.
(b) Write a summary of the above passage.
Answers
(a) Notes on the contents of the Passage :
A.Ways of improving English :
(i) living in Eng. speaking. comfy.
(ii) having a step-by-step course
(iii) reading good intst. Books
B. What to read :
(i) books other that exam. ‘set books’
(ii) books that can give pleasure
(iii) books that are not difficult to follow
C. Value of extensive reading :
(i) helps to give command over the lang.
(ii) fmlty. with sentence patterns
(iii) the habit of guessing meanings from the text without having to use a diet.
d. The relation between speaking and reading a language :
(i) not much difference between spoken and written tang.
(ii) the same patterns, same vocab.
(iii) by reading a lot of books we can learn both spoken and written Eng.
Title: How to Improve Spoken and Written English
(b) Summary of the Passage :
Living in an English speaking community can be helpful in learning and improving one’s language. But only this much is not sufficient. A step-by-step course is also necessary along with it. Also a lot or reading other than the examination ‘set books’, should be done. Difficult books for which a dictionary has to be consulted frequently should not be chosen for reading. Only easy books that can maintain the reader’s interest should be chosen. This sort of extensive reading can improve both our written and spoken English since the vocabulary and sentence patterns are common in both the cases.
| Abbreviations used :
1. Eng. – English 2. spking. — speaking 3. comty. – community 4. intst. – interesting 5. exam. – examination 6. lang. – language 7. fmlty. – familiarity 8. diet. – dictionary 9. vocab. – vocabulary |
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