Question 1: Read the following passage carefully and answer all the questions.
Sometime ago the university psychologist made a study of the way professional men and business executives spend their time. He found that they dedicate seven out of ten of their working hours to giving or getting information. Of these seven hours, 11 per cent went into writing, 15 per cent into reading, 31 per cent into talking, and 43 per cent into listening.
Clearly, then, listening to the words of others is perhaps the most significant use we have for our sense of hearing. It may seem that listening will be a skill in that one will grow better with experience. Unfortunately, reverse is often the case. It is quite possible that young children in general are better at listening to other’s talk than most mature men and women.
In another study, scientists attempted to find how efficiently business executives listen. Survey covered someone hundred firms. One almost unbelievable finding was that men at second level of command, directors and managers, seemed on average to misunderstand or to fail to understand about one-third of what they were told by their colleagues.
Such a loss of listening ability is by no means inevitable. Many individuals keep for life the capacity for careful listening which seems to come naturally to most children in years when it is their all-significant way of learning. Authorities on subject have a number of suggestions for those who seek to keep or regain that ability. One suggestion is to remember that words are just symbols with which we try to communicate ideas and feelings to each other. If we are going to achieve something, both the speaker and the listener should get together on what they mean by these symbols.
Commonest cause of poor listening is the unthinking assumption that words could mean only what they mean to you. If your telephone rings and you pick it up and hear a strange voice say “it was cold today”, you could know what temperature he means. He might be calling from someplace where a temperature of say, fifty degrees will seem cold, or where it will seem warm. To determine approximately what temperature the word refers to, you must find out in what context the speaker is using to.
Another suggestion: When you have any doubt about what someone means, put another way what you think he said and ask him whether you have it right. Assume, someone says Columbus did not discover America. This may be only a challenging way of making the point that Columbus thought he had discovered a route to Asia. But this is not only possibility. Speaker may say that what he meant was that Siberian ancestors of the American Indians crossed from Siberia to Alaska thousands of years before Columbus. In this case, of course, the speaker probably will be trying to provoke you to misunderstand his meaning at first. But same sort of thing could occur when he is making his best effort to be plain.
Answer the following questions:
I. According to the author, careful listening is a skills that seems to
a) improve with age
b) come naturally to young children
c) be highly developed among psychologists
II. After studying listening tests, scientists discovered that directors and managers
a) spend most of their time reading.
b) improve their listening skills as they get older.
c) misunderstand about one-third of what they hear.
III. ‘Strange voice’ incident is told to stress the importance of
a) words as symbols.
b) the context in which someone speaks.
c) the telephone as a means of communication.
IV. What are the ways to improve your listening ability? Explain.
Question 2: You are Rashid pursuing higher studies in the new city. During Orientation Programme, you meet the few students on campus who desire to help you settle down. Conduct a dialogue with them and express your feelings about coming to a new city. Take at least five turns.
The dialogue can start like this:
Old Student: Hello! Are you new to the College?
Rashid: Hello! Yes. I’m Rashid from Chennai.
Old Student: Welcome to St. John’s College. Hope you have a wonderful time here.
Rashid: Thank you very much.
Old Student: Tell me Rashid, I hope you are comfortable here.
Question 3: Carefully read following passage, that contains about 400 words. Then, using your own words as far as possible, write a summary of it in not more than 120 words. Finally, supply a title for your summary.
Writing is a skill; like other skills, it could be learnt, and like most skills it is not inborn. For instance, few people lack basic equipment to learn to ride the bicycle (balance, strength, sight), but most become skilful cyclists only after much practice. Confidence is the major need, and having the courage to get on and try. The same is true of writing. Most people have basic equipment (facts, experience, language), but like riding the bicycle, writing is a skill that should be learnt by doing it. No amount of reading, or absorbing rules and advice, could substitute for practice. Practice would bring co-ordination and control which would change writing from the seems that hazardous exercise to efficient means of getting somewhere.
We start from assumption that thinking about writing could improve it, and everyone could learn to write well. Most people, in reality, are better at writing than they fear. They could write successful letters to friends and efficient complaints about faulty goods. These writing tasks need the same basic skills as long reports, detailed instructions, or complex letters or memoranda. Judgement of what audience requires to know, tact in assessing which way to present this information to them most usefully, and resources of language to do the job exist in everyone. We all develop a basic storehouse of skills. It is drawn on to tell successful jokes at the bar, to shout at our driver, to persuade a friend to do something with you. This book sets out to encourage a more conscious use of those skills.
The first task is to encourage right attitudes to writing. An instructor teaching timid old ladies to ride bicycles will soon find getting to take a positive and confident view was a main step towards success. Few professional scientists busy with research projects, rushing their results on to paper for impatient managers, will like to be compared with ‘timid old ladies’, but they may recognize in themselves some of the same fearful hesitation when they put pen to paper. Writing is often felt to be a nuisance; often it is something that is secretly dreaded, rarely is it looked forward to as the climax of research.
Question 4: Write essay in about 200 words on the following topics:
i) The changing role of the mobile phone.
ii) The advantages and disadvantages of social networking sites.
iii) The increasing role of technology in our homes.
iv) Animal rights are as important as human rights.