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English Language 2001

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WAEC

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2001

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6 Read the following passage carefully and

answer the questions on it.

Bitrus, a middle-aged man, was

speeding along the hot tarmac one
afternoon, oblivious of the countryside.
By his side, reading a magazine was his
"rst son, a twenty-year old university
computer science student. On the man’s
mind was the contract he was pursuing
in the capital city. It was worth several
million dollars. Although he had handled
bigger contracts before, Bitrus was
preoccupied with this new challenge, his
mind far away from the road before him.
His son was also buried in the
magazine he was reading. So neither saw
the goat crossing the road early enough.
Like automation, Bitrus jammed on the
brakes. In a #ash, there was a skid and a
somersault. The villagers worked for
almost an hour on the huge Mercedes
before rescuing the two.
There, in the casualty ward, the duo
lay on the stretchers. Bitrus was soon in
a fairly stable, but anybody would know
that the son needed prompt specialist
medical attention. The doctor was sent
for, a surgeon who regularly handled
such cases. Soon enough, the doctor
came. The nurses heaved a sigh of relief.
But then... “Oh no, I can’t handle this
case. He’s my son!” Everyone was
shocked. One of the nurses pleaded. “But
doctor, you must do something
otherwise,... “No, he’s my son. I’ll have to
transfer this case.” And so tearfully, more
agitated than anybody around, the
doctor hurried away to call a colleague.
Here was Bitrus, with multiple
injuries, but not in danger. In the
adjoining room was his son, still
comatose. How then could a doctor
come in and say, “This is my son”? Wasn’t
Bitrus the father after all? Most people
would reason that the doctor was truly
the secret biological father. Others,
reasoning hard, would conclude that the
doctor was Bitrus’s father and thus was
right in describing him as his son. But for
how long would people continue to think
that all doctors must be male? Couldn’t
the doctor have simply been Mrs. Bitrus?
(a) (i) What was the remote cause of the
accident? (ii) What was the immediate
cause?
(b) What does the passage suggest about
doctors’ attitude to the cases they
handle?
(c) Describe the conditions of Mr. Bitrus
and his son at the hospital.
(d) What assumption about doctors does
the passage illustrate?
(e) His son was also buried in the
magazine he was reading.
(i) What type of "gurative expression is
this? (ii) What is its function as it is used
in the sentence?
(f) ...that the doctor was truly the secret
biological father.
(i) What grammatical name is given to
this expression? (ii) What is its function as
it is used in the sentence?
(g) For each of the following, "nd a word
or phrase that means the same and can
replace it as it is used in the passage: (i)
oblivious (ii) prompt (iii) regularly (iv)
pleaded (v) agitated (vi) adjoining

View Answer & Discuss WAEC 2001

7 Read the following passage carefully

and answer the questions on it.

In the 1960s and 1970s

undergraduates did not need to apply for
employment. Employees usually wooed
them by depositing o$ers of jobs in their
halls of residence for those interested to
pick and choose from as soon as they
"nished writing their degree
examinations. How things have changed!
We have since “progressed” from this age
of abundance in which unemployment
was hardly heard of to one of economic
recession and widespread
unemployment. The problem is so acute
that one "nds unemployment even
among engineers and doctors.

What are the causes of

this phenomenon? For one thing,
our educational system does not train
its products for self-employment.
Everybody expects the government or
the private sector to provide them with a
job at the end of their studies. As we
have now realized, the government and
the private sector combined cannot
create enough jobs to go round the army
of graduates turned out annually by our
universities. For another, many parents
encourage their children to enroll in
courses leading to prestigious and
lucrative professions for which they may
be intellectually unsuited. They end up
obtaining poor degrees or none at all.
Such graduates cannot compete on the
job market, so they swell the ranks of the
unemployable and the unemployed.

Perhaps the most important single

cause of unemployment is economic
recession. During periods of boom,
economic activities are generated in
abundance and these make plenty of
jobs available. But the reverse is the case
in times of economic recession.

There is no simple solution to

the problem. Everyone in the society has
a role to play here. The government has
a duty to ensure that the economy
is buoyant, thus providing the
right environment for the creation of
jobs. The educational authorities have to
orientate the process of education
towards the production of job creators
rather than job seekers. Guidance and
counseling services should be made
available in all secondary institutions.
Parents, too, should stop misdirecting
their children into choosing careers for
which they are ill-suited.

(a)(i) What was the employment situation

like in the 1960s and 1970s?

(ii) What is the situation now?

(b) In what ways do the

education systems, the parents and the
students contribute to
the unemployment situation?

(c) Mention three suggestions given

in the last paragraph for solving
the problem.

(d) Why does the writer enclose the

word progressed (First paragraph) in
quotation marks?

(e) ........for which they may

be intellectually unsuited.

(i) What grammatical name is given to

this expression?

(ii)What is its function as it is used in the

sentence?

(f) For each of the following words,

"nd another word or phrase that means
the same and can replace it as it is used
in the passage:

(i) recession

(ii) acute

(iii) army

(iv) lucrative

(v) boom

(vi) orientate

View Answer & Discuss WAEC 2001

8 Read the following passage carefully

and answer, in your own words as far
as possible, the question that follows.

Poverty! Can anyone who has not

really been poor know what poverty is? I
really doubt it. How can anyone who
enjoys three square meals a day explain
what poverty means? Indeed
can someone who has two full meals a
day claim to know poverty? Perhaps, one
begins to grasp the full meaning of
poverty when one struggles really hard
to have one miserable meal in twenty-
four hours. Poverty and hunger are
cousins, the former always dragging
along the latter wherever he chooses to
go.

If you were wearing a suit, or a

complete traditional attire, and you look
naturally rotund in your apparel, you
cannot understand what poverty entails.
Nor can you have a true feel of poverty if
you have some good shirts and pairs
of trousers, never mind that all these
are casual wear. Indeed, if you can
change one dress into another, and
these are all you can boast of, you are
not really poor. A person begins to have
a true feel of what poverty means when,
apart from the tattered clothes on his
body, he doesn’t have any other; not
even calico to keep away the cold at
night.

Let us face it, can anyone who has

never slept outside, in the open,
appreciate the full, harsh import of
homelessness? Yet that is what real,
naked poverty is. He who can lay claim to
a house, however humble, cannot claim
to be poor. Indeed, if he can a$ord to
rent a #at, or a room in town or city,
without the landlord having cause to
eject him, he cannot honestly claim to be
poor. The really poor man has no roof
over his head, and this is why you "nd
him under a bridge, in a tent or simply in
the vast open air.

But that is hardly all. The poor man

faces the world as a hopeless underdog.
In every bargain, every discussion,
every event involving him and others, the
poor man is constantly reminded of his
failure in life. Nobody listens attentively
when he makes a point, nobody accepts
that his opinion merits consideration. So
in most cases, he learns to accept that he
has neither wisdom nor opinion.

The pauper’s lot naturally rubs o$ on

his child who is subject not only to
hunger of the body but also of the mind.
The pauper lacks the resources to send
his child to school. And even
in communities where education is free,
the pauper’s child still faces an uphill task
because the hunger of the body impedes
the proper nourishment of the
mind. Denied access to modern
communications media, the poor child
has very little opportunity to understand
the concepts taught him. His mind is
rocky soil on which the teacher’s seeds
cannot easily germinate. Thus embattled
at home and then at school, the pauper’s
child soon has very little option but to
drop out of school.
That is still not all. Weakened by
hunger, embattled by cold and exposure
to the elements, feeding on poor water
and poor food, the pauper is an easy
target for diseases. This is precisely why
the poorest countries have the shortest
life expectancy while the longest life
expectancy are recorded among the
richest countries. Poverty is really a
disease that shortens life!

(a)In six sentences, one for each,

summarize the problems of the poor
man.

View Answer & Discuss WAEC 2001

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