Jamb English Language Past Questions For Year 2000

Question 71

  Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say ‘Bang’. Now, they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by firearms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill most teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the ages of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost double for white males, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics.

  Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced these statistics ‘frightening and intolerable?’. In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives’ in Ms Shalala’s words, an often-asked question seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television, the surrounding environment for most children and young adults make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying?

  It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer of fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted-that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effects. This is the reasonable hypothesis held, by 80 per cent of the respondents to a recent Time Mirror [poll who think that violent entertainment is ‘harmful’ to the society. Witness enough mimed shootouts; see enough ‘corpses’ fall across the screen and the taking of a human life seems no big deal. Even if a simple causal relationship cannot be established between watching violence and acting it out, is not this numbed sensitivity reason enough for cutting back on the overkill in films and TV?

In secretary Donna Shalala's view, the situation depicted by the statistics is

jamb 2000

  • A. tense and reassuring
  • B. topical and intimidating
  • C. alarming and unbearable
  • D. disturbing and conductive
View Answer and Explanation

Question 72

  Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say ‘Bang’. Now, they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by firearms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill most teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the ages of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost double for white males, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics.

  Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced these statistics ‘frightening and intolerable?’. In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives’ in Ms Shalala’s words, an often-asked question seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television, the surrounding environment for most children and young adults make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying?

  It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer of fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted-that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effects. This is the reasonable hypothesis held, by 80 per cent of the respondents to a recent Time Mirror [poll who think that violent entertainment is ‘harmful’ to the society. Witness enough mimed shootouts; see enough ‘corpses’ fall across the screen and the taking of a human life seems no big deal. Even if a simple causal relationship cannot be established between watching violence and acting it out, is not this numbed sensitivity reason enough for cutting back on the overkill in films and TV?

The writer says 'the firearms figure are rising' because

jamb 2000

  • A. more teenagers are now getting killed by firearms than by motor vehicle accidents
  • B. firearms now have figures that are terribly high
  • C. more teenagers now carry firearm than used to be the case
  • D. more teenagers are now getting killed by firearm than used to be the case
View Answer and Explanation

Question 73

  Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say ‘Bang’. Now, they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by firearms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill most teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the ages of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost double for white males, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics.

  Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced these statistics ‘frightening and intolerable?’. In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives’ in Ms Shalala’s words, an often-asked question seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television, the surrounding environment for most children and young adults make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying?

  It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer of fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted-that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effects. This is the reasonable hypothesis held, by 80 per cent of the respondents to a recent Time Mirror [poll who think that violent entertainment is ‘harmful’ to the society. Witness enough mimed shootouts; see enough ‘corpses’ fall across the screen and the taking of a human life seems no big deal. Even if a simple causal relationship cannot be established between watching violence and acting it out, is not this numbed sensitivity reason enough for cutting back on the overkill in films and TV?

From the passage, it can be inferred that since 1985

jamb 2000

  • A. more black males between the ages of 15 and 19 have been killing one another with guns
  • B. more black males between the ages 15 and 19 have been getting killed by guns
  • C. more white than black males have been getting killed by guns
  • D. more black than white males have been killing one another with guns
View Answer and Explanation

Question 74

  Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say ‘Bang’. Now, they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by firearms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill most teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the ages of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost double for white males, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics.

  Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced these statistics ‘frightening and intolerable?’. In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives’ in Ms Shalala’s words, an often-asked question seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television, the surrounding environment for most children and young adults make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying?

  It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer of fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted-that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effects. This is the reasonable hypothesis held, by 80 per cent of the respondents to a recent Time Mirror [poll who think that violent entertainment is ‘harmful’ to the society. Witness enough mimed shootouts; see enough ‘corpses’ fall across the screen and the taking of a human life seems no big deal. Even if a simple causal relationship cannot be established between watching violence and acting it out, is not this numbed sensitivity reason enough for cutting back on the overkill in films and TV?

What will actually be proved 'if the premise of education is granted'?

jamb 2000

  • A. entertainment on television is harmful to society
  • B. violence on television encourges violence in real life
  • C. good models can infuence the young
  • D. the viewer of fastasizes violence is the criminal who acts out violence
View Answer and Explanation

Question 75

  You would think that common cold should be easy enough to study, but it is not as 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 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 all appeared at the same time-transfer of infection from case to case not account for that. Yet at the common cold research unit in 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 secretion from known cold victims. Only one of the sail-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 a study of colds 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 seventy days. So nearly one-fifth of our lives are spent in more or less misery, coughing and sneezing. Some widely held beliefs about the common cold have turned out to be true. It seems that old people are just as liable to cold as the young. Sailors in isolated weather ships have just as many colds while on board 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 record of their colds through

jamb 2000

  • A. the british medical journal
  • B. morbility rates
  • C. temperature recordings
  • D. personal disries
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