Jamb English Language Past Questions For Year 2008
Question 1
There is a joke in a country that the closest anyone will come to experiencing eternity is the country’s court system. The problem is a strange aversion to settling cases. Judges pass them along to somebody else and rarely dismiss lawsuits, no matter how frivolous. The country’s lower courts have a backlog of about 20 million civil and criminal cases. An additional 2.3 million cases are pending before the high courts, while the Supreme Court has about 20,000 old cases on the docket. Many of those cases will take far longer than 16 years to resolve.
But now, experts say, the country’s new Prime Minister is committed to fixing the problem. And the judiciary itself, long criticize as insular and resistant to change, seems finally to have concluded that changes are needed. The chief Justice of the Supreme Court has declared that soon the country will reduce its massive case backlog. After that, ‘there will be no place for any corruption or indolence in the system’. His choice of words was telling. Whatever moral imperative exists, the chief reason that the country is getting serious about streaming the legal system is economic. Dysfunctional courts increase the risk of foreign investors, tortuous rules slow the rise of new enterprises and murky laws regarding land ownership and other issues stifle the growth of industries like construction and retail. The country’s business is lobbying for change; its Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, for instance, recently published a report that bemoaned the regulatory maze that confronts every commercial project, contributing to delays and cost overruns and providing one explanation why it receives only a tiny fraction of the foreign direct investment deposited in a neighbouring country. ‘Speedy judicial resolution will be one of the keys to making the country a competitive economy, conducive to growth and foreign investment,’ says an observer.
The reasons for the country’s judicial debacle are legion. For one thing, it has fewer judges per capital than almost any other country in the world. In 2007, it had fewer than three judges per 100, 00 people. And the state itself, which account for 60 per cent of court cases, is overly litigious.
by comparing the country’s judicial system to eternity, the writer means that the system is
- A. Eternal
- B. Continuous
- C. Slow
- D. Strange
Question 2
As a candidate for this examination, you are being examined on one type of this paper, namely Type A, Type B, Type E and Type K.
The reason for the popularity and acceptance of the leaves of fluted pumpkin in various parts of the country is largely well understood. Consumers of the leaves have grown owing to the claim that the leaf is a blood-boosting vegetable and a delicacy in the preparation of various dishes including local Nigerian soups. That is the much that many consumers know of this vegetable. The growing consumption has also meant that growers of the vegetable have been under increased pressure to keep up the supply. This has translated into more income for vegetable garden owners.
Beyond the leaves lies the giant pod with scores of seeds that have proved to be a rich source of several nutrients required by the body. It is a sweet, nutty, flat, cream-coloured seed with a chewy texture. At the tender stage, the pod can be broken pen to clean the seed before boiling in water till cooked. Another option is to roast the seed that produces a pleasant flavor
The use of pumpkin seed has increased since it has been found effective in treating prostate enlargement in men. The fact that pumpkin seeds serve as a good source of zinc makes them doubly well-suited for this role as a prostrate protector, since zinc is a mineral also used by healthcare workers to help reduce prostrate size. The healing properties of pumpkin seeds have also been recently investigated with respect to arthritis. Studies have shown that the addition pumpkin seeds to diet compares favourably with conventional drugs in reducing inflammatory symptoms. Apart from enhancing prostrate health, another reason for older men to make zinc-rich food such as pumpkin seeds a regular part of their diet is maintaining bone mineral density.
the expression The addition of pumpkin seed to diet compares favourably with conventional drugs in reducing inflammatory symptoms implies that they
- A. Are as good as conventional drugs
- B. Are better than conventional drugs
- C. Are more favoured than conventional drugs
- D. Taste better than conventional drugs
Question 3
As a candidate for this examination, you are being examined on one type of this paper, namely Type A, Type B, Type E and Type K.
The reason for the popularity and acceptance of the leaves of fluted pumpkin in various parts of the country is largely well understood. Consumers of the leaves have grown owing to the claim that the leaf is a blood-boosting vegetable and a delicacy in the preparation of various dishes including local Nigerian soups. That is the much that many consumers know of this vegetable. The growing consumption has also meant that growers of the vegetable have been under increased pressure to keep up the supply. This has translated into more income for vegetable garden owners.
Beyond the leaves lies the giant pod with scores of seeds that have proved to be a rich source of several nutrients required by the body. It is a sweet, nutty, flat, cream-coloured seed with a chewy texture. At the tender stage, the pod can be broken pen to clean the seed before boiling in water till cooked. Another option is to roast the seed that produces a pleasant flavor
The use of pumpkin seed has increased since it has been found effective in treating prostate enlargement in men. The fact that pumpkin seeds serve as a good source of zinc makes them doubly well-suited for this role as a prostrate protector, since zinc is a mineral also used by healthcare workers to help reduce prostrate size. The healing properties of pumpkin seeds have also been recently investigated with respect to arthritis. Studies have shown that the addition pumpkin seeds to diet compares favourably with conventional drugs in reducing inflammatory symptoms. Apart from enhancing prostrate health, another reason for older men to make zinc-rich food such as pumpkin seeds a regular part of their diet is maintaining bone mineral density.
The chief quality of the seed of fluted pumpkin is that it
- A. Brings income to vegetable growers
- B. Is cream-coloured
- C. Is a source of many mineral the body needs
- D. Has a chewy structure
Question 4
As a candidate for this examination, you are being examined on one type of this paper, namely Type A, Type B, Type E and Type K.
The reason for the popularity and acceptance of the leaves of fluted pumpkin in various parts of the country is largely well understood. Consumers of the leaves have grown owing to the claim that the leaf is a blood-boosting vegetable and a delicacy in the preparation of various dishes including local Nigerian soups. That is the much that many consumers know of this vegetable. The growing consumption has also meant that growers of the vegetable have been under increased pressure to keep up the supply. This has translated into more income for vegetable garden owners.
Beyond the leaves lies the giant pod with scores of seeds that have proved to be a rich source of several nutrients required by the body. It is a sweet, nutty, flat, cream-coloured seed with a chewy texture. At the tender stage, the pod can be broken pen to clean the seed before boiling in water till cooked. Another option is to roast the seed that produces a pleasant flavor
The use of pumpkin seed has increased since it has been found effective in treating prostate enlargement in men. The fact that pumpkin seeds serve as a good source of zinc makes them doubly well-suited for this role as a prostrate protector, since zinc is a mineral also used by healthcare workers to help reduce prostrate size. The healing properties of pumpkin seeds have also been recently investigated with respect to arthritis. Studies have shown that the addition pumpkin seeds to diet compares favourably with conventional drugs in reducing inflammatory symptoms. Apart from enhancing prostrate health, another reason for older men to make zinc-rich food such as pumpkin seeds a regular part of their diet is maintaining bone mineral density.
The popularity of the leaves of fluted pumpkin is due to the fact that they are
- A. Locally grown vegetable
- B. Believed to increase the blood level
- C. Inexpensive and readily available
- D. Known in many parts of the country
Question 5
Life is often difficult to describe. Men of wisdom in every society often find time to discuss life in order to explain it to the younger generation. I had been present in some meeting s a number of times. One topic that was discussed in one of them was beginning of life. ‘When did life begin?’ asked one of the men of wisdom. It was such an open-ended question. None of us could say precisely what happened when he was born. If he was born poor, he hardly would be very rich, particularly, if he was born honest in a corrupt society. If he was born rich, he might lose all his riches in one day. So, we often gather to tell one another about life. Recently, a statement was introduced into the vocabulary of English-Language – ‘The rich also cry’. The statement demonstrates, to a large extent, that even the rich people have their own period of time when life may prove very difficult and even meaningless to them. Have you not heard the experience of a very rich family whose vast business empire crumbled, in just one day? I have heard of a very rich man who lost his wife and three children in just one accident. Another rich man lost his thriving manufacturing company in an inferno. The compensation from his insurer could not solve half his financial problem. When one is poverty-stricken, that is a difficult dimension to the story of life. The poor person may prefer to die. Imagine when members of a family eat once a day! The quality of food becomes a different kettle of fish in such a circumstance. The dietician’s prayer that every normal human being must have a balance diet is cock and bull story to the poor. It is either that the poor do not have any opportunity that serves as recourse for them to be rich or that they are lazy people. Provisions must be made to create opportunities for self-development and self-realization. A lazy person cannot have his cake and eat it. People like him are not just only a problem to themselves but also to others in society.
At times, such people are dangerous to their communities.
Finally, what can one say about people who are terminally ill or insane? Perhaps silence becomes golden in that respect.
the expression ‘The rich also cry,’ as used in the passage, may be described as
- A. Figurative
- B. Proverbial
- C. Provocative
- D. Illustrative
