On Line Class versus Physical Class

There are some advantages and some disadvantages in both online mode and physical mode of
attending classes. One can attend classes through online mode sitting at home. S/he does not
need to undergo any physical, mental, monetary and traveling hazards. He does not need to
waste time on the roads, face jams, loss of time and energy to attend the class through online
mode. On the other hand, one needs to journey, face traffic-jam, spend, time, money and lose
energy for attending classes physically. But attending classes physically helps a student to
develop not only physically but also mentally. They can directly come in contact with teachers'
association. Students and teachers can directly get involved in classroom and learning
activities. They can have direct interactions among themselves. Students can play together both
with their classmates and the teachers as well. It is not possible through online mode. Students
who attend classes by using online platform cannot come closer to their teachers. However,
attending classes physically have some disadvantages as well. Classes sometimes become
boring and noisy. In adverse situations or emergency situation, like Covid Pandemic, or heavy
rainfall, hartal, strike, disruption of transport communication and attending classes from a far
distance, online mode of education or classes are more fruitful. Nevertheless, attending too
many classes through online platform may make a student physically and mentally sick.
Teachers and students are to use modern electric and electronic devices and modern education
tools a lot in online platform. By attending classes physically a student can draw more benefit
and can participate in sports and cultural and extracurricular activities directly and
practically. But if a student wants to learn s/he can do that by using any of the platforms. It
does not differ much whether s/he is attending classes physically or through online mode.
There is a proverb that if one wants to learn nobody can stop him/her and if a student does not
want to learn nobody can force him/her. So, whatever method we may adopt our goal should
be to get the best out of both these modes of education.

Public Versus Private University

There are two main streams of education in Bangladesh - public and private. Public
universities are run by the government fund. Government subsidizes to run public universities.
There are more than 70 public universities in Bangladesh. Because of the constraint of seats in
public universities, private universities have flourished in Bangladesh. Public universities have
big campuses, big classrooms, hostel facilities. Fee structures of public universities are very
low. Even the poorest students can pursue their education in public universities. On the other
hand private universities are housed on small buildings. Their classroom size is very small.
They don't have hostel facilities and they have hardly any campus facilities. Fees of private
universities are extremely high. The poor student cannot afford the fees of a private university.
But they have AC the classrooms, multimedia facilities. They are free from politics, violence
and session jam. On the other hand public universities are infested with political activities,
violence and session jam. Private universities offer only market oriented and profit earning
courses. On the contrary public universities offer all types of subjects – science, commerce arts
etc. Some private universities are doing pretty good in Bangladesh but most of them do not
bother about maintaining standard and quality of education. They have turned into mere
certificate selling centers. Public universities try to mention quality but now-a-days quality of
public university education has deteriorated.

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1.Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given below:
Once upon a time there lived in the city of Baghdad a young bachelor
who was by trade a porter. One day, as he sat in the marker-place
leaning idly against his basket, a young woman, dressed in rare silks
and cloaked in a gold-embroidered mantle of Mosul brocade, stopped
before him and gently raised her veil. Beneath it there showed dark
eyes with long lashes and lineaments of perfect beauty.

“Lift up your basket, porter,” she said in a sweet voice, “and follow
me.”
At once the porter took up his basket and followed her, thinking to
himself; “This is indeed a blessed day!” until she stopped at the door
of a house and knocked. The door was opened by a Christian, who
gave her, in return for a piece of gold, a measure of olives and two
cases of wine. These she put into the basket and said to the porter,
“Follow me.”

“By Allah,” thought the porter, “this is surely my lucky day!”

He took up his basket and followed her until she stopped at a

fruiterer’s, where she bought Syrian apples an Othmani quinces,
Peaches from and Sultani citrons, sweet-scented myrtle and henna
flowers, chamomile, anemones, violets, sweet-briar and pomegranate-
blossom. All these she put into the basket and again said to the porter,
“Follow me.”

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She stopped at a butcher’s stall and said to him “cut me ten pounds of
meat.” She wrapped the meat in a large banana-leaf and putting it
into the basket, ordered the porter to follow her. She next made her
way to a grocer’s shop, where she bought pistachios, nuts and raisins,
and then to a confectioner’s where she chose a platter of dainty
sweetmeats stuffed with almonds and flavoured with musk; lemon
cakes, pastry, crescents. Zainab’s combs and honey tarts. And all
these she placed into the porter’s basket. “Had you told me,” observed
the porter, “ I would have brought a mule to carry all these
things!”The young woman smiled at the porter’s remark and bidding
him bold his tongue, stopped at a perfume-seller’s and bought tem
different essences, rose-water, willow water and musk-rose dew, tow
loaves of sugar, a sprinkling bottle, frankincense, aloe-wood,
ambergris and candles of Alexandrine followed her until she came to a
magnificent, lofty house facing a great courtyard. Its doors were of ebony plated
with gold.
a) Who is the porter? What was he doing?
b) How was the lady look like?
c) Why did she hire the porter?
d) What was the reaction of the porter when he saw that the lady was so many items?
e) Summarise the passage and give an appropriate title.
f) What did the lady buy?
Volcanoes
Volcanoes are not scattered randomly around the world. If you were asked to name countries
in which Volcanoes occur, you would probably think of places such as Japan, Iceland, Hawaii,
Italy, New Zealand, and so on. At first, these areas may seem quite unrelated, but no matter
what countries you think of, the Volcanoes in them have one rather odd thing in common they
are all very near the sea. This isn’t such an irrelevant statement as it may sound – it is a fact
that almost all the Volcanoes in the world are within a couple of hundred kilometers of the sea.
There are remarkably few active Volcanoes in the central mountain belt, none in central Asia
or Australia, and only one away from the coast in Antarctica. There are some important areas
which are exceptions in Africa, and also some specialized, distinct group. Volcanoes mainly
occur where huge tectonic plates meet on the surface of the Earth.
Convert the words as directed and make sentences with those. 1x5=5
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Distinct (n), Africa (adj), Sound (v), important (adv), remarkably (adj), Convert (n)
directed(adv).

Text 3.4
Keeping warm is vital in winter. Not many people like cold weather, but for elderly people it can be
particularly uncomfortable and eve dangerous. The right food and drink are vitally important to
keeping warm and healthy in the long winter days. During cold weather, hot meals and plenty of hot
drinks will make you feel warmer inside. Don’t miss breakfast, have plenty of hot drinks and at least
one hot main meal each day. It’s also a good idea to have a hot drink before going to bed. As we get
older our bodies are not as good at keeping warm as they once ware. Try if possible to keep as active
as you safely can and avoid being inactive for long periods. Do not underestimate just how cold it
can be outside. If you have to go out always wear a cap or hat and several layers of light clothing and
don’t just wear one layer of heavy clothing. You take a few simple steps to help keep your home
warmer in wintertime by not leaving doors and windows open, remembering , of course, to ensure
there is enough ventilation on keep the air fresh in rooms where heating appliances are in use.

Earthquakes
An earthquake destroys buildings by shaking them to pieces. Engineers are finding ways to keep
them standing when the ground moves. As an engineer in California observed in the aftermath of the
1989 quake: Earthquakes don’t kill people. Building do. Nobody wants to spend extra money to
prepare for something that may never happen, and earthquakes engineering has long been neglected.
That attitude is now changing. Earthquakes engineers may not have needed to be remained that
building design can make all the difference between life and death, but recent quakes have increased
public interest in earthquakes-resistant designs. These range from reinforcing masonry walls with
steel beams to strengthen them, to supporting an entire building on rubber so that the structure can
float in isolation.

Text 4.5
Some people argue that everyone who claims to have seen or to have photo- graphed the Loch Ness
monster has been either drunk, deceived by a log or interested in promoting the Scottish tourist
industry. On the other hand, many people are quite prepared to concede that some animal or group of
animals has been seen in the loch. The issue is whether this animal can be identified as the monster.
There is (to date) only one photograph of the creature. It has been studied carefully by experts, and
the general consensus is that the picture reveals a row of playful otters. For this reason, arguments
for the existence of the monster based on visual evidence have met with a good deal of skepticism.
Another approach has been to consider how monsters might be able to survive in a freshwater
environment. Could they obtain enough food to sustain themselves? Those that believe that they
could, point out that loch ness is very deep, and moreover that it may be connected by a series of
subterranean passages with the sea, allowing the monster to feed. Some say that the animal will be a
whale or a basking shark which has lost its way or even come inland to die, and that this could
explain the rare sightings.

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Nuclear energy
At a time when scientific advance was seen as universally beneficial, the nuclear industry was
judged to be at the cutting edge to technology. It was crucial to country’s status as an advanced
nation. But there is a second powerful strategic argument which propelled unclear power forward in
Britain, as in other countries. This is the fact that it is based on what has appeared to be a uniquely
simple fuel, and one whose exploitation cloud avoid dependence on a variety of other uncertain
choices. One of the arguments for the development of nuclear energy in the immediate aftermath of
the Second World War was a predicted shortage of coal. Coal provided the fuel for much the greater
part to the country’s electricity. There were power cuts over the winter of 1947 because the industry
could not cope with the demand. Worse was expected to come as industrial and domestic
consumption of electricity picked up after the attrition of the war years. Now, however, there was an
alternative. A single pound of uranium, it was claimed, would produce the same energy as a
thousand tons of coal, whilst a hundred tons of uranium could provide all the electricity that the
country could possibly need. In fact, apart from industrial disputes, the unclear industry’s pessimistic
predictions about supplies of fossil fuels have been proved wrong in practice. Fossil fuels came to be
a problem, not because of shortages, but because they cause pollution. Similarly, after the Chernobyl
disaster, unclear energy was seen to bring dangers of a different kind.
Dinosaur eggs
A collection of 80-millon-year-old eggs has shed new light on the parenting style of dinosaurs,
suggesting that some of them built nests and cared for their young much as birds do today. The
ancient Troodons, whose nearly intact nests ware discovered in Montana, ware in some ways closer
to modern birds than to crocodiles and other reptiles, according to a report in nature many scientists
believe birds are evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs. Troodons ware fast slender-limbed creatures
about the size of adult humans, and many have been among the most intelligent of dinosaurs. Several
nests of fossilized Troodon eggs ware discovered on Montana’s Egg Mountain, in Teton Country.
Researchers studying the nests concluded, based on their positions that the eggs ware laid two at a
time in a bird like pattern that suggests parental incubation of the eggs. The eggs also are relatively
large with thick tough shells. By contrast crocodiles lay a large number of smaller eggs in a signal
batch. The eggs are buried under sediment and the offspring are left to fend for themselves after
hatching.

Shoe factory blast kills 1

7 critically injured

Staff Correspondent

One worker died while at least seven others were critically injured in a fire
caused by a chemical drum explosion at a shoe factory in West Islamabagh
of the old Dhaka yesterday. The fire broke out around 4:30pm killing
Sabbir Hossain, 22, employee of Shikder Plastic Factory, on the spot.
Injured workers Dipu, 13, Sharif, 18, Rubel, 22, Babu, 25, Ujjal, 26, Sohel,
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30, and Sentu, 35, have been admitted to the burn unit of Dhaka Medical
College Hospital with 19 to 90 percent burn. After visiting the spot, Station
Officer of Lalbagh Fire Station Nasrin Sultana told The Daily Star that two
fire engines had doused the flame immediately.

She said fire fighters had found the blown-up chemical drum outside the
tin-shed factory which is housed on the roof of a two-storey building. Eye
witness Arif Hossain, worker of an adjacent factory said: “Sparks from a
nearby welding work originated the fire. At that time, workers were
spraying the soles. The sprayers soon caught fire and spread the blaze.”Arif
said another fire had broken out in the same factory on the third day of this
Ramadan injuring three people.
(Source: The Daily Star)

Cop killed in arson attack on bus

2 others injured; AL MP among 15 hurt in clash; cattle-laden truck set ablaze

A policeman was killed and another burned as arsonists set fire to a police bus at Bangla Motor in
the capital last night. Driver of the requisitioned bus, a civilian, also suffered burn in the attack
around 11:20pm, hours after the opposition alliance's 83-hour blockade ended. The dead is Ferdous,
a traffic constable. The injured are Faizul Islam, also a constable, and driver Bayzid. Meanwhile, two
people burned earlier in arson attacks died early hours today at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.The
victims are truck driver Nazrul Islam, who was burned when his vehicle was set afire in Gazipur on
Monday, and truck helper Mazidul, who suffered burns when his vehicle was set ablaze in Sirajganj
on Saturday.   Constable Faizul told The Daily Star they were on duty at Bangla Motor until
11:00pm yesterday and were about to leave the place. As soon as they got on the bus, there was a
huge bang and the vehicle was ablaze. He managed to get down as he was near the door but Ferdous
could not since he was inside and was burned alive, Faizul added.  The driver jumped out through
the window.    Inspector General of Police Hassan Mahmood Khandker and Dhaka Metropolitan
Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed visited the victims at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.The
police chief said the policeman lost his life while he was serving the country and the people. He said
criminals were targeting his force as part of their attack on the state machinery. Meanwhile two
truckers were badly burned after blockaders set fire to a cattle-carrying truck at Sitakunda in
Chittagong yesterday. (Source: The Daily Star Report)

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New PSC chairman takes oath
Staff Correspondent

Newly appointed chairman of Bangladesh

Public Service Commission (PSC) Ikram
Ahmed took oath yesterday.Chief Justice Md
Muzammel Hossain administered the oath to
him at the Judges' Lounge of the Supreme
Court.SC Registrar AKM Shamsul Islam
conducted the oath taking ceremony, where
some PSC officials were present.President
Abdul Hamid on Monday appointed Ikram
Ahmed as PSC chairman replacing Ahmedul
Huq Choudhury whose tenure expired on
December 19.

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Man murdered in capital

Staff Correspondent

Unidentified criminals killed a man in the capital's Lalbagh area on Monday.The deceased,
Mohammad Minar, 30, son of Lal Miah, used to live in his sister's Chawkbazar residence.Minar
was found dead on the rooftop of an 11-storey under-construction building in Lalbagh's New
Paltan around 5:00pm, said SM Shahjalal, officer-in-charge (investigation) of Lalbagh Police
Station.Police suspected that he was strangled with a rope as marks were visible in the throat.

TUB admission test today

Our Correspondent, Barisal 

The admission test of Barisal University for 2013-14 academic session will be held today.The
test of 16 departments under six faculties will be held under four units – Ka, Kha, Ga and Gha.A
total of 29,690 students will sit for the admission test this year against 1,160 seats, said Shafiul
Alam, chairman of the admission committee.