SUMMARY PASSAGE

Read the following carefully and answer the questions 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
real 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 are wearing a suit, or a complete traditional attire, and you look naturally rotund in your
apparel, you cannot understand what poverty entrails. 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 from one dress into another and these are all you 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 sheet to keep away the
cold at night.
Let us face it, how 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 afford to rent a flat, 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 find 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 attentive when he makes 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 off 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 communication 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 the school.
That is still not all. Weakened by hunger, embattled by cold and exposure to the elements,
feeling 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 expectancies while the longest life expectancies
are recorded among the richest countries. Poverty is really a disease that shortens life!

QUESTION
In four sentences one for each, summarize the problems of the poor man

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PASSAGE 2

In all school systems of the world, some schools are considered ‘better’ than others. In fact,
based on such a judgment parents often go to great lengths to have their children enrolled in one
school rather than another. One yardstick for making this judgment is student achievement,
especially general performance in public examinations. Furthermore, among some experts in
education, opinions about schools are further narrowed down to subject areas. For example, one
often hears that school A is better than B in Mathematics and Science while the latter is better
than the former in English Language and the Liberal Arts. Whatever the focus of these
comparative statements, there remains the fact that schools do vary in terms of average student
achievement.
Why is it then that some schools have high average student achievement while others have low
average student achievements? The reasons are not farfetched. The first reason is that some
schools are located in privileged areas in the sense that the students come from homes where
parents care about their children’s education, ensure that the children are well-fed, show interest
in their school work and provide easy access to books in the home. On the other hand there are
schools which serve less privileged communities, and whose students come from homes where
parents are unable to provide the necessary support services for good academic work. Students in
the first type of school would generally have a higher rate of achievement than those in the
second type.
Another reason for the difference in academic achievement between schools in how well the
schools are equipped. Schools that have good laboratories and libraries, ample space, places to
sit and write for every student and optimum sized classrooms usually record a higher standard of
student achievement than those where the basic equipment is lacking or where the students are
crammed into inadequate spaces.
The quality of the teachers also has to do with the differences in student achievement between
schools. A teacher that does not have a good grasp of his subject matter nor is committed to his
job cannot produce an outstanding student. On the other hand, students will generally attain a
high standard where the teacher is an expert in his field, knows how to structure the material to
be learned, demands a lot from his students and motivates them. Also, school management has
been found to have a relationship with student achievement. Students perform better in schools
where the leadership is enthusiastic and creative than in schools where the principals and
teachers adopt a casual attitude to their job.
Finally, discipline cannot be divorced from the learning process, and this is often seen from the
perspective of general student behavior. Where students show a disregard for the rules and
regulations that guide good learning by disobeying their teachers, neglecting their homework or
playing truancy, they cannot make any reasonable academic progress. On the other hand,
students who comport themselves well have laid a good foundation for academic success.

Questions
In four sentences, one for each, summarize the factors responsible for the different levels of
achievement in schools.

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 PASSAGE 3
Read the following passage carefully and answer the question on it.
Scientists have made spectacular advances I genetic engineering in the last fifty years. The
benefits of this genetic revolution to mankind are immense and almost limitless. In the field of
medicine, many of the diseases that have hitherto proved incurable can now be eradicated using
genetic engineering. It is now possible to identify the specific gene with a healthy one. This new
technology can now be used to cure such diseases as diabetes, sickle-cell anaemia and cancer.
Geneticists (specialists in genetic science) claim that there several other medical benefits that can
be derived from this new science. They assert that by increasing the neuron in the brain, we
could slow down the aging process.
Scientists are now on the threshold of being able to redesign the human body to make it function
more efficiently.
This interesting aspect of preventive medicine involves the intervention of the doctor to ensure
that the foetus contains no diseased gene that can develop into a disease later on. Moreover,
scientists can now build or develop organs for transplant surgery. Patients who need or hart or
kidney transplants no longer have to wait endlessly for donors or be worried that the donated
organs would be rejected by the their body’s immune system.
Perhaps the greatest benefits of the genetic revolution are in the areas of crop and livestock
production. Cloning or the creation of a new plant or animal the genetic information carried in
one cell, has already been done with plants and animals. The result is the production of grains
that yield their own fertilizer or can be grown in factories without sunshine and soil. Already in
the United States of America, genetically modified (GM) potatoes, tomatoes, apples, etc. are on
sale in supermarkets. The main difference between these GM products and their conventionally
produced counterparts is that the former are usually bigger and have a longer shelf-life than the
latter. Consequently, most shoppers would rather go for the GM products, other things being
equal. GM livestock are usually a good bargain. Imagine being offered a chicken the size of a
turkey or a sheep almost as big as a big cow! If the price and the taste are comparable then the
housewife would naturally prefer the GM breed, just as we prefer the so-called “Agric” fowls to
our smaller local breed.
There are, however, serious potential dangers. The greatest risk is the escape-by accident or by
design-of harmful microbes from the laboratory into a world that has no difference against them.
Some scientists have speculated that the HIV virus may have originated from an accidental
escape. The world has not forgotten the case of Adolf Hithler who, in furtherance of his project
of creating “a superior race”, abused scientific knowledge and plunged the world into WORLD
WAR II. For this reason, many governments have been cautious, or even reluctant, to give the
geneticists the necessary approval to implement the results of their researches. There is no
guarantee that man can be trusted not to use this new found “power” for destructive ends.
QUESTIONS
In four sentences, one for each, summarize four benefits of genetic engineering to man.

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