Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
I can vividly remember my predicament in my first year as a new teacher. On the first day in class, I told my students that they were mature enough to comport themselves in an exemplary manner without burdening them with stringent rules. I wanted them to like me and so I allowed them a lot of freedom. Unfortunately, I lost class control, and the students exploited the situation to disrespect me. Some would leave their seats without permission; freely throw objects like pens, rulers or crumpled pieces of paper to mates or talk with others.
During the long vacation, I busied myself reading books on discipline and consulting seasoned colleagues for help. When we resumed-school the next session, I had formulated strategies on maintaining discipline. There were laid-down, rules such as "students are to be courteous and silent when the teacher or a student is speaking to the class.' "Students are to ask for the teacher's permission to leave their seats for anything", "Students are not to leave the class during lessons."
After giving the class the rules that I knew were essential for class control, I made sure the students followed them to the letter. I virtually enforced discipline myself instead of sending students to the Principal's office for disciplinary action as I did the previous year. After about a month, I realized that my efforts were yielding results.
Then, two months before the Christmas holidays, I began to relax some of the rules. One of them read as follows; "Whenever any student wants to leave the class for any reason, he should come up for permission, provided he does this without disturbing other students." About one week later, I told the students that because they were not disruptive, they could whisper to one another, open or shut windows quietly without my permission.
Indeed, before the second term holidays, we had a classroom where students would come in and go on recess as they finished their class assignments and also where small group discussions on project work took place. Where a student in one group talked too loudly to disturb others, he was cautioned by the group, not me. Teaching then became a pleasure and I felt my students had matured greatly by learning to conduct themselves in a more acceptable way.
(a) Why did the writer not give his students rules initially?
(b) What was the outcome of the writer's desire for the students to like him?
(c) How did the students react to the writer's loss of class control?
(d) What did the writer do to change the unfortunate development in the class?
(e) What helped the writer to formulate measures to maintain discipline in class?
(f)".. .before the second term holidays..."
(i) What grammatical name is given to this expression as it is used in the passage?
(ii) What is its function?
(g) "...I made sure that the students followed them to the letter "What does the writer mean by this statement as it is used in the passage?
(h) For each of the following words, find another word or phrase which means the same and which can replace it as it is used in the passage: (i) stringent; (ii) strategies; (iii) courteous; (iv) essential; (v) yielding; (vi) cautioned.



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