Comprehension/Summary - Jamb English Language Past Questions and Answers

Question 646:

• JAMB 2008

  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.




one major reason for the delay in the country’s legal system is that

A. There are not enough judges
B. Judges continue to resist change
C. Foreigners are unwilling to invest
D. The country does not have a competitive economy

Question 647:

• JAMB 2008

  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.




we can infer that the neighbouring country has more foreign investments because it

A. Is a bigger country
B. Is more conveniently located
C. Has a better balance of payments
D. Has a more efficient judiciary

Question 648:

• JAMB 2008

  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 statement I had been present myself in such meetings a number of times implies the writer’s

A. Position
B. Identification
C. Generalization
D. Presentation

Question 649:

• JAMB 2008

  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.




which of the following explains the writer’s conception

A. Life is the work of the Creator
B. The human life is the beginning of all creation
C. No one witnessed when his life began on earth
D. Life is full of stories that man has to tell to others

Question 650:

• JAMB 2008

  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