Comprehension/Summary - Jamb English Language Past Questions and Answers

Question 26:

• JAMB 1979

No journey can be quite soothing as a voyage on the Nile from Cairo to Philae. Day after day as you sails upstream nothing in the general pattern changes. incredibly bright stars are the same as last and Each new bend in the river discloses the same buffalo circling his waterwheel, the same pigeon-lofts on the houses, the same dark Egyptian faces swathed in white.
The banks are surprisingly green, a patchwork of rice fields and sugarcane, of palms and eucalyptus, and then beyond them, like a frame set around a picture; one sees the desert and the hills. There is always s a movement somewhere, but it is of a gentle, ambulatory, kind and one feels oneself going along in a rhythm with the processions of camels and donkeys on the bank, and the feluccas gliding by, and the buffalo, released at last from his wheel, sliding to the blessed coolness of the water in the evening. Occasionally a whiff of humanity comes out from the mud-hut villages on the shore, and it contains traces of the smoke of cooking forest, of dried cow-dung and of Turkish coffee, of some sweet and heavy scent, jasmine perhaps, and of water sprinkled on the dust. It is not unpleasant.
Lying on deck, one idly observes the flight of birds, one dream one lets the hours go by, and nothing can be more satisfying than the sight of the brown pillars of a ruined temple that has been standing alone on the edge of the desert for the last two thousand years. This is the past joining the present in a comfortably deceptive glow, and the traveller, like a spectator in a theater, remains detached from the both, he would not for the world live in the dust and squalor of these villages he finds so picturesque, and the ancient ruins he has come to see do not really evoke the early civilization of the Egyptians.


which of the following is true of the traveller in the passage

A. He likes being idle
B. He would not like to live in the villages
C. He would like to see temples in the ruin
D. He finds the smell of the villages unbearable
E. He felt a deceptive glow

Question 27:

• JAMB 1979

They hung around together, the boys from the school up on the hill, School was over. They were expecting the result. One or two got teaching job on St. College. It is one of the post-war secondary schools that sprang up in the city because serious people felt the educational need of the country, and possessed a sharp nose for smelling quick money. Boys from up country who were eager to learn, whose parents had a little money, but who could not get into the big school like Achimota and Mfantsipim in Cape Coast, rushed to the new schools, secured lodgings with distance relatives , and bought for a relatively cheap amount some sort of education. His friend Sammy was the history master from Form one to Five and was also put in charge of sports in the distant hope that the school would one day get its own playing field near the mental hospital. There were six hundred students who were all day boys; classes were held in Dr. house. The house was originally built by a man of wealth and a large family. The bedrooms, of which they were eight, were turned into classrooms; toilets were knocked into pantries to provide additional classrooms for the ever growing population of the school. Mr. Anokye, a retired pharmacist, owned the school. He laid great emphasis on science, being a science man himself. He wrote a small-rimmed pair of glasses which made him looks like one of those little black cats on Christmas cards. He had a small voice which squeaked with akpeteshie and a breath a breath like the smell of gun powder. He had spent many years at Kole Bu Hospital where he drank the methylated spirit meant to be supplied to laboratory assistants. He was dedicated to learning, in scholar in many ways. He knew principle. Whenever he shouted, during terminal examinations, his battle cry of Eureka! Eureka! Then he had caught someone cheating, someone looking over his answer sheet. Mr. Anokye came from a long line of scholars. He claimed his grandfather went to England with Reverend T.A Barnes, D. D., who was the Anglican Bishop of Cape Coast Diocese from 1896 to 1909. He was dedicated to his work. He interviewed Sammy himself, questioned him about his parentage and religious background, listened to him carefully, and decided to appoint him on a salary or six pounds per month pending the outcome of his Cambridge School Certificate examination. He questioned him closely on history, especially the Glorious Revolution, and Oliver Cromwell.


we know that St. Alban's College was in the pioneering state because

A. Only people of poor homes were admitted into it
B. All the students were day boys
C. The emphasis was on science
D. Mr Anokye owned it
E. It did not even have a playing field

Question 28:

• JAMB 1980

read each passage and answer the question that follow
The great herald of things to come was Ezekiel, not only in the sense that he predicted the future, but also became in the manner and content of his prophetic ministry, he foreshadowed many of the important religious developments, which were characteristics of the age after the Exile.
He, rather than Ezra, was the founder of Judaism. He not only pointed forward; but as well shall see, he represented some of the great elements in religious past.
The book which bears his name is outwardly impressive in its orderliness and symmetry and in the careful chronologic al arrangement of its contents. It purports to present the record of prophecies uttered in the Babylonian Exile between 593 and 571 B.C and for long this was not seriously questioned. Even when other prophetic books have been dissected and assigned to sundry authors and editors, this book continued to be regarded by most scholars as having come into its entirety from Ezekiel. Then came a period in which many extreme theories were advanced , assigning much of it to other hands or presupposing complicated processes of editorial revision, or dating the book to a period much later than the Babylonian Exile, or maintaining that ministry was not exercised in Babylonia but in Palestine, or at least was begun there. Such theories have been subjected to damaging criticism and are now somewhat discredited. The account of ministry and teaching is based on the view that he lived and worked among the exile in Babylonia, at the period indicated, and the bulk of the material in the book comes from him, though, like other prophetic collections, it owes much in its complication, arrangement and transmission to prophetic disciple




Ezekiel was a great herald of thing to come because

A. He was a prophet
B. He preached about events which were to characterized the period after the exile
C. God showed him what was going to happen after the exile
D. He ran a prophetic ministry
E. God was with him

Question 29:

• JAMB 1980

read each passage and answer the question that follow
The great herald of things to come was Ezekiel, not only in the sense that he predicted the future, but also became in the manner and content of his prophetic ministry, he foreshadowed many of the important religious developments, which were characteristics of the age after the Exile.
He, rather than Ezra, was the founder of Judaism. He not only pointed forward; but as well shall see, he represented some of the great elements in religious past.
The book which bears his name is outwardly impressive in its orderliness and symmetry and in the careful chronologic al arrangement of its contents. It purports to present the record of prophecies uttered in the Babylonian Exile between 593 and 571 B.C and for long this was not seriously questioned. Even when other prophetic books have been dissected and assigned to sundry authors and editors, this book continued to be regarded by most scholars as having come into its entirety from Ezekiel. Then came a period in which many extreme theories were advanced , assigning much of it to other hands or presupposing complicated processes of editorial revision, or dating the book to a period much later than the Babylonian Exile, or maintaining that ministry was not exercised in Babylonia but in Palestine, or at least was begun there. Such theories have been subjected to damaging criticism and are now somewhat discredited. The account of ministry and teaching is based on the view that he lived and worked among the exile in Babylonia, at the period indicated, and the bulk of the material in the book comes from him, though, like other prophetic collections, it owes much in its complication, arrangement and transmission to prophetic disciple




in his work, Ezekiel

A. Was friendly with Ezra
B. Founded Judaism in conhjuction with Ezra
C. Had a large religious following
D. Forged a link between the past and the future
E. Demostrated that he was a man of God

Question 30:

• JAMB 1980

read each passage and answer the question that follow
The great herald of things to come was Ezekiel, not only in the sense that he predicted the future, but also became in the manner and content of his prophetic ministry, he foreshadowed many of the important religious developments, which were characteristics of the age after the Exile.
He, rather than Ezra, was the founder of Judaism. He not only pointed forward; but as well shall see, he represented some of the great elements in religious past.
The book which bears his name is outwardly impressive in its orderliness and symmetry and in the careful chronologic al arrangement of its contents. It purports to present the record of prophecies uttered in the Babylonian Exile between 593 and 571 B.C and for long this was not seriously questioned. Even when other prophetic books have been dissected and assigned to sundry authors and editors, this book continued to be regarded by most scholars as having come into its entirety from Ezekiel. Then came a period in which many extreme theories were advanced , assigning much of it to other hands or presupposing complicated processes of editorial revision, or dating the book to a period much later than the Babylonian Exile, or maintaining that ministry was not exercised in Babylonia but in Palestine, or at least was begun there. Such theories have been subjected to damaging criticism and are now somewhat discredited. The account of ministry and teaching is based on the view that he lived and worked among the exile in Babylonia, at the period indicated, and the bulk of the material in the book comes from him, though, like other prophetic collections, it owes much in its complication, arrangement and transmission to prophetic disciple




By and large critics of Ezekiel and his work were

A. Successful
B. Ungodly
C. Unsuccessful
D. Jealous
E. Angered by his acceptance