Precis Writing Exercise No. 75/80
Checking Fee For This Exercise: $1
Total Marks: 100
Time Allowed: 3:00 Hours
Q.1. Make a precis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title. (20)
Generally, European trains still stop at borders to change locomotives and staff. This is often necessary. The German and French voltage systems are incompatible. Spain -- though not Portugal -- has a broad gauge track. English bridges are lower than elsewhere, and passengers on German trains would need a ladder to reach French platforms, twice as high as their own. But those physical constraints pale in comparison to an even more formidable barrier -- national chauvinism. While officials in Brussels strive for an integrated and efficiently run rail network to relieve the Continent's gorged roads and airways, and cut down on pollution, three member countries -- France, Germany and Italy -- are working feverishly to develop their own expensive and mutually incompatible high-speed trains.
Q.2. Write a precis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title. (20)
Throughout the ages of human development men have been subject to miseries of two kinds: those imposed by external nature, and, those that human beings misguidedly inflicted upon each other. At first, by far the worst evils were those that were due to the environment. Man was a rare species, whose survival was precarious. Without the agility of the monkey, without any coating of fur, he has difficulty in escaping from wild beasts, and in most parts of the world could not endure the winter's cold. He had only two biological advantages: the upright posture freed his hands, and intelligence enabled him to transmit experience. Gradually these two advantages gave him supremacy. The numbers of the human species increased beyond those of any other large mammals. But nature could still assert her power by means of flood and famine and pestilence and by exacting from the great majority of mankind incessant toil in the securing of daily bread. In our own day our bondage to external nature is fast diminishing, as a result of the growth of scientific intelligence. Famines and pestilence still occur, but we know better, year by year, what should be done to prevent them. Hard work is still necessary, but only because we are unwise: given peace and co-operation, we could subsist on a very moderate amount of toil. With existing technique, we can, whenever we choose to exercise wisdom, be free of many ancient forms of bondage to external nature. But the evils that men inflict upon each other have not diminished in the same degree. There are still wars, oppressions, and hideous cruelties, and greedy men still snatch wealth from those who are less skillful or less ruthless than themselves. Love of power still leads to vast tyrannies, or ot mere obstruction when its grosser forms are impossible. And fear deep scarcely conscious fear -- is still the dominant motive in very many lives.
Q.3. Make a precis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title. (20)
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge is infinitely preferable to a gift of material things. There are many reasons for this. Nothing becomes truly one's own on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice. A gift of material goods can be appropriated by the recipient without effort or sacrifice; it therefore rarely becomes his own and is all too frequently and easily treated as a mere windfall. A gift of intellectual goods, a gift of knowledge, is a very different matter. Without a genuine effort of appropriation on the part of the recipient there is no gift. To appropriate the gift and to make it one's own is the same thing, and 'neither moth nor rust doth corrupt'. The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free. The gift of knowledge also has far more lasting effects and is far more closely relevant to the concept of 'development'. Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you are helping him a little bit for a very short time, teach him the act of fishing, and he can help himself all his life. Further, if you teach him to make his own fishing net, you have helped him to become not only self-supporting, but also self-reliant and independent man and businessman.
This, then should become the ever-increasing preoccupation of aid-programmes to make men self-reliant and independent by the generous supply of the appropriate intellectual gifts, gifts of relevant knowledge on the methods of self-help. This approach, incidentally, has also the advantage of being relatively cheap, of making money go a long way. For POUNDS 100/- you may be able to equip one man with certain means of production, but for the same money you may well be able to teach a hundred men to equip themselves. Perhaps a little 'pump-priming' by way of material goods will in some cases be helpful to speed the process of development. (E.F. Schumacher)
Q.4. Make a precis of the following passage in about 125 words and suggest a suitable title. (20)
"Education does not develop autonomously: it tends to be a mirror of society and is seldom at the cutting edge of social change. It is retrospective, even conservative, since it teaches the young what others have experiences and discovered about the world. The future of education will be shaped not by educators, by by changes in demography, technology and the family. Its ends -- to prepare students to live and work in their society -- are likely to remain stable, but its means are likely to change dramatically."
"Schools, colleges and universities will be redefined in fundamental ways: who is educated, how they are educated, where they are educated - all are due for upheaval. But their primary responsibility will be much the same as it is now: to teach knowledge of languages, science, history, government, economics, geography, mathematics and the arts, as well as the skill necessary to understand today's problems and to use its technologies. In the decades ahead, there will be a solid consensus that, As Horace Mann, an American educator, wrote in 1846, "Intelligence is primary ingredient in the wealth of nations." In recognition of the power of this idea, education will be directed purposefully to develop intelligence as a vital national resources." "Even as nations recognize the value of education in creating human capital, the institutions that provide education will come under increasing strain. State systems of education may not survive demographic and technological change. Political upheavals in unstable regions and the case of international travel will ensure a steady flow of immigrants, legal and illegal, from poor nations to rich ones. As tides of immigration sweep across the rich world, the receiving nations have a choice: they can assimilate the newcomers to the home culture, or they can expect a proliferation of cultures within their borders. Early this century, state systems assimilated newcomers and taught them how to fit in. Today social science frowns on assimilation, seeing it as a form of cultural coercion, so state systems of education are likely to eschew cultural imposition. In effect, the state schools may encourage trends that raise doubts about the purpose or necessity of a state system of education. (Diane Ravieh)
Q.5. Make a precis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title. (20)
When you see a cockroach on a bed-hug your first reaction is one of disgust and that is immediately, followed by a desire to exterminate the offensive creature. Later, in the garden, you see a butterfly or a dragonfly, and you are filled with admiration at its beauty and grace. Man's feelings towards insects are ambivalent. He realizes that some of them for example, - flies and cockroaches are threats to health. Mosquitoes and tsetse flies have in the past sapped the vitality of entire tribes or nations. Other insects are destructive and cause enormous losses. Such are locusts, which can wipe out whole areas of crops in minutes; and termites, whose often insidious ravages, unless checked at an early stage, can end in the destructing of entire rows of houses.
Yet men's ways of living may undergo radical changes if certain species of insects were to become extinct. Bees, for example, pollinate the flowers of many plants which are food sources. In the past, honey was the only sweetening agent known to man in some remote parts of the world. Ants, although they bite and contaminate man's food are useful scavengers which consume waster material that would otherwise pollute the environment. Entomologists who have studied insect fossils believe them to have inhabited the earth for nearly 400 million years. Insects live in large numbers almost everywhere in the world, from the hottest deserts and the deepest caves to the peaks of high mountains and even the snows of the polar caps.
Some insects communities are complex in organizations, prompting men to believe that they possess and ordered intelligence. But such organized behaviour is clearly not due to developed brains. If we have to compare them to humans, bee and ant groups behave like extreme totalitarian societies. Each bee or ant seem to have a determined role to play instinctively and does so without deviation. The word "instinct" is often applied to insect behaviour. But some insect behaviour appears so clear that one tends to think that some sort of intelligence is at work. For example, the worker bee, upon reaching to the hive after having found a new source of nectar, communicates his discovery by a kind of dance which tells other bees the direction and distance away of the nectar.
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