Assignment No. 4(Spring 2012)
English Comprehension (ENG101)
Total Marks: 15
Due Date: 05-07-2012
Q.1 ‘Paraphrasing is just another name for your writing style’. Paraphrase the following paragraphs in your own words. (5)
Note: The paraphrasing must be one-third of the following excerpt.
One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The loveliest landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, and looked as if they stood on their heads and had no bodies. Their countenances were so distorted that no one could recognize them, and even one freckle on the face appeared to spread over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very amusing. When a good or pious thought passed through the mind of any one it was misrepresented in the glass; and then how the demon laughed at his cunning invention.
All who went to the demon’s school, for he kept a school, talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like. They carried the glass about everywhere, till at last there was neither a land nor a people who had not been looked at through this distorted mirror.
They wanted even to fly with it up to heaven to see the angels, but the higher they flew the more slippery the glass became, and they could scarcely hold it, till at last it slipped from their hands, fell to the earth, and was broken into millions of pieces. But now the looking-glass caused more unhappiness than ever, for some of the fragments were not as large as a grain of sand, and they flew about the world into every country. When one of these tiny atoms flew into a person’s eye, it stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment he saw everything through a distorted medium, or could see only the worst side of what he looked at, for even the smallest fragment retained the same power which had belonged to the whole mirror. A few persons even got a fragment of the looking-glass in their hearts, and this was very terrible, for their hearts became cold like a lump of ice. A few of the pieces were so large that they could be used as window-panes; it would have been a sad thing to look at our friends through them. Other pieces were made into spectacles; this was dreadful for those who wore them, for they could see nothing either rightly or justly.
At all this the wicked demon laughed till his sides shook, it tickled him so to see the mischief he had done. There were still a number of these little fragments of glass floating about in the air, and now you shall hear what happened with one of them.
(Hans Christian Andersen- Looking-Glass and the Broken Fragments)
Q.2 UNDERLINE the FIVE clichés from the given passage. (5)
It isclear as crystal that after joining Hassan enterprises, Aleena became busy
as a bee. She was mostly sick and tired due to over exertion. Her family members
and friends were bored to tears even in her presence as she would indulge herself
in her office work even at home. Her complexion also became pale. Before that,
she used to be as red as a rose.
Q.3 Fill in the blanks with the help of appropriate choices.
1- Every trade and profession has its own …..
technical jargon.
formal jargon
simple jargon
complex jargon
2- All writing problems do not involve …..
grammar
syntax
semantics
pragmatics
3- Careful writers avoid weakening their writing with …..
slangs
clichés
proverbs
idioms
4- Punctuation depends upon …..
grammar
linguistics
stylistics
phonetics
5- In essay writing, note making is a skill and it is a .….
personal affairformal affair
informal affair
public affair
