WORD POWER LADDER EXPERT
18 - 20 correct
You can remain an expert
If you emerge an expert, congratulations. More extensive reading will keep you an expert forever.
MASTER 14 - 17 correct
You can be an expert
If you are a master...best wishes.
More extensive reading will make you an expert.
STRUGGLING LEARNER 10 - 13 correct
You are almost there
If you emerge a struggling learner, well done, more effort in extensive reading will make you get there.
BEGINNER 0 - 9
Don't be discouraged, you can make it
If you are still at the beginning level, don't lose hope, you can make it.
Devote more time to extensive reading.
Fig.2.1 Word Power Ladder
Weigh yourself on the power weighing scale designed in the box. The scale depends on your performance in self-assessment exercise 1. No matter your position on the ladder, there is still room for improvement.
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The UN in Sudan
Constantly threatened by war, air attacks and incursions by government armed militias from neighbouring Arab tribes, tile Nuba are past-masters at making the best of things. Everything is recycled; following air raids, pieces of bomb fragments immediately find their way onto the market; and then to the blacksmiths to be converted into knives and agriculture tools. Some of the locals joke that it is only the air raids that stand between them and the stone age.
The Nuba are faced with a growing dilemma; they are currently suffering from Khartoum's blockade on relief and desperately need more food, but unfettered UN access could undermine their way of life. It is ironic that the help so desperately needed could prove to be their undoing. Father Kizido, a Catholic missionary who has long worked in the area, points out- ‘Isolation is very heavy burden, but I don't think the solution lies in opening up to the outside world completely. I hope the Nuba will be clever enough to strike a balance. The big danger will come if the UN starts dumping food and upsetting traditional production techniques, and create dependency as they have in South Sudan where round -the-clock air-drops have become a way of life’.
However, even if the UN humanitarian mission is given the go-ahead, the seemingly intractable political and military problems, which underline and underpin the starvation, will still remain. The Nuba are still caught in the middle of a long running conflict, which the international community is only now beginning to take seriously. Their leader fears that a quick-fix solution imposed on the margins of one side or the other of a divided nation. A workable peace settlement that satisfies the diverse interest of the Nuba and other minorities as well as the Southerners would appear to be in a future as dim as it is distant.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Find the meaning of the under listed words in the passage titled ‘The UN and Sudan’ by breaking them into their component parts and joining the meaning of the parts together to obtain the overall meaning of the words.
The words to attack this way are listed below. Complete the exercise before turning to the discussion that follows.
(1) incursions (8) round-the-clock (2) blockade (9) humanitarian (3) unfettered (10) intractable (4) undermine (11) starvation (5) desperately (12) long-running (6) undoing
(7) dependency
Have you completed the exercise? Turn to the discussion below if you have done so.
Also note that not all English words can be subjected to word attack process of deducing meanings. You discover that some words are prone to this kind of way of finding meaning than the other. By breaking the words listed in exercise 2, the following components emerge. From the smaller units of the words, the meaning of the entire words can be deduced.
1. incursions incur - sions brought suffix in
(entry into)
2. blockade block - ade
prevent art of (stop entry)
3. unfettered un - fetter - d
not chain past-tense hinder
(unhindered)
4. undermine under mine
below me
(reduce/bring down) 5. desperately desperate - ly
willing to adverb do without
caring eager
(seriously willing) 6. undoing un - do - ing
not do - continuous (go against)
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7. dependency depend ency
relying art of (too much reliance)
8. round-the-clock round tie clock) throughout the time (all the time)
9. humanitarian human - nit - arian from feeling nity noun for
people
(concern for people) 10. intractable in - tract - able
not large adjective expensive area that can be seen/control
(not controllable) 11. starvation starve - action
hunger noun (famine)
12. long-running long running extended going period of
time
(going for long)
Of course, even though this is not the only way to determine meanings of words, it is one of the ways. You make the words easier to find their meanings when you break them into smaller meaningful components.