Page 81 - DENG101_Communication Skills-I

Communication Skills-I

Notes Exercises

1. Answer the following questions based on the text:

(a) What do you mean by, ‘Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability”?
(b) What are the qualities of an ‘expert man’?
(c) What is the usefulness of studies (as told by Bacon)?
(d) What does the essayist say about books?

2. What do you infer from the following lines?
(a) “To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is
affectation”
(b) “Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them”

(c) “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed
and digested”
(d) “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man”

3. Find out a word in the text that means the same, or comes closest to the meaning of the
following words:
(a) Adornment
(b) Temperament

(c) Inspection
(d) Understated
(e) Exemplify

7.4 Comprehension Passage 4: Pt. Nehru’s Speech

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem
our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight
hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which
comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and

when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment

we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause
of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are fi lled with
her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike
she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today
a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is
but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.
Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the
future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign
body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all
the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains
continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges
we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of

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