English and Communication Skills

Number of Lectures: 08 Weightage : 30% Unit 1 : Lesson 6 to 10 ·          ‘ Fantasy ’ – a collection of short stories edited by V. Sasikumar (Orient Black Swan) Number of Lectures: 02 Weightage : 10% Unit 2 : ·          Sentence Framing through vocabulary (Text Based) Number of Lectures: 10 Weightage : 40% Unit 3 : ·          Usage Preposition, ·          concord and pronouns ·          Speaking Skills O  ...

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There had been a christening that afternoon at St Peter's, Neville Square, and Albert Edward Foreman still wore his verger's gown. He kept his new one, its folds as full and stiff as though it were made not of alpaca but of perennial bronze, for funerals and weddings (St Peter's, Neville Square, was a church much favoured by the fashionable for these ceremonies) and now he wore only his second-best. He wore it with complacence, for it was the dignified symbol of his office, and without it (when he took it off to go home) he had the disconcerting sensation of being somewhat insufficiently clad. He took pains with it; he pressed it and ironed it himself. During the sixteen years he had been verger of this church he had had a succession of such gowns, but he had never been able to throw them away when they were worn out and the complete series, neatly wrapped up in brown paper, lay in the bottom drawers of the wardrobe in his bedroom. The verger busied himself qu...

Although Mr. McMaster had lived in Amazonas for nearly sixty years, no one except a few families of Shiriana Indians was aware of his existence. His house stood in a small savannah, one of those little patches of sand and grass that crop up occasionally in that neighbourhood, three miles or so across, bounded on all sides by forest. The stream which watered it was not marked on any map; it ran through rapids, always dangerous and at most seasons of the year impassable, to join the upper waters of the River Uraricoera, whose course, though boldly delineated in every school atlas, is still largely conjectural. None of the inhabitants of the district, except Mr. McMaster, had ever heard of the republic of Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil or Bolivia, each of whom had at one time or another claimed its possession. Mr. McMaster’s house was larger than those of his neighbours, but similar in character—a palm thatch roof, breast high walls of mud and wattle, and a mud floor. He owned the dozen ...

“Have you written to your dad yet?” asked Nene1 one afternoon as she sat with Nnaemeka in her room at 16 Kasanga Street, Lagos. “ No. I’ve been thinking about it. I think it’s better to tell him when I get home on leave!” “But why? Your leave is such a long way off yet—six whole weeks. He should be let into our happiness now.” Nnaemeka was silent for a while, and then began very slowly as if he groped for his words: “I wish I were sure it would be happiness to him.” “Of course it must,” replied Nene, a little surprised. “Why shouldn’t it?” “You have lived in Lagos all your life, and you know very little about people in remote parts of the country.” “That’s what you always say. But I don’t believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry.” “Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement is not arranged by them. In our case it’s worse—you are not even an Ibo.” This was said so seriously and so bluntly that Nene c...