cameroon gce A level June 2024 English language 1

cameroon gce A level June 2024 English language 1

cameroon gce A level June 2024 English language 1

SECTION A
READING COMPREHENSION (16 marks)
M i Read file following passage carefully anil aksWer Hie questions below it-.

Despite the fact that humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of the poor, more than
half of the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are
vrctiins ’bfkfiS(jaSe.-Theirefcohomic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to
them and to more prosperous areas. As a result, we must embark on a bold new programme for making the
benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of
underdeveloped areas. I believe that we should make available to peace-loving people the benefits of our store of
technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life.

Among the natural resources which can be called upon in national plans lor development, possibly* the most . .
important is human labour. As the English language suffers from a certain weakness in its ability to describe
groups composed of both male and female members, this is usually described as “manpower’ . Without a 10
productive Jaboui; forces including effectiveHeadersliip iind intelligent middle managementsno amount of foreign
assistance or of natural wealth can ensure successful development and modernization.
he manpower for development during the next quarter century will come from the world s present population of infants, children and adolescents. But we haye.no assurance that they VviH be equal tb the task. Will they have the health, the education, the skills, the socio-cultural attitudes essential for the responsibilities of development? i
For far too many of them the answer is no. The reason is basic. Children’s most’critical years, with regard to •
physical, intellectual, social and emotional development, are those before they reach five years of age. During
those critical formative years, they are cared for exclusively by their mothers, and in many parts of the world,
mothers may not have the capacity to raise superior children. The woman is incapable of doing so by reason of her ’
poor health, her ignorance and her lack of status and recognition, of social and legal rights, of economic parity of
independence. As M. Pierre Emeric Mandl of UNICEF has stated, “She has been educated to submission; she is
not regarded as a separate and complete human being”. How can such a non-person raise a superior child?
The best she can do is to maintain the status quo, and the statijs quo js not good enough for development..
One essential factor has been overlooked or ignored. The forgotten factor is the role of women. Development
will be handicapped as long as women remain second-class citizens, uneducated, without legal or economic status, 25
married when they are still practically children, and henceforth producing one baby after another, often only to see
half of them die before they are of school age.
We can enhance development by improving “womanpower”, by giving women the opportunity to develop
themselves. This is especially true as women make up 60% of the world’s population. Excluding women from
development endeavours imply that all development effort is hinged on only about 40% of the world’s population. 30
With this tendency, development cannot progress to meet the needs of society. Statistics show that the average
family size increases in an inverse ratio to the mother’s years of education; lowest among college graduates
and highest among those with only primary school training or no education.
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Malnutrition is most frequent in large families, and increases in frequency with each additional sibling. (firth order
is important loo. In a study conducted in India by Dr. Gopalan, malnutrition among the first three children of a
family was about half as prevalent as among those with a birth order from four to six. Both illegitimacy and
prematurity are more frequent among school dropouts than among girls who complete their education. Both
illegitimacy and prematurity have an adverse effect on the health and development of the child. The first for social
reasons – the lack of a stable environment, and the second, primarily because of the reduced resistance to disease
and infection of the premature infant.

In recent years, much attention has been given to the relationship between early malnutrition and retarded mental
development. Dr. Mark Hegsted of Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Michael Latham of Cornell
University have both cautioned against the over-simplification of assuming that malnutrition is the sole or
principal cause of retardation, or that it can be avoided or mitigated by improved nutrition ,
other factors in its etiology, such as poor child care and hygiene and the lack of social and
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However, many of the
emotional stimulus,

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