How I Discovered Gabriel García Márquez
By Jose A. Carillo
It is a very private story that I occasionally tell, but only to aspiring literary types, younger executives, and teenage bookworms who find time to ask me what is a good English-language book or novel to read. The story is about how, many years ago, I discovered Gabriel García Márquez in the romance section of a big bookstore at Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila. It was shortly before or right after martial law had taken the life of the daily paper where I worked as a roving reporter, I cannot remember the exact date now. But there was Márquez, still a total stranger to me, in the Avon hardback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad in the original Spanish), enjoying in the same shelf the company of such rupture-and-heartbreak novelists as Emily Loring, Barbara Cartland, and Jacqueline Susann. No, García Márquez did not get there as an occasional stray, chucked absentmindedly or insensitively into the shelf by some browser. If memory serves me well, the book had been actually misclassified and miscatalogued in the same genre as the more popular company it was keeping when I found it.
The reason why it got there was probably serendipity of the most sublime order, but I think you can dismiss that thought as just me imagining the whole thing in chronological reverse. A more plausible reason was that it had the green and grainy cover art of a naked man and woman in passionate embrace, which I later thought was the publisher’s well-intentioned attempt to make the Buendia family’s otherwise unimaginable tragedies and grief more commercially acceptable. It was actually this somber study in solarized chiaroscuro that drew my eye to the book. When I began to leaf through it, however, furtively expecting some passages about women in the throes of illicit sex, I read something much more exciting, much more stimulating, and much more intriguing. “Many years later,” García Márquez began, “as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” A few passages later I was irretrievably sold to the book. I promptly paid for it, tearing the plastic wrapping no sooner had the sales clerk sealed it, and started to read as I trudged the sidewalk on my way to my apartment somewhere in the city.
When I had read the book twice or thrice and still couldn’t get over the thrill of the discovery, I excitedly recommended and lent it to a broadcast acquaintance at the old National Press Club. I can’t remember now who the borrower was, but he was one of those press club habitues who would dawdle over beer or gin tonic at the bar till somebody’s self-imposed midnight closing song-and-piano piece was over. What I do remember is that he never returned it to me. He assured me, however, that he had read it and enjoyed it so much that he could not resist lending it to someone—was it Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil or the late Renato Constantino?—who in turn lent it to someone who lent it to someone until finally the chain in the lending was lost. The last I heard from the original borrower was that the book had been passed on to an English Lit. professor at the University of the Philippines, where a few years later I was to learn that it had become mandatory reading in its English graduate school.
Being pathetically inept in Spanish, I could never really know what Castilian or Colombian idioms I missed in the English translation, but the English-language García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude truly set my mind on fire. He lit in me a tiny flame at first, then a silent fire for language that burned even brighter with the passing of the years. He was not only robust and masterful in his prose but devastatingly penetrating in his insights about the flow and ebb of life in the archetypal South American town of Macondo. Not since I chanced upon a battered copy of The Leopard (Il Gatopardo in the original Italian) by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa two years earlier, this time a real stray in a smaller bookstore nearby, had I seen such soaring yet quietly majestic writing. Here is García Márquez at his surreal best: “Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats as she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant when Remedios the Beauty began to rise. Ursula, almost blind at the time, was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identity the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the sheets of the flapping sheets that rose up with her…” With prose like this I became a García Márquez pilgrim, re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude countless times and devouring, like an adolescent glutton, practically all of his novels and short-story collections in the years that followed.
Many years later, in 1982, I was to discover in the morning papers that García Márquez had so deservedly won the Nobel Prize for literature. I was so happy for the new Nobel Laureate and for myself, and I no longer thought anymore of ever recovering that first copy of him that I had the pleasure of retrieving from the company where it obviously didn’t belong. In homage I went back to the bookstore where I first found García Márquez, quietly and almost reverently picking up a new Picador paperback edition of him. Its cover art was no longer the man and woman in the deathless embrace, but this time an image more faithful to the elemental truth of the book: the whole Buendia family in a portrait of domestic but elegiac simplicity, at one and at peace with the chickens and shrubs and flowers that gave them sustenance, awaiting the last of the one hundred years allotted to them on earth.
The book is mottled with age and yellow with paper acid now. Now and then I would lend it to a soul that is intrigued why I would keep such a forlorn book on my office desk, but only after tragicomically extracting an elaborate pledge that he or she would really read it and give it back to me no matter how long it took to finish it.
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This essay originally appeared in the author’s “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times in 2002 and subsequently became Chapter 40, Section 7 of his book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language. Copyright 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. Copyright 2008 by Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
Friday, 24 March 2017
Rediscovering John Galsworthy By Jose A. Carillo
Rediscovering John Galsworthy
By Jose A. Carillo
Exactly twelve days after I was born in a small farming town in southeastern Philippines, the great director and actor Orson Welles broadcast on radio in Wisconsin a dramatic adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic short-story, “The Apple Tree.” Of course there was no way that I could have known this at the time; I was only a malnourished infant in a country that had just come out of brutal enemy occupation. I only discovered the fact about this confluence of events four nights ago while surfing the modern-day marvel called the Web. I stumbled serendipitously on the complete script of Welles’ broadcast while looking for traces of the great love story that had so bewitched and given me so much pleasure one magical summer in the late 60s.
You must forgive me for what in every way looks like juvenile excitement over only an old story and an old English-language writer that modern anthologies seem to have even completely forgotten. But to me “The Apple Tree” was—and still is—the quintessential love story. The quiet tragedy between the London cosmopolite Frank Ashurst and the beautiful Welsh country lass Megan David, told with great empathy and narrative skill by a master of the English language, haunted me for years. To me it was just a happy accident that the story was written by a writer who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Galsworthy was an English prose stylist so luminous in his language and so engaging in his storytelling that I gladly surrendered that summer and the next, reading practically the whole body of his novels and short fiction.
Take, as a first taste of Galsworthy, this passage from the opening lines of “The Apple Tree” as retold by Welles: “The familiar words of Hippolytus echoed in my mind: ‘The apple-tree, the singing, and the gold.’ The apple tree. And then, quite suddenly, I remembered. I’d been here before. Years before. I’d stood on this self-same hill. I knew the valley into which I looked. That ribbon of road and the old well behind. Life has moments of sheer beauty, of unbidden flying rapture that—they last no longer than the span of a cloud’s flight over the sun. I’d stumbled on just such a moment. In my own life, I’d stumbled on a buried memory of wild, sweet time.”
The English I am writing and you are reading now is, for the most part, what it is precisely because I had stumbled on “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy and fell in love with both many years ago. It was in the public library of the British-Philippine Council, that time when it was still at old R. Hidalgo Street, in what is now largely Manila’s Muslim quarter in Quiapo. The story was part of a Galsworthy hardbound collection with russet cover simply entitled “Caravan.” I never got to own a personal copy of the book, but read and reread everything in it, so enchanted was I by Galsworthy’s narrative art, which was so far removed from the run of the English-language authors available to me at the time. But in the following years Galsworthy dropped out of sight from the shelves of bookstores. I looked far and wide to get a copy of “Caravan,” scouring every bookstore I could get myself into both here and in my travels, but could not find one. In time, distracted and enthused by English-language stylists with comparable if not greater facility with prose, I gave up my search for both the writer and the book.
But four nights ago, from the lens of more than half a century, there was Orson Welles in digital form talking to me about “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy in his Mercury Theater dramatization of the story, sponsored intriguingly by then the leading American maker of beer. To the tune of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, as indicated in the script, the great actor and director of “Citizen Kane” (which, it is probably worth mentioning, is considered the greatest film of all time) began: “Tonight, the Mercury brings you one of the loveliest of all love stories. It’s by John Galsworthy and it’s called ... ‘The Apple Tree’.” I almost fell off my computer swivel chair, so profound and delightful was my shock. The treasured gem that I had given up looking for after so many years was suddenly and literally in my fingertips again.
And so now I can relive again and again that unforgettable first encounter between Frank and Megan, as first imagined by the great Galsworthy and now retold by the digital Welles:
FRANK ASHURST (narrates): It was a girl. The wind blew her crude, little skirt against her legs and lifted her battered tam-o’-shanter. It was clear she was a country girl -- her shoes were split, her hands were rough and brown, and her hair waved untidily across her forehead. But her lashes were long and dark, and her gray eyes were a wonder: dewy, as if opened for the first time that day.
MEGAN: Hello.
ROBERT: Could you tell us if there’s a farm near here where we could spend the night? My friend’s getting pretty lame.
MEGAN: Well, there’s our farm, sir.
FRANK: Oh, could you put us up?
MEGAN: I’m sure my aunt would be glad to. If you like, I’ll show you the way.
The way that Megan showed to Frank was, in the small compass of “The Apple Tree,” a path that led not only to such great love and so much heartbreak, but also to some of the most compelling and beautiful lines of prose I have seen in English literature. I dare you now to tarry a little from your purely mundane pursuits to take that path. (circa 2002-2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in Jose Carillo’s English Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
By Jose A. Carillo
Exactly twelve days after I was born in a small farming town in southeastern Philippines, the great director and actor Orson Welles broadcast on radio in Wisconsin a dramatic adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic short-story, “The Apple Tree.” Of course there was no way that I could have known this at the time; I was only a malnourished infant in a country that had just come out of brutal enemy occupation. I only discovered the fact about this confluence of events four nights ago while surfing the modern-day marvel called the Web. I stumbled serendipitously on the complete script of Welles’ broadcast while looking for traces of the great love story that had so bewitched and given me so much pleasure one magical summer in the late 60s.
You must forgive me for what in every way looks like juvenile excitement over only an old story and an old English-language writer that modern anthologies seem to have even completely forgotten. But to me “The Apple Tree” was—and still is—the quintessential love story. The quiet tragedy between the London cosmopolite Frank Ashurst and the beautiful Welsh country lass Megan David, told with great empathy and narrative skill by a master of the English language, haunted me for years. To me it was just a happy accident that the story was written by a writer who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Galsworthy was an English prose stylist so luminous in his language and so engaging in his storytelling that I gladly surrendered that summer and the next, reading practically the whole body of his novels and short fiction.
Take, as a first taste of Galsworthy, this passage from the opening lines of “The Apple Tree” as retold by Welles: “The familiar words of Hippolytus echoed in my mind: ‘The apple-tree, the singing, and the gold.’ The apple tree. And then, quite suddenly, I remembered. I’d been here before. Years before. I’d stood on this self-same hill. I knew the valley into which I looked. That ribbon of road and the old well behind. Life has moments of sheer beauty, of unbidden flying rapture that—they last no longer than the span of a cloud’s flight over the sun. I’d stumbled on just such a moment. In my own life, I’d stumbled on a buried memory of wild, sweet time.”
The English I am writing and you are reading now is, for the most part, what it is precisely because I had stumbled on “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy and fell in love with both many years ago. It was in the public library of the British-Philippine Council, that time when it was still at old R. Hidalgo Street, in what is now largely Manila’s Muslim quarter in Quiapo. The story was part of a Galsworthy hardbound collection with russet cover simply entitled “Caravan.” I never got to own a personal copy of the book, but read and reread everything in it, so enchanted was I by Galsworthy’s narrative art, which was so far removed from the run of the English-language authors available to me at the time. But in the following years Galsworthy dropped out of sight from the shelves of bookstores. I looked far and wide to get a copy of “Caravan,” scouring every bookstore I could get myself into both here and in my travels, but could not find one. In time, distracted and enthused by English-language stylists with comparable if not greater facility with prose, I gave up my search for both the writer and the book.
But four nights ago, from the lens of more than half a century, there was Orson Welles in digital form talking to me about “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy in his Mercury Theater dramatization of the story, sponsored intriguingly by then the leading American maker of beer. To the tune of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, as indicated in the script, the great actor and director of “Citizen Kane” (which, it is probably worth mentioning, is considered the greatest film of all time) began: “Tonight, the Mercury brings you one of the loveliest of all love stories. It’s by John Galsworthy and it’s called ... ‘The Apple Tree’.” I almost fell off my computer swivel chair, so profound and delightful was my shock. The treasured gem that I had given up looking for after so many years was suddenly and literally in my fingertips again.
And so now I can relive again and again that unforgettable first encounter between Frank and Megan, as first imagined by the great Galsworthy and now retold by the digital Welles:
FRANK ASHURST (narrates): It was a girl. The wind blew her crude, little skirt against her legs and lifted her battered tam-o’-shanter. It was clear she was a country girl -- her shoes were split, her hands were rough and brown, and her hair waved untidily across her forehead. But her lashes were long and dark, and her gray eyes were a wonder: dewy, as if opened for the first time that day.
MEGAN: Hello.
ROBERT: Could you tell us if there’s a farm near here where we could spend the night? My friend’s getting pretty lame.
MEGAN: Well, there’s our farm, sir.
FRANK: Oh, could you put us up?
MEGAN: I’m sure my aunt would be glad to. If you like, I’ll show you the way.
The way that Megan showed to Frank was, in the small compass of “The Apple Tree,” a path that led not only to such great love and so much heartbreak, but also to some of the most compelling and beautiful lines of prose I have seen in English literature. I dare you now to tarry a little from your purely mundane pursuits to take that path. (circa 2002-2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in Jose Carillo’s English Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
A World Without English By Jose A. Carillo
A World Without English
By Jose A. Carillo
In the farming village where I grew up there was a man—a maker of homemade coconut oil—who did not believe in anything his mind could not grasp or which lay outside the life he knew. Let us call him Pedro de la Cruz. He was born at about the same time as my father in the early decades of the last century, but for some reason his schooling was cut short in the second grade, while my father went on to normal school in Manila to become a schoolteacher. Pedro thus could not understand, write, or speak English beyond the usual peremptory greetings like “Good morning!” or “Good afternoon!” Even these he affected to be beneath his dignity saying. In fact, he viewed with contempt people who spoke English in his presence; once they had left, he would spit on the ground and call them social climbers who surely would not make it to wherever it was they were going. “Mark my words,” he would say in the dialect, “they who think they are so good in a foreign tongue will soon come crashing to the ground!”
Pedro, along with his whole family, was intensely religious. Prayer colored his day as it did his wife Pilar, who was also hardly literate; his eldest son Gregorio, who was my classmate in grade school; Jacinto, the next born; and Teresita, their only daughter. Every morning when the parish church bell rang some two kilometers away, and again at Angelus, they would stop their hand-driven coconut press and pray all the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. Sundays they would don their Sunday’s best for Holy Mass without fail, all five going to church on foot. Their religiosity, together with the almost unceasing oil-making in their small, hand-driven mill, was the central unifying force of their lives.
Pedro was fiercely obstinate about the worldview that sustained this way of life. One time, back from Manila during a summer college break, I made the mistake of discussing Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with him. I explained that Darwin had determined that man might have sprung from the same prehistoric ancestral stock as that of the apes. This launched Pedro into a strangely eloquent diatribe against the false beliefs fostered by science and the infidels they produced. He gave me the disconcerting feeling that I was the biology teacher being prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial, the only difference being that Clarence Darrow was nowhere around to defend me. And on matters like this, Pedro simply had to have the last word. You had to give up the argument because if you didn’t, it would go on past midnight in his hut, which in those days without electricity would be lit only by a flickering coconut-oil lamp.
Pedro’s deep religiosity resulted in a frightening determinism. “Not a leaf will fall from the tree if God will not will it,” he would intone with fire in his eyes, “and that leaf will surely rise back to the twig if he wished it.” He also believed that God would surely provide for his family no matter what happened. For this reason, he did not think it necessary for any of his children to be educated beyond the level he had attained. In fact, he thought that every learning beyond this was simply a form of needless expense, a totally irrelevant enterprise that would only corrupt the way one ought to earn a living, grow into adulthood, raise a family, and end up in the grave like everybody else.
The impact of this worldview was most profound in the case of Gregorio, who was in the same class with me from the second to the sixth grade. Gregorio’s talent in arithmetic was astonishing. He could add an eight-level array of ten-digit numbers in less than a minute, and could multiply a ten-digit number by another ten-digit number almost as fast. His grasp of English, unfortunately, was just above rudimentary. There had been no English-language reading materials in the de la Cruz household to stoke the fires of his otherwise brilliant mind, and the siblings could not or did not dare speak English with him. There was also no radio to stimulate his English comprehension; his father thought it a nuisance and a vexation to the spirit (TV was still a good 25 years away into the future). Had his English been at least as good as mine, which was by no means that good, I have no doubt that he would have been our class valedictorian. He could have gone on to high school and college and surely could have made something of himself, perhaps a mathematics or physics professor in a major university. But this was not be.
Because Pedro did not send anyone of the siblings to high school and kept a life of penury, no money went out of the family bourse except those that went to food and the upkeep of their manual oil-making equipment. He kept his hut the thatched roof affair that it had always been, dismissing galvanized iron sheets as no good because they got so hot in summers; bought no motor vehicle, preferring to move on foot as always and to continue using a carabao-drawn cart to haul coconut and other cargo to his oil mill; and forced his family to live totally without entertainment and vice. This made the de la Cruz family outwardly prosperous and even enabled them to extend loans to the neighborhood in the form of coconut oil or petty cash. An emboldened Pedro could thus boast to the villagers that without even learning a word of English and without making his children take nonsense subjects in high school and college, his family was better off than most except the jueteng operator and the U.S. Navy pensionados in town.
The neighborhood grew and flowed out; villagers moved to town, to the cities, to countries unknown and unheard off; houses big and small, built by money from overseas, sprouted all over. But Pedro’s hut stood unruffled and unchanged. After he and his wife passed away, the de la Cruz siblings continued to live in the same small, unfenced plot of land. They built satellite huts around their father’s, raised families, and set up their own hand-driven oil mills. But each had no dream or ambition beyond what their father had decreed. From each of the four hand-driven mills there would issue, day in and day out, the same peculiar sweetish odor of burnt coconut. Pedro’s legacy of a world without English would keep it that way until it had totally spent itself.
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in the Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
By Jose A. Carillo
In the farming village where I grew up there was a man—a maker of homemade coconut oil—who did not believe in anything his mind could not grasp or which lay outside the life he knew. Let us call him Pedro de la Cruz. He was born at about the same time as my father in the early decades of the last century, but for some reason his schooling was cut short in the second grade, while my father went on to normal school in Manila to become a schoolteacher. Pedro thus could not understand, write, or speak English beyond the usual peremptory greetings like “Good morning!” or “Good afternoon!” Even these he affected to be beneath his dignity saying. In fact, he viewed with contempt people who spoke English in his presence; once they had left, he would spit on the ground and call them social climbers who surely would not make it to wherever it was they were going. “Mark my words,” he would say in the dialect, “they who think they are so good in a foreign tongue will soon come crashing to the ground!”
Pedro, along with his whole family, was intensely religious. Prayer colored his day as it did his wife Pilar, who was also hardly literate; his eldest son Gregorio, who was my classmate in grade school; Jacinto, the next born; and Teresita, their only daughter. Every morning when the parish church bell rang some two kilometers away, and again at Angelus, they would stop their hand-driven coconut press and pray all the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. Sundays they would don their Sunday’s best for Holy Mass without fail, all five going to church on foot. Their religiosity, together with the almost unceasing oil-making in their small, hand-driven mill, was the central unifying force of their lives.
Pedro was fiercely obstinate about the worldview that sustained this way of life. One time, back from Manila during a summer college break, I made the mistake of discussing Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with him. I explained that Darwin had determined that man might have sprung from the same prehistoric ancestral stock as that of the apes. This launched Pedro into a strangely eloquent diatribe against the false beliefs fostered by science and the infidels they produced. He gave me the disconcerting feeling that I was the biology teacher being prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial, the only difference being that Clarence Darrow was nowhere around to defend me. And on matters like this, Pedro simply had to have the last word. You had to give up the argument because if you didn’t, it would go on past midnight in his hut, which in those days without electricity would be lit only by a flickering coconut-oil lamp.
Pedro’s deep religiosity resulted in a frightening determinism. “Not a leaf will fall from the tree if God will not will it,” he would intone with fire in his eyes, “and that leaf will surely rise back to the twig if he wished it.” He also believed that God would surely provide for his family no matter what happened. For this reason, he did not think it necessary for any of his children to be educated beyond the level he had attained. In fact, he thought that every learning beyond this was simply a form of needless expense, a totally irrelevant enterprise that would only corrupt the way one ought to earn a living, grow into adulthood, raise a family, and end up in the grave like everybody else.
The impact of this worldview was most profound in the case of Gregorio, who was in the same class with me from the second to the sixth grade. Gregorio’s talent in arithmetic was astonishing. He could add an eight-level array of ten-digit numbers in less than a minute, and could multiply a ten-digit number by another ten-digit number almost as fast. His grasp of English, unfortunately, was just above rudimentary. There had been no English-language reading materials in the de la Cruz household to stoke the fires of his otherwise brilliant mind, and the siblings could not or did not dare speak English with him. There was also no radio to stimulate his English comprehension; his father thought it a nuisance and a vexation to the spirit (TV was still a good 25 years away into the future). Had his English been at least as good as mine, which was by no means that good, I have no doubt that he would have been our class valedictorian. He could have gone on to high school and college and surely could have made something of himself, perhaps a mathematics or physics professor in a major university. But this was not be.
Because Pedro did not send anyone of the siblings to high school and kept a life of penury, no money went out of the family bourse except those that went to food and the upkeep of their manual oil-making equipment. He kept his hut the thatched roof affair that it had always been, dismissing galvanized iron sheets as no good because they got so hot in summers; bought no motor vehicle, preferring to move on foot as always and to continue using a carabao-drawn cart to haul coconut and other cargo to his oil mill; and forced his family to live totally without entertainment and vice. This made the de la Cruz family outwardly prosperous and even enabled them to extend loans to the neighborhood in the form of coconut oil or petty cash. An emboldened Pedro could thus boast to the villagers that without even learning a word of English and without making his children take nonsense subjects in high school and college, his family was better off than most except the jueteng operator and the U.S. Navy pensionados in town.
The neighborhood grew and flowed out; villagers moved to town, to the cities, to countries unknown and unheard off; houses big and small, built by money from overseas, sprouted all over. But Pedro’s hut stood unruffled and unchanged. After he and his wife passed away, the de la Cruz siblings continued to live in the same small, unfenced plot of land. They built satellite huts around their father’s, raised families, and set up their own hand-driven oil mills. But each had no dream or ambition beyond what their father had decreed. From each of the four hand-driven mills there would issue, day in and day out, the same peculiar sweetish odor of burnt coconut. Pedro’s legacy of a world without English would keep it that way until it had totally spent itself.
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in the Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
The Roots of English By Jose A. Carillo
The Roots of English
By Jose A. Carillo
More than a decade ago, on our way from Washington, D.C., to New York to watch Les Miserables on Broadway, my wife Leonor and I made a side trip to the imposingly neon-lit gaming center of Atlantic City on the East Coast. No, we were not inveterate gamblers out to break the bank at the stately Trump Taj Mahal casino. We were simply being treated to a night out by a wealthy relative who had made a small fortune in the United States by working as many as three day-and-night sales clerking jobs for nearly 20 years. She had given each of us $100 for gambling money, Leonor’s for a try at the slot machines and mine for a sortie at the baccarat tables.
Expectedly, my puny $100 lasted only a few rounds of blackjack. I was actually an embarrassment among the well-heeled players who, as some former and current top Philippine government officials are reputed to do, would bet as high as $20,000 on a single play. I therefore hurriedly left for the slot machines to see how Leonor was doing. Down to her last token, she was in a decidedly foul mood. When she saw me she plunked the metal into the slot machine in a way that plainly meant good riddance, yanked the lever, and stood up to join me. “These things are really designed to dupe you with fierce regularity,” she said. But just as we were leaving, the machine suddenly clanged and a bell started ringing. From the machine’s maw spewed tokens that ran to a few hundred dollars. A minor commotion ensued as an attendant came with a small plastic barrel, scooped the tokens, and brought us to the cashier to change the booty to greenbacks.
Leonor and I gleefully decided to open a U.S. dollar account with our winnings. Our relative, however, wiser to the ways of the world, admonished us that such wealth earned with no sweat was no good and wouldn’t last. He suggested that to exorcise the bad luck from it, we should instead treat everybody in our entourage to a Big Mac and French fries. I promised to do that after a leisurely stroll on the boardwalk along the coast, near which the surf of the Atlantic Ocean crashed with melodious regularity in the darkness.
Later, as I chomped a Big Mac and looked at some of the bloodshot-eyed gamblers wolfing the same, I was reminded of a story about how the English word “sandwich” came about, and how it came to represent a concept that is probably as popular as “love” and “mother.” The roots of “sandwich” had actually been traced to an odd gambling-related practice in Old England, in the same manner that many Filipinos, in both the real and figurative sense, can trace their ancestry or parentage to an “anak ng jueteng.” It is told that in the mid-1700s, John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, got so addicted to gambling that he refused to leave the card table even to eat. He thus would ask his servants to put meat, cheese, and other foodstuff between two slices of bread for him to get by. The Earl’s concoctions were the first of their kind, and in time they were named not after him but after his town. The rest, including my Big Mac, was history.
Let me add as a footnote that Sandwich is a Saxon word that means “sandy place” or “a place in the sand,” which of course has absolutely nothing to do with food. (Or are we really that sure?) And close to Sandwich there was a small village called Ham, which, I must warn you, had got nothing to do with hamburger either; this sandwich variety was first concocted in Hamburg in Germany. The word “ham” actually came from the English word “hamlet,” which means “a small village.” And while we are at it, I might as well tell you that the Anglo-Saxons called a saltwork or a place that produced salt a “wich.” So, it turns out that most if not all of the English towns whose names end in “wich”—such as Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich, and most likely also Greenwich and Sandwich—once produced salt as a cottage or major industry, like our very own Las Piñas in Parañaque. (Now would you still want to name your new pastry shop Northwich or Southwich?)
All of these ruminations as I dined along the Atlantic Coast prove my little thesis that the roots of English are not as elegant and romantic as many of us colonial-minded Filipinos think. It’s just that far too many English words and icons had relentlessly pummeled our minds since the Americans came to our shores. Many English words we are fond of using—like Crosby (“village where there are crosses,” by being an old Norse word for “village”) and Milton (“farmstead with a mill,” tun being an Old English word for “farmstead”)—are actually as “baduy” and as wedded to the earth as original Tagalog place names like Maasin (“with plenty of salt”), Marulas (“slippery”), Meycauayan (“with some bamboos”), Malinta (“full of leeches”), and Maahas (“infested with snakes”).
I suppose that there were thousands of such Tagalog or vernacular place names that had been blotted out of existence when the Spaniards went on a name-changing spree in our country. You all know that they renamed most of our villages after a saint, such as San Roque, San Agustin, and San Eutiquio and—when the list ran out—even such curiosities as Sta. Mesa and Sta. Cruz. That, of course, is another extremely fascinating story outside plain and simple English that begs to be told. (2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in the Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
By Jose A. Carillo
More than a decade ago, on our way from Washington, D.C., to New York to watch Les Miserables on Broadway, my wife Leonor and I made a side trip to the imposingly neon-lit gaming center of Atlantic City on the East Coast. No, we were not inveterate gamblers out to break the bank at the stately Trump Taj Mahal casino. We were simply being treated to a night out by a wealthy relative who had made a small fortune in the United States by working as many as three day-and-night sales clerking jobs for nearly 20 years. She had given each of us $100 for gambling money, Leonor’s for a try at the slot machines and mine for a sortie at the baccarat tables.
Expectedly, my puny $100 lasted only a few rounds of blackjack. I was actually an embarrassment among the well-heeled players who, as some former and current top Philippine government officials are reputed to do, would bet as high as $20,000 on a single play. I therefore hurriedly left for the slot machines to see how Leonor was doing. Down to her last token, she was in a decidedly foul mood. When she saw me she plunked the metal into the slot machine in a way that plainly meant good riddance, yanked the lever, and stood up to join me. “These things are really designed to dupe you with fierce regularity,” she said. But just as we were leaving, the machine suddenly clanged and a bell started ringing. From the machine’s maw spewed tokens that ran to a few hundred dollars. A minor commotion ensued as an attendant came with a small plastic barrel, scooped the tokens, and brought us to the cashier to change the booty to greenbacks.
Leonor and I gleefully decided to open a U.S. dollar account with our winnings. Our relative, however, wiser to the ways of the world, admonished us that such wealth earned with no sweat was no good and wouldn’t last. He suggested that to exorcise the bad luck from it, we should instead treat everybody in our entourage to a Big Mac and French fries. I promised to do that after a leisurely stroll on the boardwalk along the coast, near which the surf of the Atlantic Ocean crashed with melodious regularity in the darkness.
Later, as I chomped a Big Mac and looked at some of the bloodshot-eyed gamblers wolfing the same, I was reminded of a story about how the English word “sandwich” came about, and how it came to represent a concept that is probably as popular as “love” and “mother.” The roots of “sandwich” had actually been traced to an odd gambling-related practice in Old England, in the same manner that many Filipinos, in both the real and figurative sense, can trace their ancestry or parentage to an “anak ng jueteng.” It is told that in the mid-1700s, John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, got so addicted to gambling that he refused to leave the card table even to eat. He thus would ask his servants to put meat, cheese, and other foodstuff between two slices of bread for him to get by. The Earl’s concoctions were the first of their kind, and in time they were named not after him but after his town. The rest, including my Big Mac, was history.
Let me add as a footnote that Sandwich is a Saxon word that means “sandy place” or “a place in the sand,” which of course has absolutely nothing to do with food. (Or are we really that sure?) And close to Sandwich there was a small village called Ham, which, I must warn you, had got nothing to do with hamburger either; this sandwich variety was first concocted in Hamburg in Germany. The word “ham” actually came from the English word “hamlet,” which means “a small village.” And while we are at it, I might as well tell you that the Anglo-Saxons called a saltwork or a place that produced salt a “wich.” So, it turns out that most if not all of the English towns whose names end in “wich”—such as Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich, and most likely also Greenwich and Sandwich—once produced salt as a cottage or major industry, like our very own Las Piñas in Parañaque. (Now would you still want to name your new pastry shop Northwich or Southwich?)
All of these ruminations as I dined along the Atlantic Coast prove my little thesis that the roots of English are not as elegant and romantic as many of us colonial-minded Filipinos think. It’s just that far too many English words and icons had relentlessly pummeled our minds since the Americans came to our shores. Many English words we are fond of using—like Crosby (“village where there are crosses,” by being an old Norse word for “village”) and Milton (“farmstead with a mill,” tun being an Old English word for “farmstead”)—are actually as “baduy” and as wedded to the earth as original Tagalog place names like Maasin (“with plenty of salt”), Marulas (“slippery”), Meycauayan (“with some bamboos”), Malinta (“full of leeches”), and Maahas (“infested with snakes”).
I suppose that there were thousands of such Tagalog or vernacular place names that had been blotted out of existence when the Spaniards went on a name-changing spree in our country. You all know that they renamed most of our villages after a saint, such as San Roque, San Agustin, and San Eutiquio and—when the list ran out—even such curiosities as Sta. Mesa and Sta. Cruz. That, of course, is another extremely fascinating story outside plain and simple English that begs to be told. (2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I’ll be posting one of them in the Forum every Wednesday from October 26, 2016 onwards.
Indignities in American Minor By Jose A. Carillo
Indignities in American Minor
By Jose A. Carillo
This is much too unglamorous to admit, and my wife Leonor actually blanched when she read the first draft of this essay. But I told her firmly that it was a story I had to write once and for all as a cautionary tale for our times. Four years before September 11, 2001, while lined up at Los Angeles Customs for my flight back to Manila, U.S. agents had made me strip down to my underwear. It was not a particularly chilly autumn day in the West Coast, and America then was still the carefree blonde in a two-piece, traipsing barefoot on Long Beach, singing an innocent little ditty about freedom and clueless of the horrible outrage that was to befall her four years later. But even with the good heating at the airport I found myself shivering. I simply could not take the frisking and the progressive nakedness with grace and equanimity.
What a shame, I thought, to be put in the same class as the terrorists, mobsters, drug lords, and potbellied politicians who routinely deserved such searches! There I was, clothesless and listless in the City of the Angels, trying with some delicacy to shield with my hands as much of my crotch from the prying eyes that were all over me. But no matter how sophisticated I tried to look and how impeccable the English I used in my protestations, I was a practically naked alien under a host country’s sufferance, and short of begging, at that moment there wasn’t really much I could do to change that fact.
The female agent also asked me to take off my shoes. She did it in probably much the same way that a fellow agent did it to a Filipino senator who, I read in the news just now, went through the same body search recently in San Francisco. I did not refuse nor even make a squeak, however. One reason was that I wasn’t a senator but a nobody. I would never know the pleasure of breezing through Customs without anybody laying as much as a hand on me, even if it was obvious that I carried contraband or a ton of plastic bomb on my belly. But what really took out much of the sting from the indignity was that I was not the only one targeted. And looking back, I realize now that it actually might have been my fault to be zeroed in along with the six who were behind me in the queue.
Aside from wearing my old spring windbreaker that I regularly used for Decembers back home in Manila, I had the bad sense to hand-carry all the way from the East Coast a bulky, heavily padded green winter jacket lined with Teflon. I am actually of the lean sort, but I must have looked like a drug runner laden with cocaine whenever my bulk showed on their surveillance monitors. In any case, they asked me and the six others to step aside: a sixtyish woman in a wheelchair, an Oriental-looking gentleman in a very respectable-looking dark gray suit, and four or five Filipinos with their trademark huge shoulder bags and mountainous backpacks.
The agents led us to a nearby inspection room, and in no time they had efficiently dismantled the wheelchair into a neat pile of tubes and nuts and bolts. They cautiously jiggled and peered inside each tube, but found nothing explosive or incendiary. Then the young, portly female agent, who looked every inch of Filipino parentage, frisked the old woman in the wheelchair, ever politely asking and helping her disengage the strap of her bra. Again there was nothing, not even a little vial of cocaine nor a lipstick case of crack for the effort. Then finally it was my turn. She started frisking me. In the best English that I could muster, I asked her: “Why have you chosen me for this? Do I look like a criminal?” And she replied in the best and most dispassionate Tagalog that she could muster: “Trabaho lang po. Natiyempuhan lang kayo.” (“Just doing my job, sir. You just happened to be it.”) Finding nothing on me, of course, she said: “Sori sir. Pasensiya na kayo.” (“I’m sorry for this. My apologies for doing it.”) She asked me to put my clothes back on, then waved the dignified-looking man to come forward.
As he started to strip, the man tried his best to look nonchalant about the whole thing, but I noticed that his brow began to sweat and twitch a little. I suddenly had the inkling that the agents would not be disappointed this time. True enough, when the man took off his sando and was down to his briefs, there came into view several thick bundles of U.S. currency, securely bound with masking tape to the front, back, and sides of his torso. There must have several hundred thousands of dollars of the notes on him. “I’m sorry, sir,” the agent said with barely suppressed distaste, “you have attempted to take out currency beyond the $10,000-limit without declaring it, a violation of U.S. law.” She then asked all six of us to go, and began reading the man his Miranda rights.
I may make light of the tough security measures that the U.S. now imposes on citizens and foreigners alike passing through its ports, but I do not really wish to trivialize what September 11 has done to the nation that we once knew as the Land of Milk and Honey. The fact is that September 11 has changed most of America’s icons and rules. And make no mistake about it now, because I say this in all practical seriousness: If you are going to San Francisco or LA or New York or Chicago, it will no longer be enough to wear flowers on your hair or make a “Peace!” sign with your fingers. You better be in your best form and best behavior. Give your paunch and toenails a good trim and don’t forget to wear clean socks. Have a nice haircut, and consider shaving off your prized mustache or goatee. Don’t bank on charm and diplomatic immunity. And remember, practice your English and watch your temper. Nothing will better qualify you for being asked to step aside the Customs queue in LA or San Francisco to be grilled or stripped than an atrocious or non-existent English or, much worse, a flare-up of a monumental ego.
Sadly and forever, as the old refrain goes, everything is different now in America because of September 11. (2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I'll be running one of them in the Forum every Wednesday starting October 26, 2016.
By Jose A. Carillo
This is much too unglamorous to admit, and my wife Leonor actually blanched when she read the first draft of this essay. But I told her firmly that it was a story I had to write once and for all as a cautionary tale for our times. Four years before September 11, 2001, while lined up at Los Angeles Customs for my flight back to Manila, U.S. agents had made me strip down to my underwear. It was not a particularly chilly autumn day in the West Coast, and America then was still the carefree blonde in a two-piece, traipsing barefoot on Long Beach, singing an innocent little ditty about freedom and clueless of the horrible outrage that was to befall her four years later. But even with the good heating at the airport I found myself shivering. I simply could not take the frisking and the progressive nakedness with grace and equanimity.
What a shame, I thought, to be put in the same class as the terrorists, mobsters, drug lords, and potbellied politicians who routinely deserved such searches! There I was, clothesless and listless in the City of the Angels, trying with some delicacy to shield with my hands as much of my crotch from the prying eyes that were all over me. But no matter how sophisticated I tried to look and how impeccable the English I used in my protestations, I was a practically naked alien under a host country’s sufferance, and short of begging, at that moment there wasn’t really much I could do to change that fact.
The female agent also asked me to take off my shoes. She did it in probably much the same way that a fellow agent did it to a Filipino senator who, I read in the news just now, went through the same body search recently in San Francisco. I did not refuse nor even make a squeak, however. One reason was that I wasn’t a senator but a nobody. I would never know the pleasure of breezing through Customs without anybody laying as much as a hand on me, even if it was obvious that I carried contraband or a ton of plastic bomb on my belly. But what really took out much of the sting from the indignity was that I was not the only one targeted. And looking back, I realize now that it actually might have been my fault to be zeroed in along with the six who were behind me in the queue.
Aside from wearing my old spring windbreaker that I regularly used for Decembers back home in Manila, I had the bad sense to hand-carry all the way from the East Coast a bulky, heavily padded green winter jacket lined with Teflon. I am actually of the lean sort, but I must have looked like a drug runner laden with cocaine whenever my bulk showed on their surveillance monitors. In any case, they asked me and the six others to step aside: a sixtyish woman in a wheelchair, an Oriental-looking gentleman in a very respectable-looking dark gray suit, and four or five Filipinos with their trademark huge shoulder bags and mountainous backpacks.
The agents led us to a nearby inspection room, and in no time they had efficiently dismantled the wheelchair into a neat pile of tubes and nuts and bolts. They cautiously jiggled and peered inside each tube, but found nothing explosive or incendiary. Then the young, portly female agent, who looked every inch of Filipino parentage, frisked the old woman in the wheelchair, ever politely asking and helping her disengage the strap of her bra. Again there was nothing, not even a little vial of cocaine nor a lipstick case of crack for the effort. Then finally it was my turn. She started frisking me. In the best English that I could muster, I asked her: “Why have you chosen me for this? Do I look like a criminal?” And she replied in the best and most dispassionate Tagalog that she could muster: “Trabaho lang po. Natiyempuhan lang kayo.” (“Just doing my job, sir. You just happened to be it.”) Finding nothing on me, of course, she said: “Sori sir. Pasensiya na kayo.” (“I’m sorry for this. My apologies for doing it.”) She asked me to put my clothes back on, then waved the dignified-looking man to come forward.
As he started to strip, the man tried his best to look nonchalant about the whole thing, but I noticed that his brow began to sweat and twitch a little. I suddenly had the inkling that the agents would not be disappointed this time. True enough, when the man took off his sando and was down to his briefs, there came into view several thick bundles of U.S. currency, securely bound with masking tape to the front, back, and sides of his torso. There must have several hundred thousands of dollars of the notes on him. “I’m sorry, sir,” the agent said with barely suppressed distaste, “you have attempted to take out currency beyond the $10,000-limit without declaring it, a violation of U.S. law.” She then asked all six of us to go, and began reading the man his Miranda rights.
I may make light of the tough security measures that the U.S. now imposes on citizens and foreigners alike passing through its ports, but I do not really wish to trivialize what September 11 has done to the nation that we once knew as the Land of Milk and Honey. The fact is that September 11 has changed most of America’s icons and rules. And make no mistake about it now, because I say this in all practical seriousness: If you are going to San Francisco or LA or New York or Chicago, it will no longer be enough to wear flowers on your hair or make a “Peace!” sign with your fingers. You better be in your best form and best behavior. Give your paunch and toenails a good trim and don’t forget to wear clean socks. Have a nice haircut, and consider shaving off your prized mustache or goatee. Don’t bank on charm and diplomatic immunity. And remember, practice your English and watch your temper. Nothing will better qualify you for being asked to step aside the Customs queue in LA or San Francisco to be grilled or stripped than an atrocious or non-existent English or, much worse, a flare-up of a monumental ego.
Sadly and forever, as the old refrain goes, everything is different now in America because of September 11. (2003)
This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date. I'll be running one of them in the Forum every Wednesday starting October 26, 2016.
Standard operating procedure (SOP)
Standard operating procedure (SOP)
• Element of a typical SOP
- Purpose and scope
- Definitions
- Materials and equipment needed
- Safety concerns
- Who is responsible?
- Step-by-step procedure with identification and emphasis of “critical steps”
- Record to be kept
- Copies of forms to be used
- References.
Vocabulary:
• Turn the bulb anti-clockwise.
• Look at it.
• Take it out of the socket.
Switch off the power.
Remove nail tire make hole steel plate
Join cables check concrete dry check width shelf paint wall Twist tightly press gently drill carefully measure carefully
pull firmly spread evenly electric drill
finger pair of pliers brush ruler
1. robot /ˈrəʊbɒt/ 2. rubbish /'rʌbɪʃ/
3. fix /fɪks/ 4. nut /nʌt/
5. bolt /bəʊlt/ 6. wire /'waɪə/
7. thoroughly /ˈθʌrəlɪ/ 8. dirt /dɜ:t/
9. leak /li:k/ 10. tap /tap/
Study the dialog. Then act it out with your friend.
Dina : Where's your robot, Adi?
Adi : In the rubbish bin. It began to do everything wrong. I couldn't fix it, so I threw it away.
Dina : Let's find out what's wrong with it. First, remove the nuts, bolts and wires. Wash the rest of the parts thoroughly so that they are free of dirt and oil.
Adi : The parts are now completely dry. What do I do next?
Dina : Put back the wires. They must be carefully arranged. Then join the parts using the nuts and bolts. Later, the buttons be fitted. Here, let me show you how.
Adi : Oh, it works! Thank you, Dina. You're wonderful at fixing things. Could you also fix our leaking tap?
Read the dialog and practice it with your friends. Pay attention to your intonation.
Dr. Kimberly : Mr. Davis. On behalf of the university management, I'd like to briefly describe the new working procedures that are hoped to be more flexible.
Mr. Davis : Please do, I'm listening.
Dr. Kimberly : Well, the spirit of these new working procedures is to offer some flexibility for university employee in order that they can maintain the quality of the service to the students and other clients.
Mr. Davis : Anyway, will these new procedures be put into effect for all employees?
Dr. Kimberly : Of course not. These will be applicable only to those who have continuously worked for the university for at least one year.
Mr. Davis : What are the major changes?
Dr. Kimberly : A lot. One of them is working hours and working arrangements. Employees are now given an opportunity to request any change for working hours and arrangements.
Mr. Davis : Sounds interesting. Go on.
Dr. Kimberly : Any request that is made and accepted will make a permanent change to contractual terms and conditions. The personnel manager will hold a meeting to discuss details about this.
Mending a Fuse
- First, find the fuse box.
- Then make sure you turn off all the main electric switches.
- Now open he door of the fuse box. Inside is a row of white objects. These are the fuse carriers. The fuse wires are fixed inside them.
- Pull out the fuse carriers one by one to see if the wire is broken. The fuse is broken when you can see the two burnt-out ends of wire. The fuse carrier will be slightly blackened.
- Hold the fuse carrier firmly and loosen the nuts.
- After that, take out the broken bits of wire.
- Remember to choose a new length of fuse wire of the carrier in a clockwise direction.
- Then turn the carrier round. Twist the wire round the other end in the same way.
- Next, screw both nuts tight.
- Finally, replace the carrier in the fuse box. Turn on the main switch and put on the lights.
SOAL UJIAN BAHASA INGGRIS
SEMESTER GENAP (EMPAT)
SMK AS-SAABIQ
Instruksi
Jawablah pertanyaan dibawah ini dengan memilih salah satu jawaban yang benar A, B, C atau D
1. When ……………………………. your sister?
a. did you see b. do you see c. was you saw d. had you seen
2. I ……………………………. her two days ago.
a. seeing b. saw c. see d. seed
3. Ina : Why are you sleepy in class?
Ines : Do I look sleepy, Na? I am not sleepy, but I have a painful stomach ache.
Ina : You should go to the doctor. Come on I'll accompany you.
The underlined words express ........
a. obligation b. satisfaction c. advice d. offering
 |
4. What type of this ship is it?
a. cable ferry
b. cruise ship
c. cargo liner
d. crane vessel
5. He ……………………………. to the meeting on Wednesday because he was on holiday.
a. comes b. did not came c. did not come d. does not come
6. My father wanted to watch a soccer match on television ......... my mother was already watching another program.
a. but b. while c. or d. so
7. Where ……………………………. for your holidays?
a. did you go b. went c. do you went d. was you go
8. How long ……………………………. you to drive from Mecca to Medinna?
a. did it took b. did it take c. does it take d. do it took
9. Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979 for her work among the homeless.
The underlined word means ... .
a. celebrated b. dedicated c. granted d. proved
 |
10. What are they doing?
a. The woman is talking to her friend
b. The man is whispering something to his wife
c. The two woman are using glasses
d. The woman is whispering something to her friend
11. I don't like dogs ___ jump on me.
a. whose b. that c. Æ d. whom
12. A : Have you heard that uncle Joe will come next week?
B : Oh. really? When did he tell you?
A : Last week.
The underlined sentence is used to express ........
a. happiness b. surprise c. pleasure d. enjoyment
13. I ………………… a fantastic film at the cinema last week.
a. saw b. seeing c. seed d. see
14. "Watch the TV tonight. My daughter is on TV channel 5 at eight. She always makes me happy." "Sure, I will."
From the underlined words we know that the first speaker feels ........ her daughter.
a. angry with b. proud of c. worried about d. disappointed at
15. The batik dress mother gave me is old, its colour has faded. Its refers to ...
a. mother b. old c. batik d. colour
16. "I am sorry I don't know the answer, but I really wish I ..."
a. know b. have known c. knew d. will know
Question 36 to 38 refer to the following article
At present, aeroplanes are playing a very important role to .....(17)..... one place to another. People can go round the world just in a two day flight by the world's first supersonic airliner, Concorde, which .....(18)..... at a height of over 18.000 metres and .....(19)..... a speed of over 2.000 km per hour.
17. a. disjoin b. separate c. connect d. divide
18. a. goes b. drives c. flies d. comes
19. a. cuts b. continues c. reaches d. moves
20. My teeth were hurting ......... I made an appointment to go the dentist.
a. or b. so c but d. because
21. Mary introduced me to her former lecturer ........ she married after she had graduated.
a. of whom b. whom c. whose d. who
22. He ........ 20 years old when he started work.
a. were b. was c. is d. did
23. Have you seen ......... heard the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber?
a. but b. or c. so d. while
24. Jaya : Why are you still here?
Didn't you tell me that you would go to Jakarta today?
Setiadi : I would have been in Jakarta if the bus had not got an accident.
The underlined utterance means..........
a. Setiadi went to Jakarta b. The bus got an accident
c. Jaya went to Jakarta d. The bus was safe
25. If I find her address, I…………………… her an invitation.
a. will send b. would send c. sent d. send
26. I wanted to go to the rock concert ......... all the tickets were already sold out.
a. but b. so c. both d. and
27. If I don’t see him this afternoon, I …………………… him in the evening.
a. will phone b. phone c. phoned d. would phoned
28. Jack : Rita, ............
Rita : Pleased to meet you. Don.
Don : Pleased to meet you too.
a. I'd like you to meet my friend Don b. don't you know Don is my friend
c. Don wants to meet you d. please introduce yourself to Don
29. Last Thursday our English teacher …… all the exercise.
a.corrected b. is correcting
a.corrected b. is correcting
c. has corrected d. has been correcting
30. I wanted to eat sushi for dinner ......... I went to a Japanese restaurant.
a. but b. and c. or d. so
31. Sam is the boy _____ shaved his head--he is completely bald now.
a. whose b. that c. which d. who
32. "I'm sorry for …... you all this trouble,
a. having b. creating c. causing d. making
33. A dishwasher is a machine ____ washes dishes.
a. who b. whose c. which d. that
34. X : Have you sent the letter?
Y : No, I haven't finished typing it.
X : What? You ... have sent it yesterday
Y : I'm sorry. I'll send it immediately
a. may b. could c. would d. might
35. 
Which one of the statement is correct
Which one of the statement is correct
a. canoe is the biggest one
b. speed boat is smaller than canoe
c. yatch is the biggest one
c. yatch is the same size as speed baot
36. Susi : Let's go to the Jazz Festival tonight!
Yani : You go, please. Jazz is not my music. I'd, better go back to my books.
From the dialogue we know that Yani ... Susi's invitation.
a. prefers b. refuses c. ignores d. accepts
Question number 37 to 40 refer to the following passage
The Titanic was the biggest ship in the world at that time. It had good facilities such as: a fully air conditional cabin, restaurant, bar, mini shop, recreation space, ship’s band and singers, medical facilities, telephone, etc. When the Titanic sailed from Southampton to New York in April 1912 with 819 crews and 1316 passengers, it sank after it sailed for four days. It happened in North Atlantic Ocean. It hit a very big iceberg. Since there were not enough lifeboats and all the passengers or the crews were very afraid, the ship sank rapidly, most of passangers and crews sank and only few people was safe.
37. Where did the tragedy happen?
a. in the sea b. in the high way c. in the harbor d. In the air
38. It had good facilities. The underlined word refers to ….
a. the world b. the ship c. the time d. that biggest
39. Which line tells us that most of people died?
a.line 3 & 4 b. line 1 & 2 c. line 6 & 7 d. line 5
40. Where did the Titanic sink exactly?
a. Southeast continent b. in the sea
c. Atlantic ocean d. North Atlantic Ocean
1. I wanted to eat fish for lunch ......... the fish and chip shop had closed for the day.
a. or b. but c. so d. and
2. One day three weeks ago John’s friends visited him to his house because he …… off his bike.
a. falls b. fell c. has been falling d. is falling
a. falls b. fell c. has been falling d. is falling
3. I am going to do my homework ......... take a shower when I get home from school.
a. and b. but c. so d. thus
4. My brother wanted to buy a novel ......... he went to the book store after he finished work.
a. so b. or c. but d. and
5. I wanted to visit my grandmother last week ......... she had an accident and had to be taken to hospital.
a. but b. or c. so d. and
6. The food ____ she is buying looks healthy.
a. who b. that c. which d. whom
7. The bat is the only mammal ___ can fly.
a. who b. that c. which d. whom
8. Look! That's the singer ___ mother is from my hometown.
a. whose b. who c. that d. who's
9. I felt bad for the guy ___ failed the exam.
a. that b. which c. who d. whose
10. I ……………………………. her two days ago.
a. seeing b. saw c. see d. seed
11. Ina : Why are you sleepy in class?
Ines : Do I look sleepy, Na? I am not sleepy, but I have a painful stomach ache.
Ina : You should go to the doctor. Come on I'll accompany you.
The underlined words express ........
a. obligation b. satisfaction c. advice d. offering
 |
12. What type of this ship is it?
a. cable ferry
b. cruise ship
c. cargo liner
d. crane vessel
13. He ……………………………. to the meeting on Wednesday because he was on holiday.
a. comes b. did not came c. did not come d. does not come
14. My father wanted to watch a soccer match on television ......... my mother was already watching another program.
a. but b. while c. or d. so
15. Where ……………………………. for your holidays?
a. did you go b. went c. do you went d. was you go
16. How long ……………………………. you to drive from Mecca to Medinna?
a. did it took b. did it take c. does it take d. do it took
17. Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979 for her work among the homeless.
The underlined word means ... .
a. celebrated b. dedicated c. granted d. proved
 |
18. What are they doing?
a. The woman is talking to her friend
b. The man is whispering something to his wife
c. The two woman are using glasses
d. The woman is whispering something to her friend
19. I don't like dogs ___ jump on me.
a. whose b. that c. Æ d. whom
20. A : Have you heard that uncle Joe will come next week?
B : Oh. really? When did he tell you?
A : Last week.
The underlined sentence is used to express ........
a. happiness b. surprise c. pleasure d. enjoyment
21. I ………………… a fantastic film at the cinema last week.
a. saw b. seeing c. seed d. see
22. "Watch the TV tonight. My daughter is on TV channel 5 at eight. She always makes me happy." "Sure, I will."
From the underlined words we know that the first speaker feels ........ her daughter.
a. angry with b. proud of c. worried about d. disappointed at
23. The batik dress mother gave me is old, its colour has faded. Its refers to ...
a. mother b. old c. batik d. colour
24. "I am sorry I don't know the answer, but I really wish I ..."
a. know b. have known c. knew d. will know
Question 36 to 38 refer to the following article
At present, aeroplanes are playing a very important role to .....(17)..... one place to another. People can go round the world just in a two day flight by the world's first supersonic airliner, Concorde, which .....(18)..... at a height of over 18.000 metres and .....(19)..... a speed of over 2.000 km per hour.
25. a. disjoin b. separate c. connect d. divide
26. a. goes b. drives c. flies d. comes
27. a. cuts b. continues c. reaches d. moves
28. My teeth were hurting ......... I made an appointment to go the dentist.
a. or b. so c but d. because
29. Mary introduced me to her former lecturer ........ she married after she had graduated.
a. of whom b. whom c. whose d. who
30. He ........ 20 years old when he started work.
a. were b. was c. is d. did
31. Have you seen ......... heard the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber?
a. but b. or c. so d. while
32. Jaya : Why are you still here?
Didn't you tell me that you would go to Jakarta today?
Setiadi : I would have been in Jakarta if the bus had not got an accident.
The underlined utterance means..........
a. Setiadi went to Jakarta b. The bus got an accident
c. Jaya went to Jakarta d. The bus was safe
33. If I find her address, I…………………… her an invitation.
a. will send b. would send c. sent d. send
34. I wanted to go to the rock concert ......... all the tickets were already sold out.
a. but b. so c. both d. and
35. If I don’t see him this afternoon, I …………………… him in the evening.
a. will phone b. phone c. phoned d. would phoned
36. Jack : Rita, ............
Rita : Pleased to meet you. Don.
Don : Pleased to meet you too.
a. I'd like you to meet my friend Don b. don't you know Don is my friend
c. Don wants to meet you d. please introduce yourself to Don
37. Last Thursday our English teacher …… all the exercise.
a.corrected b. is correcting
a.corrected b. is correcting
c. has corrected d. has been correcting
38. I wanted to eat sushi for dinner ......... I went to a Japanese restaurant.
a. but b. and c. or d. so
39. Sam is the boy _____ shaved his head--he is completely bald now.
a. whose b. that c. which d. who
40. "I'm sorry for …... you all this trouble,
a. having b. creating c. causing d. making
41. A dishwasher is a machine ____ washes dishes.
a. who b. whose c. which d. that
42. X : Have you sent the letter?
Y : No, I haven't finished typing it.
X : What? You ... have sent it yesterday
Y : I'm sorry. I'll send it immediately
a. may b. could c. would d. might
43. 
Which one of the statement is correct
Which one of the statement is correcta. canoe is the biggest one
b. speed boat is smaller than canoe
c. yatch is the biggest one
c. yatch is the same size as speed baot
44. Susi : Let's go to the Jazz Festival tonight!
Yani : You go, please. Jazz is not my music. I'd, better go back to my books.
From the dialogue we know that Yani ... Susi's invitation.
a. prefers b. refuses c. ignores d. accepts
Question number 37 to 40 refer to the following passage
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The Titanic was the biggest ship in the world at that time. It had good facilities such as: a fully air conditional cabin, restaurant, bar, mini shop, recreation space, ship’s band and singers, medical facilities, telephone, etc. When the Titanic sailed from Southampton to New York in April 1912 with 819 crews and 1316 passengers, it sank after it sailed for four days. It happened in North Atlantic Ocean. It hit a very big iceberg. Since there were not enough lifeboats and all the passengers or the crews were very afraid, the ship sank rapidly, most of passangers and crews sank and only few people was safe.
45. Where did the tragedy happen?
a. in the sea b. in the high way c. in the harbor d. In the air
46. It had good facilities. The underlined word refers to ….
a. the world b. the ship c. the time d. that biggest
47. Which line tells us that most of people died?
a.line 3 & 4 b. line 1 & 2 c. line 6 & 7 d. line 5
48. Where did the Titanic sink exactly?
a. Southeast continent b. in the sea
c. Atlantic ocean d. North Atlantic Ocean
49. Jasmine is a flower ____ is white and very fragrent.
a. which b. who c. that d. whom
50. They are filming the girl ___ birthday is today.
a. whose b. that c. who d. which
51. There's the couple ___ dancing you liked so much.
a. whose b. that c. who
52. If John has the money, he will buy a Ferrari.
a. will buy b. buys c. would buy d. bought
Some and Any
Selamat sore pembaca belajar bahasa Inggris online, sore-sore gini jika tidak ada kerjaan, mendingan baca penjelasan saya mengenai some dan any... heee
Some dan any mempunyai arti "beberapa/tidak banyak". Cara pemakaian some dan any ini tidak terlalu sulit Some dan any termasuk quantifier dan saya telah menjelaskan pada materi sebelumnya masalah quantifier ini. Berikut ini perbedaan pemakai some dan any:
Some
Some digunakan dalam kaliamat positif. Some bisa digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung ataupun yang tidak bisa dihitung (countable dan uncountable nouns ). Some diharamkan diletakkan pada kalimat jika kalimat tersebut berbentuk negatif.
Sekarang perhatikan contoh berikut ini:
Toni has some books.
They have some pens.
There are some apples on the table.
My brothers buy some new pencils.
There is some sugar in the kitchen.
I need some water.
Perlu diketahui bahwa, jika kita menggunakan "some" untuk benda yang bisa dihitung (countable nouns ), maka benda tersebut haruslah berbentuk jamak/ plural.
Toni has some booksToni has some book.
They have some pens .They have some pen.
There are some apples on the table,There are some apple on the table.
My brothers buy some new pencils My brothers buy some new pencil.
Bila setelah kata some kita meletakkan kata benda yang tidak bisa dihitung/uncountable noun, maka kata benda tersebut janganlah ditambah "s/es".
There is some sugar in the kitchen.There is some sugars in the kitchen.
I need some water.I need some waters.
She has some salt.She has some salts.
Note: Ingat, some tidak boleh dipakai dalam kalimat berbentuk negatif, terkadang kita menemukan penempatan some dalam kalimat tanya/interrogative, biasanya kalimat tanya yang menggunakan kata some adalah kalimat tanya yang bermakna menawarkan sesuatu (offer something) dan juga permintaan (request something).
contoh:
Would you like some apples? (offer)
Can I have some water? (request)
Any
Any dipakai hanya dalam kalimat negatif dan kalimat tanya/interrogative. Kita tidak diperbolehkan memakai "any" dalam kalimta positif. Kita juga bisa meletakkan kata benda yang bisa dihitung ataupun yang tidak bisa dihitung/countable or uncountable nouns setelah kata "any".Bila kata benda tersebut adalah kata benda yang bisa dihitung/countable noun, maka kata benda itupun harus berbentuk jamak/plural.
contoh;
I don't have any books. I don't have any book.
They didn't bring any pens.They didn't bring any pen.
She doesn't have any rulers.She doesn't have any ruler.
Do they need any knives?Do they need any knife?
Does she water any flowers?Does she water any flower?
We don't have any sugar.
The boys didn't have any money.
Shinta does not bring any food.
Do the girls play any games today?
Some dan any mempunyai arti "beberapa/tidak banyak". Cara pemakaian some dan any ini tidak terlalu sulit Some dan any termasuk quantifier dan saya telah menjelaskan pada materi sebelumnya masalah quantifier ini. Berikut ini perbedaan pemakai some dan any:
Some
Some digunakan dalam kaliamat positif. Some bisa digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung ataupun yang tidak bisa dihitung (countable dan uncountable nouns ). Some diharamkan diletakkan pada kalimat jika kalimat tersebut berbentuk negatif.
Sekarang perhatikan contoh berikut ini:
Toni has some books.
They have some pens.
There are some apples on the table.
My brothers buy some new pencils.
There is some sugar in the kitchen.
I need some water.
Perlu diketahui bahwa, jika kita menggunakan "some" untuk benda yang bisa dihitung (countable nouns ), maka benda tersebut haruslah berbentuk jamak/ plural.
Toni has some books
They have some pens .
There are some apples on the table,
My brothers buy some new pencils
Bila setelah kata some kita meletakkan kata benda yang tidak bisa dihitung/uncountable noun, maka kata benda tersebut janganlah ditambah "s/es".
There is some sugar in the kitchen.
I need some water.
She has some salt.
Note: Ingat, some tidak boleh dipakai dalam kalimat berbentuk negatif, terkadang kita menemukan penempatan some dalam kalimat tanya/interrogative, biasanya kalimat tanya yang menggunakan kata some adalah kalimat tanya yang bermakna menawarkan sesuatu (offer something) dan juga permintaan (request something).
contoh:
Would you like some apples? (offer)
Can I have some water? (request)
Any
Any dipakai hanya dalam kalimat negatif dan kalimat tanya/interrogative. Kita tidak diperbolehkan memakai "any" dalam kalimta positif. Kita juga bisa meletakkan kata benda yang bisa dihitung ataupun yang tidak bisa dihitung/countable or uncountable nouns setelah kata "any".Bila kata benda tersebut adalah kata benda yang bisa dihitung/countable noun, maka kata benda itupun harus berbentuk jamak/plural.
contoh;
I don't have any books.
They didn't bring any pens.
She doesn't have any rulers.
Do they need any knives?
Does she water any flowers?
We don't have any sugar.
The boys didn't have any money.
Shinta does not bring any food.
Do the girls play any games today?
Much and Many
Much dan many mempunyai arti banyak. Much dan many juga termasuk dalam quantifier. Pengetahuan mengenai countable dan uncountable nouns sangatlah penting diketahui jika kita ingin dengan mudah memahami pemakaian much dan many.
Much digunakan untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung/uncountable nouns dan many digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung/countable nouns. Much dan many dapat digunakan dalam kalimat positif, negatif maupun kalimat interrogative.
Perlu diperhatikan bahwa, dalam penggunaan "many", kata benda yang diletakkan sesudahnya haruslah berbentuk jamak/plural.
contoh dalam kalimat:
Much digunakan untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung/uncountable nouns dan many digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung/countable nouns. Much dan many dapat digunakan dalam kalimat positif, negatif maupun kalimat interrogative.
Perlu diperhatikan bahwa, dalam penggunaan "many", kata benda yang diletakkan sesudahnya haruslah berbentuk jamak/plural.
contoh dalam kalimat:
Many
Many people can drive.
There are so many books in the bedroom.
Do you have many friends?
Much
I have much money.
There is much sugar in the kitchen.
Do you have much milk?
My father and my mother have much free time.
How much dan How many
How much dan how many digunakan pada kalimat tanya, dan mempunyai arti "berapa banyak...?"
How much di gunakan untuk menanyakan jumlah atau kuantitas benda yang tidak bisa dihitung. How many digunakan untuk menanyakan kuantitas benda yang bisa dihitung.
Contoh:
How many books do you have? = Berapa banyak buku yang kamu miliki?
How many people are there in the room? = Ada berapa banyak orang yang ada di ruangan itu?
How many students do you have? = Berapa banyak murid yang kamu miliki?
How much sugar do you have? =Berapa banyak gula yang kamu miliki.
How much water do you drink in a day? =Berapa banyak air yang kamu minum dalam sehari?
How much salt do you want? = Berapa banyak garam yang kamu inginkan?
Many people can drive.
There are so many books in the bedroom.
Do you have many friends?
Much
I have much money.
There is much sugar in the kitchen.
Do you have much milk?
My father and my mother have much free time.
How much dan How many
How much dan how many digunakan pada kalimat tanya, dan mempunyai arti "berapa banyak...?"
How much di gunakan untuk menanyakan jumlah atau kuantitas benda yang tidak bisa dihitung. How many digunakan untuk menanyakan kuantitas benda yang bisa dihitung.
Contoh:
How many books do you have? = Berapa banyak buku yang kamu miliki?
How many people are there in the room? = Ada berapa banyak orang yang ada di ruangan itu?
How many students do you have? = Berapa banyak murid yang kamu miliki?
How much sugar do you have? =Berapa banyak gula yang kamu miliki.
How much water do you drink in a day? =Berapa banyak air yang kamu minum dalam sehari?
How much salt do you want? = Berapa banyak garam yang kamu inginkan?
A little/little dan A few/few
Tiba saatnya kita membahas a little dan a few. Dalam bahasa Indonesia, a little dan a few mempunyai arti sedikit/tidak banyak dan bisa juga mempunyai arti beberapa. Meraka ini juga termasuk quantifier sama hal nya dengan "much, many, some, any". Untuk mememudahkan kita memahami pemakaian a little dan a few, kita harus memahami countable dan uncountable nouns lebih dahulu. Countable dan uncountable nouns telah saya jelaskan pada pembahasan sebelumnya.
A Little
A Little
kata ini dipakai untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung, seperti gula (sugar), garam (salt), air (udara), money (uang), water (air), dll. Kata a little mempunyai makna positif, dengan kata lain makna positif ini berarti si pembicara merasa puas, merasa cukup atas benda yang mengikuti sesudah kata a little tersebut. Masih bingung? heee Kita langsung masuk pada contoh kalimat saja.
She needs a little sugar.= Dia membutuhkan sedikit gula.
There is a little milk in the refrigerator..=Ada sedikit susu di dalam lemari es.
They buy a little salt.=Mereka membeli sedikit garam.
I have a little money.=Saya mempunyai sedikit uang.
Perhatikan contoh kalimat di atas! Kata-kata yang dicetak tebal adalah kata benda yang tidak bisa dihitung, oleh karena itu jika kita ingin mengatakan "sedikit gula" dalam bahasa Inggris menjadi "a little sugar".Bagaimana, mudah bukan cara pemakaiannya.
Jika kita mengatakan " I have a little money." Berarti si pembicara merasa puas, merasa cukup atas uang yang dimilikinya walaupun itu sedikit atau tidak banyak. Nah, inilah yang dimaksud dari "makna positif" pada penjelasan saya di atas.
Little
Di samping a little, dalam bahasa Inggris orang sering juga menggunakan "little" tanpa memberikan artikel a sebelum kata little. Perlu diketahui bahwa a little dan little itu berbeda, walau dalam bahasa Indonesia kita terjemahkan dengan kata yang sama yaitu 'sedikit' akan tetapi mempunyai makna yang berbeda. Di atas telah dijelaskan bahwa a little mempunyai makna positif dan little mempunyai makna negatif.
Jika kita mengatakan "I have little money", berarti si pembicara merasa tidak cukup, merasa tidak puas atau merasa tidak senang atas uang yang ia miliki tersebut.
A Few
Kata ini kebalikan dari a little, jika a little untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung, a few untuk benda yang bisa dihitung atau countable nouns. Perhatikan contoh-contoh di bawah ini!
Doni has a few books.
Rina doesn't have a few pens.
Do you bring a few pencils?
Do they need a few spoons?
A few cars are parked in the yard.
There are a few cats in the room.
Perhatikan contoh-contoh di atas, setelah kata a few terdapat kata benda yang bisa dihitung, di samping itu perlu juga diperhatikan bahwa, kata benda sesudahnya haruslah berbentuk jamak. Untuk masalah kata benda jamak/plural dan juga kata benda tunggal/singular telah dibahas pada pembahasan-pembahasan sebelumnya.
Semoga penjelasan mengenai a little dan a few ini bisa dipahami. Sama halnya dengan a little, a few juga mempunyai makna positif.
Few
She needs a little sugar.= Dia membutuhkan sedikit gula.
There is a little milk in the refrigerator..=Ada sedikit susu di dalam lemari es.
They buy a little salt.=Mereka membeli sedikit garam.
I have a little money.=Saya mempunyai sedikit uang.
Perhatikan contoh kalimat di atas! Kata-kata yang dicetak tebal adalah kata benda yang tidak bisa dihitung, oleh karena itu jika kita ingin mengatakan "sedikit gula" dalam bahasa Inggris menjadi "a little sugar".Bagaimana, mudah bukan cara pemakaiannya.
Jika kita mengatakan " I have a little money." Berarti si pembicara merasa puas, merasa cukup atas uang yang dimilikinya walaupun itu sedikit atau tidak banyak. Nah, inilah yang dimaksud dari "makna positif" pada penjelasan saya di atas.
Little
Di samping a little, dalam bahasa Inggris orang sering juga menggunakan "little" tanpa memberikan artikel a sebelum kata little. Perlu diketahui bahwa a little dan little itu berbeda, walau dalam bahasa Indonesia kita terjemahkan dengan kata yang sama yaitu 'sedikit' akan tetapi mempunyai makna yang berbeda. Di atas telah dijelaskan bahwa a little mempunyai makna positif dan little mempunyai makna negatif.
Jika kita mengatakan "I have little money", berarti si pembicara merasa tidak cukup, merasa tidak puas atau merasa tidak senang atas uang yang ia miliki tersebut.
A Few
Kata ini kebalikan dari a little, jika a little untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung, a few untuk benda yang bisa dihitung atau countable nouns. Perhatikan contoh-contoh di bawah ini!
Doni has a few books.
Rina doesn't have a few pens.
Do you bring a few pencils?
Do they need a few spoons?
A few cars are parked in the yard.
There are a few cats in the room.
Perhatikan contoh-contoh di atas, setelah kata a few terdapat kata benda yang bisa dihitung, di samping itu perlu juga diperhatikan bahwa, kata benda sesudahnya haruslah berbentuk jamak. Untuk masalah kata benda jamak/plural dan juga kata benda tunggal/singular telah dibahas pada pembahasan-pembahasan sebelumnya.
Semoga penjelasan mengenai a little dan a few ini bisa dipahami. Sama halnya dengan a little, a few juga mempunyai makna positif.
Few
Few sama halnya dengan little, few mepunyai makna negatif.
Contoh:
I have few books.
Pada kalimat ini berarti si pembicara tidak merasa cukup, tidak merasa senang dan juga puas atas buku yang ia miliki, ini yang dimaksud makna negatif pada kata few.
Semoga penjelasan saya ini bisa dimengerti. Saya ulangi kemabali, A little/little dipakai untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung atau uncountable noun, akan tetapi a little mempunyai makna positif dan little mempunyai makna negatif.
A few/few digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung dan harus berbentuk jamak. A few bermakna positif dan few bermakna negatif. Untuk penjelasan makna negatif dan positifnya semoga sudah bisa dipahami dari penjelasan saya di atas.
Contoh:
I have few books.
Pada kalimat ini berarti si pembicara tidak merasa cukup, tidak merasa senang dan juga puas atas buku yang ia miliki, ini yang dimaksud makna negatif pada kata few.
Semoga penjelasan saya ini bisa dimengerti. Saya ulangi kemabali, A little/little dipakai untuk benda yang tidak bisa dihitung atau uncountable noun, akan tetapi a little mempunyai makna positif dan little mempunyai makna negatif.
A few/few digunakan untuk benda yang bisa dihitung dan harus berbentuk jamak. A few bermakna positif dan few bermakna negatif. Untuk penjelasan makna negatif dan positifnya semoga sudah bisa dipahami dari penjelasan saya di atas.
SOAL UJIAN BAHASA INGGRIS
SEMESTER GENAP (EMPAT)
SMK MARITIM TANJUNGPINANG
Instruksi
Jawablah pertanyaan dibawah ini dengan memilih salah satu jawaban yang benar A, B, C atau D
1. When ……………………………. your sister?
a. did you see b. do you see c. was you saw d. had you seen
2. I ……………………………. her two days ago.
a. seeing b. saw c. see d. seed
3. Ina : Why are you sleepy in class?
Ines : Do I look sleepy, Na? I am not sleepy, but I have a painful stomach ache.
Ina : You should go to the doctor. Come on I'll accompany you.
The underlined words express ........
a. obligation b. satisfaction c. advice d. offering
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4. What type of this ship is it?
a. cable ferry
b. cruise ship
c. cargo liner
d. crane vessel
5. He ……………………………. to the meeting on Wednesday because he was on holiday.
a. comes b. did not came c. did not come d. does not come
6. My father wanted to watch a soccer match on television ......... my mother was already watching another program.
a. but b. while c. or d. so
7. Where ……………………………. for your holidays?
a. did you go b. went c. do you went d. was you go
8. How long ……………………………. you to drive from Mecca to Medinna?
a. did it took b. did it take c. does it take d. do it took
9. Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979 for her work among the homeless.
The underlined word means ... .
a. celebrated b. dedicated c. granted d. proved
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10. What are they doing?
a. The woman is talking to her friend
b. The man is whispering something to his wife
c. The two woman are using glasses
d. The woman is whispering something to her friend
11. I don't like dogs ___ jump on me.
a. whose b. that c. Æ d. whom
12. A : Have you heard that uncle Joe will come next week?
B : Oh. really? When did he tell you?
A : Last week.
The underlined sentence is used to express ........
a. happiness b. surprise c. pleasure d. enjoyment
13. I ………………… a fantastic film at the cinema last week.
a. saw b. seeing c. seed d. see
14. "Watch the TV tonight. My daughter is on TV channel 5 at eight. She always makes me happy." "Sure, I will."
From the underlined words we know that the first speaker feels ........ her daughter.
a. angry with b. proud of c. worried about d. disappointed at
15. The batik dress mother gave me is old, its colour has faded. Its refers to ...
a. mother b. old c. batik d. colour
16. "I am sorry I don't know the answer, but I really wish I ..."
a. know b. have known c. knew d. will know
Question 36 to 38 refer to the following article
At present, aeroplanes are playing a very important role to .....(17)..... one place to another. People can go round the world just in a two day flight by the world's first supersonic airliner, Concorde, which .....(18)..... at a height of over 18.000 metres and .....(19)..... a speed of over 2.000 km per hour.
17. a. disjoin b. separate c. connect d. divide
18. a. goes b. drives c. flies d. comes
19. a. cuts b. continues c. reaches d. moves
20. My teeth were hurting ......... I made an appointment to go the dentist.
a. or b. so c but d. because
21. Mary introduced me to her former lecturer ........ she married after she had graduated.
a. of whom b. whom c. whose d. who
22. He ........ 20 years old when he started work.
a. were b. was c. is d. did
23. Have you seen ......... heard the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber?
a. but b. or c. so d. while
24. Jaya : Why are you still here?
Didn't you tell me that you would go to Jakarta today?
Setiadi : I would have been in Jakarta if the bus had not got an accident.
The underlined utterance means..........
a. Setiadi went to Jakarta b. The bus got an accident
c. Jaya went to Jakarta d. The bus was safe
25. If I find her address, I…………………… her an invitation.
a. will send b. would send c. sent d. send
26. I wanted to go to the rock concert ......... all the tickets were already sold out.
a. but b. so c. both d. and
27. If I don’t see him this afternoon, I …………………… him in the evening.
a. will phone b. phone c. phoned d. would phoned
28. Jack : Rita, ............
Rita : Pleased to meet you. Don.
Don : Pleased to meet you too.
a. I'd like you to meet my friend Don b. don't you know Don is my friend
c. Don wants to meet you d. please introduce yourself to Don
29. Last Thursday our English teacher …… all the exercise.
a.corrected b. is correcting
a.corrected b. is correcting
c. has corrected d. has been correcting
30. I wanted to eat sushi for dinner ......... I went to a Japanese restaurant.
a. but b. and c. or d. so
31. Sam is the boy _____ shaved his head--he is completely bald now.
a. whose b. that c. which d. who
32. "I'm sorry for …... you all this trouble,
a. having b. creating c. causing d. making
33. A dishwasher is a machine ____ washes dishes.
a. who b. whose c. which d. that
34. X : Have you sent the letter?
Y : No, I haven't finished typing it.
X : What? You ... have sent it yesterday
Y : I'm sorry. I'll send it immediately
a. may b. could c. would d. might
35. Which one of the statement is correct
Which one of the statement is correcta. canoe is the biggest one
b. speed boat is smaller than canoe
c. yatch is the biggest one
c. yatch is the same size as speed baot
36. Susi : Let's go to the Jazz Festival tonight!
Yani : You go, please. Jazz is not my music. I'd, better go back to my books.
From the dialogue we know that Yani ... Susi's invitation.
a. prefers b. refuses c. ignores d. accepts
Question number 37 to 40 refer to the following passage
 |
The Titanic was the biggest ship in the world at that time. It had good facilities such as: a fully air conditional cabin, restaurant, bar, mini shop, recreation space, ship’s band and singers, medical facilities, telephone, etc. When the Titanic sailed from Southampton to New York in April 1912 with 819 crews and 1316 passengers, it sank after it sailed for four days. It happened in North Atlantic Ocean. It hit a very big iceberg. Since there were not enough lifeboats and all the passengers or the crews were very afraid, the ship sank rapidly, most of passangers and crews sank and only few people was safe.
37. Where did the tragedy happen?
a. in the sea b. in the high way c. in the harbor d. In the air
38. It had good facilities. The underlined word refers to ….
a. the world b. the ship c. the time d. that biggest
39. Which line tells us that most of people died?
a.line 3 & 4 b. line 1 & 2 c. line 6 & 7 d. line 5
40. Where did the Titanic sink exactly?
a. Southeast continent b. in the sea
c. Atlantic ocean d. North Atlantic Ocean
Good luck and keep smile
1. I wanted to eat fish for lunch ......... the fish and chip shop had closed for the day.
a. or b. but c. so d. and
2. One day three weeks ago John’s friends visited him to his house because he …… off his bike.
a. falls b. fell c. has been falling d. is falling
a. falls b. fell c. has been falling d. is falling
3. I am going to do my homework ......... take a shower when I get home from school.
a. and b. but c. so d. thus
4. My brother wanted to buy a novel ......... he went to the book store after he finished work.
a. so b. or c. but d. and
5. I wanted to visit my grandmother last week ......... she had an accident and had to be taken to hospital.
a. but b. or c. so d. and
6. The food ____ she is buying looks healthy.
a. who b. that c. which d. whom
7. The bat is the only mammal ___ can fly.
a. who b. that c. which d. whom
8. Look! That's the singer ___ mother is from my hometown.
a. whose b. who c. that d. who's
9. I felt bad for the guy ___ failed the exam.
a. that b. which c. who d. whose
10. I ……………………………. her two days ago.
a. seeing b. saw c. see d. seed
11. Ina : Why are you sleepy in class?
Ines : Do I look sleepy, Na? I am not sleepy, but I have a painful stomach ache.
Ina : You should go to the doctor. Come on I'll accompany you.
The underlined words express ........
a. obligation b. satisfaction c. advice d. offering
 |
12. What type of this ship is it?
a. cable ferry
b. cruise ship
c. cargo liner
d. crane vessel
13. He ……………………………. to the meeting on Wednesday because he was on holiday.
a. comes b. did not came c. did not come d. does not come
14. My father wanted to watch a soccer match on television ......... my mother was already watching another program.
a. but b. while c. or d. so
15. Where ……………………………. for your holidays?
a. did you go b. went c. do you went d. was you go
16. How long ……………………………. you to drive from Mecca to Medinna?
a. did it took b. did it take c. does it take d. do it took
17. Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979 for her work among the homeless.
The underlined word means ... .
a. celebrated b. dedicated c. granted d. proved
 |
18. What are they doing?
a. The woman is talking to her friend
b. The man is whispering something to his wife
c. The two woman are using glasses
d. The woman is whispering something to her friend
19. I don't like dogs ___ jump on me.
a. whose b. that c. Æ d. whom
20. A : Have you heard that uncle Joe will come next week?
B : Oh. really? When did he tell you?
A : Last week.
The underlined sentence is used to express ........
a. happiness b. surprise c. pleasure d. enjoyment
21. I ………………… a fantastic film at the cinema last week.
a. saw b. seeing c. seed d. see
22. "Watch the TV tonight. My daughter is on TV channel 5 at eight. She always makes me happy." "Sure, I will."
From the underlined words we know that the first speaker feels ........ her daughter.
a. angry with b. proud of c. worried about d. disappointed at
23. The batik dress mother gave me is old, its colour has faded. Its refers to ...
a. mother b. old c. batik d. colour
24. "I am sorry I don't know the answer, but I really wish I ..."
a. know b. have known c. knew d. will know
Question 36 to 38 refer to the following article
At present, aeroplanes are playing a very important role to .....(17)..... one place to another. People can go round the world just in a two day flight by the world's first supersonic airliner, Concorde, which .....(18)..... at a height of over 18.000 metres and .....(19)..... a speed of over 2.000 km per hour.
25. a. disjoin b. separate c. connect d. divide
26. a. goes b. drives c. flies d. comes
27. a. cuts b. continues c. reaches d. moves
28. My teeth were hurting ......... I made an appointment to go the dentist.
a. or b. so c but d. because
29. Mary introduced me to her former lecturer ........ she married after she had graduated.
a. of whom b. whom c. whose d. who
30. He ........ 20 years old when he started work.
a. were b. was c. is d. did
31. Have you seen ......... heard the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber?
a. but b. or c. so d. while
32. Jaya : Why are you still here?
Didn't you tell me that you would go to Jakarta today?
Setiadi : I would have been in Jakarta if the bus had not got an accident.
The underlined utterance means..........
a. Setiadi went to Jakarta b. The bus got an accident
c. Jaya went to Jakarta d. The bus was safe
33. If I find her address, I…………………… her an invitation.
a. will send b. would send c. sent d. send
34. I wanted to go to the rock concert ......... all the tickets were already sold out.
a. but b. so c. both d. and
35. If I don’t see him this afternoon, I …………………… him in the evening.
a. will phone b. phone c. phoned d. would phoned
36. Jack : Rita, ............
Rita : Pleased to meet you. Don.
Don : Pleased to meet you too.
a. I'd like you to meet my friend Don b. don't you know Don is my friend
c. Don wants to meet you d. please introduce yourself to Don
37. Last Thursday our English teacher …… all the exercise.
a.corrected b. is correcting
a.corrected b. is correcting
c. has corrected d. has been correcting
38. I wanted to eat sushi for dinner ......... I went to a Japanese restaurant.
a. but b. and c. or d. so
39. Sam is the boy _____ shaved his head--he is completely bald now.
a. whose b. that c. which d. who
40. "I'm sorry for …... you all this trouble,
a. having b. creating c. causing d. making
41. A dishwasher is a machine ____ washes dishes.
a. who b. whose c. which d. that
42. X : Have you sent the letter?
Y : No, I haven't finished typing it.
X : What? You ... have sent it yesterday
Y : I'm sorry. I'll send it immediately
a. may b. could c. would d. might
43. 
Which one of the statement is correct
Which one of the statement is correct
a. canoe is the biggest one
b. speed boat is smaller than canoe
c. yatch is the biggest one
c. yatch is the same size as speed baot
44. Susi : Let's go to the Jazz Festival tonight!
Yani : You go, please. Jazz is not my music. I'd, better go back to my books.
From the dialogue we know that Yani ... Susi's invitation.
a. prefers b. refuses c. ignores d. accepts
Question number 37 to 40 refer to the following passage
|
The Titanic was the biggest ship in the world at that time. It had good facilities such as: a fully air conditional cabin, restaurant, bar, mini shop, recreation space, ship’s band and singers, medical facilities, telephone, etc. When the Titanic sailed from Southampton to New York in April 1912 with 819 crews and 1316 passengers, it sank after it sailed for four days. It happened in North Atlantic Ocean. It hit a very big iceberg. Since there were not enough lifeboats and all the passengers or the crews were very afraid, the ship sank rapidly, most of passangers and crews sank and only few people was safe.
45. Where did the tragedy happen?
a. in the sea b. in the high way c. in the harbor d. In the air
46. It had good facilities. The underlined word refers to ….
a. the world b. the ship c. the time d. that biggest
47. Which line tells us that most of people died?
a.line 3 & 4 b. line 1 & 2 c. line 6 & 7 d. line 5
48. Where did the Titanic sink exactly?
a. Southeast continent b. in the sea
c. Atlantic ocean d. North Atlantic Ocean
49. Jasmine is a flower ____ is white and very fragrent.
a. which b. who c. that d. whom
50. They are filming the girl ___ birthday is today.
a. whose b. that c. who d. which
51. There's the couple ___ dancing you liked so much.
a. whose b. that c. who
52. If John has the money, he will buy a Ferrari.
a. will buy b. buys c. would buy d. bought
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