CS 610 Foundation Course in English for Computing

1. Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:
Computers are used in many seemingly different ways in modern life, to the point that they are frequently misnamed “electronic brains”. However, all these different applications use the same basic principles, and all must be first analyzed as problems by a person before the computer can be used. For example, a computer may be used to perform routine work of a repetitive nature, such as maintaining the bank of all of the customers of a bank.
Previously this job was done by manual labour. Bookkeepers were instructed about the rules to be followed for a typical account and then they applied them to each account. Now the computer can do this, but the rules, must first be established by a person. This is an example of the use of a computer to save human drudgery in processing repetitive information.
Computers are also used to control systems in environments where it is nor feasible for humans to act, as for example, in unmanned space flight. A computer may be organized to respond in predetermined such as measurements made by on-board instruments such as radar and to signals sent from ground stations. It may also compute the position and the velocity of the spacecraft in order to find out where the craft is heading in relation to the desired destination. Using the information available, the computer can send signals to the spacecraft control systems to keep the craft on the desired course and to perform the planned maneuvers. However, again notice that all of the operations had to be planned ahead of time by people. A person had to think out the response to each combination of circumstances and to organize the computer to produce those responses. Thus a person might have decided that the braking rockets should be fired with a thrust proportional to the velocity and the inverse of the distance to the target. When the computer is properly prepared, it can control the braking rockets, but the decision about how they are fired is made by a person when he writes the program.
The third major area of computer application is to assist people in solving problems that are beyond human capabilities. For example, a computer can be used to perform long sequences of computations that could never be performed by people because of human proneness to error and slow speed. Such situations commonly arise in mathematics or engineering when computations can only be performed sequentially, that is, when the results of one calculation must be known before the next can be performed. Manual calculation of the stresses in a modern airplane wing, for example, would be out of the question. Although the designer of the plane makes the basic decisions about the style of the wing and how the stresses are to be analyzed, the computer makes it possible to perform the analysis in a practical length of time.
(i) Why does the writer think that the computer has been wrongly named as ‘electronic brains’?
(ii) List the three major areas of computer application.
(iii) List the three major areas of computer application.
(iv) In what ways has the computer saved man from drudgery/manual labour?
(v) Find out words from the passage which mean the same as the following:
a) Work in which you use your physical strength rather than your mind.
b) An action planned beforehand
c) Things happening in a fixed order.

Q.2
(a) Change the voice of the following sentences:
(1) The cheque issued by you has been refused by the bank.
(2) Heat turns milk sour.
(b) Fill in the blanks in the following sentences with the correct form of the tense of the the verb given in brackets:
(i) Water __________________ (boil) at 1000C
(ii) Have you ___________ (see) my book?
(iii) You _______________ (drive) very fast.

Q.3. Do as directed:
(a) Correct the following sentences:
(I) I am understanding the lesson now.
(II) All qualities and kinds of material is available in this Mall.
(III) The house was shock by the explosion.
(b) I am right. (Use a tag question)
(c) He is ______________ able student but not ___________________ ablest. (Use proper article)
(d) Abstinence _____________ smoking will do you good. (Use correct preposition)
(e) Use three words in your own sentences to bring out their different meanings:
Desert; dessert
(f) He built a house. He built it at a great cost. (Combine the two sentences into one)
(g) “the earth is round,” said the teacher. (Change into indirect speech)

Q.4 Write a composition in about 300 words on any one of the following. The topic sentence is given to you. Develop it keeping in mind unity, order and coherence.
(1) How computers have changed your life.
(2) Distance education helps education reach all the comers and all the comers and all the sections of people.
(3) Only the rich people have benefited from an open and liberalized economy.

Q.5. Read the passage and summarise it in about 150 words.
Once again the Supreme Court seems to have done the job that the Parliament and the executive has long dithered over. In demanding that the central and state governments speed up the process of making the registration of marriage compulsory for all communities, the SC has understood the urgency of this simple procedure that can help check the gross violation of women’s rights in the country. Proof of marriage may not be a panacea, but it can go a long way towards controlling persistent social diseases like child marriage, bigamy and trafficking of women. It is actually baffling as to why the Centre has repeatedly rejected the NHRC’s proposal for such a rule – in 1994, 1996 and 2000 – and allowed the situation to drift unchecked.
A large number of marriages in India take place in violation of existing provisions of the law. Despite the Child Marriage, social sanction for this Act, which penalises under-age marriage, social sanction for this Act persists, mainly in states like Rajasthan and UP, and ceremonies are performed openly and in large numbers. In the case of bigamy and trafficking, it often gets difficult for the complainant wife to prove her marital status in the absence of a proof of marriage. And this lacuna is also widely misused to deny marriage and thus, escape from paying maintenance or to prevent women from inheriting their husband’s property. Gender parity is still a distant goal in this country. But steps like registering marriages will go some way in empowering women and helping them assert their rights.
In the case of marriage registration, unlike others where the spectre of the uniform civil code hangs ominously, the government has no cause to be worried about objections from the minority communities. In any case, the personal laws of the Christian and Parsi communities make registration of marriage are recorded in the nikahnamma, a contract, which is handed over to the couple. What is really needed is to insert a provision in the Hindu Marriage Act to make registration mandatory. Four state governments ---- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kamataka and Himachal Pradesh --- have already gone ahead with this legislation. It is now up to the Centre to make this a uniform rule.