Part A (20 Marks)READING (10 marks)1. New year is the time for resolution. Mentally at least most of us could compile formidable lists of 'dos and don'ts. The same old favourite recur year in and year out with monotonous regularity. We resolve to get up early each morning, eat healthy food, exercise, be nice to people whom we don't like and find more time for our parents. Past experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyond attainment. If we remain deep-rooted liars, it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure.2. Most of us fail in in our efforts at self-improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to to carry them out. We also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolution to everybody, so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways. Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolutions to myself. I Limited myself to two modest ambitions, to do physical exercise every morning and to read more in the evening. An overnight party on New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year, but on the second, I applied myself diligently to the task.3. The daily exercise lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up. The self-discipline required to drag myself out of bed eleven minutes earlier than usual was considerable. Nevertheless, I managed to creep town into the living room for two days before anyone found me out. After jumping about in the carpet and twisting the human frame into uncomfortable positions, I sat down at the breakfast table and in an exhausted condition. It was this that betrayed me. The next morning the whole family trooped in to watch the performance. That was really unsettling, but I fended off the taunts and jibes of the whole family good-humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea. However, my enthusiasm waned. The time I spent at exercises gradually diminished. Little by little, the eleven minutes fell to zero. By January 10, I was back to where I had started from. I argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself myself at exercises in the morning, I would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home from work. Resisting the hypnotising effect of television, I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyes glued to a book. One night, however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs and sat in front of the television pretending to read. That proved to be my undoing, for I soon got back to the old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen. I still haven't given up my resolution to do more reading. In fact, I have just bought a book entitled 'How to Read a Thousand Words a minute'. Perhaps, it will solve my problem, but I just have not had time to read it.​