FUT Minna · 100 level · 2 units
FUT Minna GST 101 — Use of English I Past Questions
Recurring exam topics, sample past questions and revision strategy for GST 101 at Federal University of Technology Minna.
About GST 101 at FUT Minna
Use of English is a 100-level General Studies requirement in virtually every Nigerian university. It is foundational — not because it teaches anything especially difficult, but because every undergraduate must pass it to progress to faculty courses with English-medium assessment. The course typically covers parts of speech, sentence structure, comprehension, summary writing, paragraph development, oral English, and a survey of communication-skills topics including the difference between informal and formal academic register. Past questions at this level emphasise comprehension passages drawn from contemporary Nigerian writing, summary writing of short academic excerpts, and direct grammar items where students must identify subjects, predicates, and modifiers in unfamiliar sentences. Most institutions weight CA at 30 percent and final examination at 70 percent. The CA is usually a combination of attendance, in-class quizzes, and a graded short essay. Students under-prepare for this course because they assume their secondary-school English background is enough — but the comprehension passages at university level move faster and reward students who can summarise a 400-word paragraph in three accurate sentences. The strongest strategy is to drill past questions, especially the comprehension and summary sections, since these test the skill rather than memorised content.
Recurring Topics in GST 101 Past Papers
Parts of speech
Identification and function — nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions.
Sentence types
Simple, compound, complex, compound-complex. Identifying clauses.
Comprehension
Reading a 300–600-word academic passage and answering inference, vocabulary and main-idea questions.
Summary writing
Condensing a passage into 3–5 sentences without copying long phrases verbatim.
Oral English
Stress, intonation, vowel and consonant sound discrimination.
Common errors
Subject-verb agreement, dangling modifiers, tense consistency, redundancy.
Sample Past Questions (GST 101)
Q1. Identify the parts of speech of the underlined words in the following sentence: "Despite the heavy rain, the students walked quickly to the lecture hall."
Q2. Write a summary of the passage above in not more than 50 words.
Q3. Choose the option that best completes the sentence: "Neither the lecturer nor his assistants ____ available to answer the question."
Q4. Define the term "topic sentence" and write one for a paragraph on the importance of reading in academic success.
Q5. List five characteristics of formal academic writing and contrast them with informal writing.
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Q6. In the underlined word in the sentence "She walked through the corridor quietly", identify the part of speech.
Q7. Rewrite the following sentence in the active voice: "The assignment was completed by the students before the deadline."
Q8. What is a misplaced modifier? Give one example.
GST 101 Exam Format at FUT Minna
Most Nigerian universities format GST 101 as a 90-minute examination with three sections: Section A (objective questions on grammar, 20 marks), Section B (comprehension passage with 5 sub-questions, 30 marks), and Section C (summary writing or short essay, 20 marks). Continuous assessment contributes 30 marks for a 100 total.
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