Which strategy is the best way to improve the written expression in a redundant sentence?
Read the excerpt from The Great Gatsby.Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They were not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size. I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.The use of words such as “fashionable,” “superficial,” “bizarre,” and “sinister” provide
Read the paragraph.The question of whether or not to allow cell phones in school is an important one. Cell phones are a monumental distraction to young people whose attention should be focused on learning. However, they do serve a purpose in that phones allow students to communicate with their parents. Plus, cell phones are great for taking pictures with friends. In all, cell phone use at school must be carefully regulated. Which best explains the inconsistency in writing used in this paragraph?
Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released. Being in business was something I detested. When I found that I could sell a song or a poem, I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows.Harburg was relieved when the crash occurred because
What are the plaintiffs seeking for their children in Brown v. Board of Education?
Read this excerpt from Diane Di Prima’s poem "Buddhist New Year Song."I could see the planet from which we had comeI could not remember (then) what our purpose wasbut remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawnin the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold lightrevealed the “mindborn” worldsWhat is the purpose of these allusions in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.”In other cases, the censoring has been direct and brutal. On February 28, 1981 the morning newspaper carried a story about the burning of my novel, Bless Me, Ultima. The book was banned from high school classes in Bloomfield, New Mexico, and a school board member was quoted as saying: “We took the books out and personally saw that they were burned.”Which type of rhetoric used most shows how the powerful use censorship to silence the powerless?
Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue."Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ______, Mary thought he was _____.” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that. Which information from the excerpt best supports the inference that achievement tests ignore imagination as an element of language ability?
Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. “Tenente,” Passini said. “We understand you let us talk. Listen. There is nothing as bad as war. We in the auto-ambulance cannot even realize at all how bad it is. When people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them the war is made.” “I know it is bad but we must finish it.” “It doesn’t finish. There is no finish to a war.” “Yes there is.” Passini shook his head. “War is not won by victory. What if we take San Gabriele? What if we take the Carso and Monfalcome and Trieste? Where are we then? Did you see all the far mountains to-day? Do you think we could take all them too? Only if the Austrians stop fighting. One side must stop fighting. Why don’t we stop fighting? If they come down into Italy they will get tired and go away. They have their own country. But no, instead there is a war.”Which best describes the effect of Passini’s long pieces of dialogue?
Which excerpt from "Harrison Bergeron" best illustrates irony?
Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue."Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world. Which best summarizes the central idea of the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."The sun was approaching the long mesa where it disappeared during the winter. What type of figurative language is included in this passage?
Because of his journalistic background, Ernest Hemingway’s diction tends to be
Use the following definitions to answer the question.conscience:1. (noun) the sense of right and wrong2. (noun) inner thoughtsconscious:1. (adjective) aware2. (noun) area of the mind aware of surroundingsWhich sentence contains correct word usage?
Read the excerpts from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” and “Speaking Arabic.”My friend had concluded that if he took his language and culture out of his poetry, he stood a better chance of receiving a fellowship. He took out his native language, the poetic patois of our reality, the rich mixture of Spanish, English, pachuco and street talk which we know so well. In other words, he took the tortillas out of his poetry, which is to say he took the soul out of his poetry. At a neighborhood fair in Texas, somewhere between the German Oom-pah Sausage Stand and the Mexican Gorditas booth, I overheard a young man say to his friend, “I wish I had a heritage. Sometimes I feel—so lonely for one.” And the tall American trees were dangling their thick branches right down over his head.Which best states how the structures of both excerpts support ideas about cultural diversity?
Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.The road was crowded and there were screens of corn-stalk and straw matting on both sides and matting over the top so that it was like the entrance at a circus or a native village.Keeping in mind Hemingway’s iceberg principle, what feeling is he trying to convey by describing the scene as an “entrance to a circus or a native village”?
Read the quote from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds""Send us rain clouds, Grandfather." They laid the bundle in the back of the pickup and covered it with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.This quote is located early in the narrative. What does it reveal about Leon?
Read the excerpt from "Harrison Bergeron."The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Vonnegut uses satire in this excerpt by
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