The Art of Argument - Test Test Answers

Which examples are clauses? Choose three correct answers.

Read the example. A phone rang in the concert hall the orchestra stopped playing. What common sentence-construction error does this show?

What are the characteristics of an independent clause? Choose three correct answers.

Which statements best describe an effective claim in an argumentative essay? Choose two correct answers.

When writing an argument, it is important for writers to explain their position with

Read the sentence. Marileta is staying with friends until she finds an apartment . What type of clause do the underlined words form?

Which elements does a strong argumentative essay always contain? Choose two correct answers.

Which statement is the most effective claim?

Read the passage from an argumentative essay. (1) Bernie Sanders has argued that no one should have to pay tuition to go to college. (2) This will only increase the tax burden on the middle classes. To improve the relationship between ideas, the writer should revise sentence 2 by

Read the excerpt from President Ronald Reagan’s speech on the night before the 1980 presidential election. And many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel burdened, stifled and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems. Which statement best describes the rhetorical technique used in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from President Ronald Reagan’s speech on the night before the 1980 presidential election. I know that tonight the fate of America’s 52 hostages is very much on the minds of all of us. Like you, there is nothing I want more than their safe return—that they be reunited with their families after this long year of imprisonment. When they have returned, all of us will be turning to the concerns that will determine the course of America in the next four years. A child born this year will begin his or her adult life in what will be the 21st century. What kind of country, what kind of legacy will we leave to these young men and women who will live out America’s third century as a nation? Which techniques does President Reagan use in this excerpt? Choose four correct answers.

Read the excerpt from President Ronald Reagan’s speech on the night before the 1980 presidential election. A popular novel of the '60s ended prophetically with its description of a "kindly, pleasant, greening land about to learn whether history still has a place for a nation so strangely composed of great ideals and uneasy compromise as she.” That is really the question before us tonight: for the first time in our memory many Americans are asking: does history still have a place for America, for her people, for her great ideals? There are some who answer "no”; that our energy is spent, our days of greatness at an end, that a great national malaise is upon us. They say we must cut our expectations, conserve and withdraw, that we must tell our children . . . not to dream as we once dreamed. Last year I lost a friend who was more than a symbol of the Hollywood dream industry; to millions he was a symbol of our country itself. And when he died, the headlines seemed to convey all the doubt about America, all the nostalgia for a seemingly lost past. "The Last American Hero,” said one headline; "Mr. America dies,” said another. Well, I knew John Wayne well, and no one would have been angrier at being called the "last American hero.” Just before his death, he said in his own blunt way, "Just give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick.” Duke Wayne did not believe that our country was ready for the dust bin of history, and if we’ll just think about it we too will know it isn’t. Which ideas from the excerpt would be most appropriate to include in a summary? Choose three correct answers.

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez. Passage A: Given this mandate of silence, I was a real thorn in my mother's side. She had named me, her second of four daughters, after herself—so we shared the same name. Of all her babies, she reports, l was the best behaved, until l learned to talk. Then, I would not shut up. I always had to answer her back when I disagreed with her. Childhood was rocky, but adolescence was a full-fledged war. Passage B: Unfortunately for my mother, I grew up to be a writer publishing under my maiden name. Which statement correctly analyzes how the passages work together to create a central idea?

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez. Images of the dictator hung in every house next to the crucifix and Ia Virgencita with the declaration beneath: In this house Trujillo is Chief. The pale face of a young military man wearing a plumed bicorne hat and a gold–braided uniform looked down beneficently at my mother as she read her romantic novelas and dreamed of meeting the great love of her life. Sometimes in her daydreams, her great love wore the handsome young dictator’s face. Never having seen him, my mother could not know the portrait was heavily retouched. What is the central idea of this paragraph?

Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust, but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property, and at the same time it encourages the white man to remain in ignorance and poverty. What is the author’s main claim?

Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. . . . I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. Read the excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible. What claim do the authors have in common?

Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. I believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot-box in the South will cease. It will become apparent that the white man who begins by cheating a Negro out of his ballot soon learns to cheat a white man out of his, and that the man who does this ends his career of dishonesty by the theft of property or by some equally serious crime. In my opinion, the time will come when the South will encourage all of its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays better, from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that political stagnation which always results when one-half of the population has no share and no interest in the Government. What is the strongest reasoning the author uses to support his claim?

Read the excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s speech delivered at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our education life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists. Read the excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. What evidence do the two texts have in common?

Read these sentences from Paco's evaluation of Dan DeLuca's argument in the article "Dylan's Nobel Prize Settles Debate: Rock Lyrics Are Poetry." (1) In addition to quoting comments about Dylan's contributions to literature, DeLuca examines Dylan's writing and its influences. (2) Despite a somewhat confusing presentation of evidence, in the end, DeLuca's argument is convincing. (3) In his article, DeLuca attempts to come to grips with the decades-old question "Are rock lyrics poetry?” (4) He claims that this question has been answered with a resounding yes by the Nobel committee, who awarded their literary prize to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan for his collective literary works, most of which are song lyrics. In which order should the sentences appear?

Read the introduction to Dan DeLuca's argument. (1) Bob Dylan is the songwriter who opened up the doors of possibility to all who followed. (2) He was the mysterious bard with a guitar who sent out a clarion call—first as the acoustic Voice of His Generation, then as the plugged-in rocker who remained a master of the unexpected for five decades—that the words pop singers sang were worthy of being taken seriously. (3) "Dylan was a revolutionary,” Bruce Springsteen said in his 1988 speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (4) "The way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind.” (5) Early masterpieces such as "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and "Visions Of Johanna” and "Like A Rolling Stone” fueled a debate: Are rock lyrics poetry? (6) The answer must be yes, because on Thursday, Dylan was awarded the highest honor for a writer: the Nobel Prize in literature. (7) The Swedish Academy, in making him the first American winner since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993, cited him for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Which sentence states DeLuca’s claim?

Read the introduction to Dan DeLuca's argument. Bob Dylan is the songwriter who opened up the doors of possibility to all who followed. He was the mysterious bard with a guitar who sent out a clarion call—first as the acoustic Voice of His Generation, then as the plugged-in rocker who remained a master of the unexpected for five decades—that the words pop singers sang were worthy of being taken seriously. "Dylan was a revolutionary,” Bruce Springsteen said in his 1988 speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "The way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind.” Early masterpieces such as "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and "Visions Of Johanna” and "Like A Rolling Stone” fueled a debate: Are rock lyrics poetry? The answer must be yes, because on Thursday, Dylan was awarded the highest honor for a writer: the Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy, in making him the first American winner since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993, cited him for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Which statement summarizes DeLuca’s claim?

Which ideas from the excerpt would be most appropriate to include in a summary? Choose two correct answers.

Read the excerpt from "Remembering to Never Forget: Dominican Republic’s ‘Parsley Massacre’” by Mark Memmott. Writer and Middlebury College professor Julia Alvarez, the daughter of Dominicans and someone who lived there as a child, said on Tell Me More today that the killings must be acknowledged and testified to. "We can’t change the present or the future unless we acknowledge what has happened,” she told guest host Celeste Headlee. "There's no place on this planet anymore where that should be happening. It's time that the people themselves say . . . ‘that’s enough.’” Which details support Alvarez’s ideas about the situation in her home country? Choose two correct answers.

Read the two excerpts. "Remembering to Never Forget: Dominican Republic's 'Parsley Massacre’” by Mark Memmott: Seventy-five years ago, thousands of Haitians were murdered in the Dominican Republic by a brutal dictator. It was one of the 20th Century's least-remembered acts of genocide. As many as 20,000 people are thought to have been killed on orders given by Rafael Trujillo. But the "parsley massacre" went mostly unnoticed outside Hispaniola. Even there, many Dominicans never knew about what happened in early October 1937. They were kept in the dark by Trujillo's henchmen. "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez: During my early teen years in this country, I knew very little about what was actually going on in the Dominican Republic. Whenever Ia situación on the island came up, my parents spoke in hushed voices. In December 1960, four months after our arrival, Time magazine reported the murder of the three Mirabal sisters, who along with their husbands had started the national underground Dominican Republic. My parents confiscated the magazine. To our many questions about what was going on, my mother always had the ready answer, " En boca cerrada no entran moscas ." No flies fly into a closed mouth. Later, I found out that this very saying had been scratched on the lintel of the entrance of the SIM's torture center at La Cuarenta. Which statement best compares how the two authors address this topic?

Read the excerpt from "Remembering to Never Forget: Dominican Republic’s ‘Parsley Massacre’” by Mark Memmott. Passage A: This week, people from around the world are expected to gather in the Dominican Republic for a "Border of Lights” commemoration that aims to "honor a tragedy long forgotten, and unknown to many people.” Passage B: Trujillo, as the Border of Lights website explains, fed and nurtured anti-Haitian sentiment and created an atmosphere that still excludes ethnic Haitians from becoming part of "the Dominican melting pot.” The method his soldiers used in 1937 to try to identify those who would be killed was cruelly unique. When confronting someone in the lands along the border with Haiti, they would hold up a sprig of parsley and ask what it was. If the person responded by trilling the "r” in perejil (Spanish for parsley), he would be free to go. Anyone who didn't trill the "r” was thought to be a Haitian Creole speaker—and was likely to be killed. How do these excerpts work together to develop a central idea?