The Art of Argument — Test Answers

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. 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 "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 "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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which examples are clauses? Choose three correct answers.

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.

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 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 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?