Shape the sentence to change the effect
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Use this
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852–53), the opening. Notes: the Lord Chancellor heads the Court of Chancery, where the novel's lawsuit has dragged on for years; aits are small river islands.
London. … the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. … Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.
Bo reads the opening of Dickens's Bleak House. Its sentences have no main verbs. Is that a choice or a flaw, and why?
- A choice: the short verbless sentences hurry the reader through the setting so that the story's action can begin sooner.
- A choice: with no main verbs, nothing acts or changes; fog, mud and court simply persist, a city stuck in place like its lawsuit.
- A choice, though “Fog lay everywhere” would keep the same effect: adding one verb changes nothing a reader feels.
- A flaw that misfires: with no main verbs, the reader cannot tell whether the fog is spreading or lifting, so the scene stays blurred.
Use this
From a draft for a local-history journal about an invented town.
[1] Historians once explained the town's decline by the closing of its mill in 1921. [2] Although the census records show the population falling for two decades before the mill shut its doors.
Ren is editing this draft. Is sentence [2] a deliberate fragment or an error, and what should the editor do?
- An error: formal writing does not allow a sentence to open with “Although,” so that word must be cut.
- An error: join it as “… in 1921, because the census records show the population falling …” to make the link clear.
- An error: the “Although” clause needs a main clause; joined to [1] with a comma, it states the counterclaim clearly.
- A choice: the clause hangs unfinished, so the reader feels how weak the old explanation is, a fair effect in an argument.
Use this
From an invented wildlife agency's survey report.
[1] The 2024 survey recorded 214 nesting pairs, the highest count since monitoring began. [2] Suggesting that the restored marsh now supports the colony through the whole breeding season.
Milo is checking this report before it is published. Is [2] a deliberate fragment or an error, and what is the right repair or reason?
- An error: “Suggesting” has no subject or main verb; joined to [1] with a comma, the hedged inference stays with the count.
- A choice: setting the inference apart in its own sentence gives it weight, a fair move when a report reaches its main finding.
- An error: join it as “… since monitoring began, proving that the restored marsh now supports the colony …”
- An error: a formal report may not begin any sentence with an -ing word, so “Suggesting” must be removed or replaced.
Use this
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), from the chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.” Note: frittered means wasted bit by bit.
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
Noah reads this passage from Walden. Why does Thoreau's verbless “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” work where it is?
- It practices what it urges: after a sentence that counts on fingers and toes, three bare words cut the reckoning down to one idea.
- It adds urgency, and “Simplicity is what we need” would keep that urgency while giving the cry a verb.
- It softens the passage: after the charge that our lives are frittered away, the repeated word offers comfort and rest.
- It is a lapse in a careful argument: the exclamation interrupts the reasoning, and a full sentence with a verb would persuade more.
Use this
From a sports essay. Purpose: make the reader wait with the diver and feel the dive as sudden.
Draft: The diver stood at the end of the high board for nearly a minute. She did not move. The crowd went quiet, and the water below grew smooth. Then she dove, and she entered the water with barely a splash.
Revision 1: For nearly a minute the diver stood at the end of the high board, so still that the crowd went quiet, so long that the water below grew smooth, until, all at once, she dove.
Revision 2: The diver dove after standing at the end of the high board for nearly a minute, so still that the crowd went quiet and the water below grew smooth.
Tala compares two revisions of a sportswriter's draft. Which better serves the writer's purpose, and what does it give up?
- Revision 1: its long build holds the dive for the last words; it gives up the clean entry, the result the draft reported.
- Revision 1: its long build holds the dive for the last words; it gives up the minute, which no longer appears.
- Revision 1: its long build holds the dive for the last words, and it keeps each of the draft's details.
- Revision 2: naming the dive first lets the reader settle into the stillness without worry; it gives up the clean entry.
Use this
From an essay about an invented city's new city hall. Purpose: let the reader feel the irony between the building's splendor and its service to residents.
Draft: The new city hall cost forty million dollars and took six years to build, and it has a marble lobby, a glass dome and a fountain that changes color at night. The counter where residents apply for permits is open two hours a day.
Revision 1: The counter where residents apply for permits, open two hours a day, sits inside a new city hall that cost forty million dollars, took six years to build, and has a marble lobby, a glass dome and a fountain that changes color at night.
Revision 2: Forty million dollars. Six years. A marble lobby, a glass dome, a fountain that changes color at night. The counter where residents apply for permits is open two hours a day.
Zee compares two revisions of a paragraph about a new city hall. Which better serves the writer's purpose, and what does it give up?
- Revision 1: ending on the dome and the fountain leaves the reader with the splendor, the irony's point; it gives up the short closing sentence.
- Revision 2: the verbless list piles up the splendor, and one plain sentence lands the irony; it gives up naming what cost forty million.
- Revision 2: the verbless list piles up the splendor, and one plain sentence lands the irony; it gives up the two hours.
- Revision 2: the verbless list piles up the splendor, and one plain sentence lands the irony, saying just what the draft said.
Use this
Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, near the end. Notes: concert means joint action; disenthrall means set free.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not "Can any of us imagine better?" but "Can we all do better?" … The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Jun judges how the sentence shapes in this passage build Lincoln's argument. Which comment is most accurate?
- “Quiet past” against “stormy present” sets old against new, and the balanced “As … so” makes new thinking follow from the new case.
- The contrast of “quiet past” and “stormy present” argues by repetition, since the same words return in each half of the sentence.
- The passage moves among questions, contrasts and commands, a variety that keeps a long message to Congress from tiring its hearers.
- The short first sentence is a weakness: stating the conclusion first spends it before the contrasts can earn it.
Use this
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883), chapter 9. Twain recalls learning to pilot a steamboat.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!
Luz judges how the sentence shapes in this passage build Twain's voice. Which comment is most accurate?
- The third sentence is a weakness: it repeats the second almost word for word and slows the turn toward the river's lost grace and poetry.
- One long sentence among short ones keeps the reader alert, a mix that any reflective passage benefits from.
- The periodic opening saves “a valuable acquisition” for last; then the short “But I had lost something, too” turns the gain into loss.
- The opening is a loose sentence that drifts from detail to detail, which makes the young pilot's mastery of the river sound casual and easy.
Use this
From an essay on city streets.
[1] Nobody plans a city for walkers anymore. [2] We plan it for the car that must be parked, for the truck that must unload, for the bus that must turn, and, if there is room left over, for the person who must cross. [3] The sidewalk is what remains after the street has been decided. [4] And so the walker learns to wait: at the light, at the driveway, at the corner where the curb has never been cut.
Bo judges how the sentence shapes in this essay build its argument about walkers. Which comment is most accurate?
- The short [3] weakens the essay: after the long, rolling list in [2], a plain flat statement drains away the argument's energy.
- Its repeated “for the … that must” ranks the users and puts the walker last, “if there is room left over”: the order argues.
- Sentence [2] is periodic: it holds its main point, the walker who must cross, until the very end, so the reader waits for the subject.
- The list after the colon in [4] ranks the city's users, placing the walker last to show how little room is left.
Use this
From a science magazine's essay about an invented space probe.
[1] For eleven years the probe crossed the outer solar system in silence, its instruments asleep to save power, its course adjusted only by commands sent from Earth once a month. [2] Engineers on the ground had rehearsed the waking sequence hundreds of times, but they could not test the one part that mattered: whether a machine left cold for a decade would answer at all. [3] At 6:04 on a January morning, the signal arrived. [4] It was faint, it was four minutes late, and it was there.
Jun judges how the sentence shapes in this essay build its suspense. Which comment is most accurate?
- The series in [4] undercuts the moment: “faint” and “late” sound like complaints, so the success reads as a letdown.
- [1] is periodic: its main clause comes after the list of how the probe was kept, so the reader waits through the silence.
- The paragraph alternates long and short sentences, and that variety alone makes a technical account easier for any reader to follow.
- The trailing phrases of [1] stretch the silence, [2] names the doubt, and [4] saves the plain “it was there” for its last words.