Shape the sentence to change the effect
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me
Circle the best answer.
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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: the “Although” clause needs a main clause; joined to [1] with a comma, it states the counterclaim clearly.
- An error: join it as “… in 1921, because the census records show the population falling …” to make the link clear.
- An error: formal writing does not allow a sentence to open with “Although,” so that word must be cut.
- A choice: the clause hangs unfinished, so the reader feels how weak the old explanation is, a fair effect in an argument.
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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 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.
- It adds urgency, and “Simplicity is what we need” would keep that urgency while giving the cry a verb.
- It practices what it urges: after a sentence that counts on fingers and toes, three bare words cut the reckoning down to one idea.
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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 minute, which no longer appears.
- Revision 2: naming the dive first lets the reader settle into the stillness without worry; it gives up the clean entry.
- Revision 1: its long build holds the dive for the last words, and it keeps each of the draft's details.
- Revision 1: its long build holds the dive for the last words; it gives up the clean entry, the result the draft reported.
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From a trailhead sign at a mountain park. Purpose: hikers reading at the trailhead should grasp the two deadlines at a glance.
Draft: Storms build out of sight beyond the ridge on summer afternoons, and hikers above the tree line when one arrives have no shelter, so the park asks that hikers reach the summit by noon and start down by one o'clock, even if the sky looks clear.
Revision 1: Reach the summit by noon. Start down by one, even under a clear sky. Storms build out of sight beyond the ridge on summer afternoons, and above the tree line there is no shelter.
Revision 2: Because storms build out of sight beyond the ridge on summer afternoons, and because there is no shelter above the tree line, hikers should reach the summit by noon and start down by one, even under a clear sky.
Jun compares two revisions of a draft trail sign. Which better serves the writer's purpose, and what does it give up?
- Revision 1: the deadlines come first as short commands, and it keeps the draft's tone exactly while cutting words.
- Revision 1: the deadlines come first as commands a hiker takes in at once; it gives up the polite “the park asks.”
- Revision 2: its two “because” clauses build a varied, persuasive rhythm before the deadlines; it gives up the short commands.
- Revision 1: the deadlines come first as short commands; it gives up the reason, since the storms are no longer explained.
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From a speech at an invented town's council meeting. Purpose: close the speech by building to one shared idea, that these groups use the same room.
Draft: The library is where students without quiet homes do homework. It is also where people looking for work use the computers. Retired residents read the newspapers there every morning.
Revision 1: The library is where students without quiet homes do their homework, where people looking for work fill out applications, where retired residents read the morning papers.
Revision 2: For students without quiet homes, for people looking for work, for retired residents with the morning papers, the library is the one room they share.
Bo compares two revisions of the speech's closing. Which better serves the speaker's purpose, and what does it give up?
- Revision 2: the three “for” phrases build to a main clause that gathers them; it gives up what each group does there.
- Revision 2: the three “for” phrases build to a main clause that gathers them, and each detail of the draft survives.
- Revision 1: its repeated “where” gives each group its own beat, the rhythm a closing appeal needs; it gives up the computers.
- Revision 2: the three “for” phrases build to a main clause that gathers them; it gives up the retired residents.
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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 2: the verbless list piles up the splendor, and one plain sentence lands the irony, saying just what the draft said.
- 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 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.
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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?
- 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.
- The contrast of “quiet past” and “stormy present” argues by repetition, since the same words return in each half of the sentence.
- “Quiet past” against “stormy present” sets old against new, and the balanced “As … so” makes new thinking follow from the new case.
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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 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.
- 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.
- The periodic opening saves “a valuable acquisition” for last; then the short “But I had lost something, too” turns the gain into loss.
- One long sentence among short ones keeps the reader alert, a mix that any reflective passage benefits from.
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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?
- 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.
- Its repeated “for the … that must” ranks the users and puts the walker last, “if there is room left over”: the order argues.
- The short [3] weakens the essay: after the long, rolling list in [2], a plain flat statement drains away the argument's energy.
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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.