Shape the sentence to change the effect
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
The Last Keeper (essay about an invented lighthouse)
[1] For forty-one years the light at Gannet Point was kept by hand, first by a man who trimmed the wicks and wound the clockwork that turned the lens, and later by his daughter, who learned to read the weather from the color of the water before she could read a book. [2] In the spring of 1962 the lighthouse board installed an automatic lamp, a timer and a backup generator, and promised the town that the light would now run itself. [3] The keeper was asked to stay one more winter, to watch the new machines and to report every flicker, every delay and every failure to do what a person had always done. [4] She kept a careful log through the storms of that season, writing down each reading in the same small hand. [5] Page after page recorded the lamp lighting on time, the lens turning at its proper speed and the generator starting whenever the current dropped. [6] In April the board, satisfied that the equipment needed no one to watch it, thanked her for her service and closed the keeper's house.
Short sentence to place: “Nothing failed.”
Kira is revising this essay. The writer wants “Nothing failed.” to read as irony: the machines' success is what ends the keeper's work. Where should it go?
- After [3]: it answers the board's request at once, so the reader knows the winter's result before the log is described.
- After [5]: it sums up the log just before [6], so the machines' success arrives as the reason the house is closed.
- After [6]: as the closing line, it lets the reader feel the irony once the board has acted on the log.
- After [2]: it backs the board's promise right away, so the reader trusts the machines as the board does.
The Recipe Cards (memoir essay)
[1] My grandmother's recipe cards, which I inherited in a shoebox with a broken lid, are models of precision. [2] Each one specifies its measures exactly: two and one-quarter cups of flour, sifted twice; butter at exactly room temperature; an oven heated to 375 degrees for at least twenty minutes before the pan goes in. [3] She wrote them in the 1970s for a neighborhood cookbook, in a careful slanted hand, and she corrected each one in red ink whenever a neighbor reported that a cake had sunk or a loaf had refused to rise. [4] When I followed the cards myself, the bread came out dense, the pie crust tore, and the cookies spread into a single sheet across the pan. [5] I asked my aunt what I had done wrong, and she described an afternoon in that kitchen forty years earlier: flour on the counter, the radio playing, and the cards in a drawer that nobody opened. [6] The cards, I understood at last, had been written for strangers, and the bread had been made by someone who did not need them.
Short sentence to place: “She never measured.”
Luz is revising this memoir. The writer wants “She never measured.” to strike against the precise cards as a sudden reversal. Where should it go?
- After [6]: as the last words, it leaves the reader with the grandmother's habit once the meaning is clear.
- After [5]: the aunt's scene implies it, the short sentence states it flatly, and [6] then draws out what it means.
- After [2]: set right beside the exact measures, it makes the sharpest contrast, before the cards have been tried.
- After [4]: the failures pile up, and the short sentence explains them before the aunt is asked anything.
Letter to the City Paper (opinion letter about an invented city)
[1] Supporters of the plan to close the Elm Street branch library describe it as a matter of simple arithmetic. [2] The branch costs the city more per visit than any other, its building needs a new roof, and the main library downtown is only two miles away. [3] The arithmetic is accurate as far as it goes, and no one who has read the budget can pretend that the roof will somehow repair itself. [4] The plan assumes that two miles is a short distance, yet for many of the branch's regular visitors, who walk because they are too young or too old to drive, it is a bus ride with a transfer in each direction. [5] For those visitors the true cost of the closing is not recorded in the city's budget at all, because it is paid in hours rather than in dollars.
Short sentence to place: “Distance is not access.”
Noah is revising this letter. The writer wants “Distance is not access.” to turn the letter from concession to rebuttal. Where should it go?
- At the end of [3], after a comma and “but”: the concession and the turn then share one sentence, tied together.
- After [3]: the concession is granted in full, and the short claim pivots the letter just before [4] supplies the case.
- After [4]: the bus ride with a transfer comes first, so the claim lands with its evidence already behind it.
- Before [1]: stating the claim first, as essays often do, tells the reader at once what the letter will argue.
Use this
From a travel essay about an old library.
The reading room is larger than the photographs suggest. Middle sentence: Two globes, a brass telescope and a long table covered with maps that no one has unrolled in decades stand beneath the central dome. The visitor notices them last.
Ren is revising the middle sentence. The writer wants the place first and the objects last, as a visitor's eye finds them. Which revision works?
- Beneath the central dome stand two globes, a brass telescope and a long table covered with maps that no one has unrolled in decades.
- Beneath the central dome, two globes, a brass telescope and a long table covered with maps that no one has unrolled in decades stand.
- Beneath the central dome stands two globes, a brass telescope and a long table covered with maps that no one has unrolled in decades.
- Beneath the central dome, covered with maps that no one has unrolled in decades, stand two globes, a brass telescope and a long table.
Use this
From a history of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in 1858.
Sentence: If the engineers had kept the voltage low, the cable might have lasted for years; instead, the chief electrician raised it to force the signal through, and the insulation failed within weeks.
Tala is revising this sentence. The writer wants a formal conditional that drops “if” and keeps the engineers' missed choice in front. Which revision works?
- Had the voltage been kept low by the engineers, the cable might have lasted for years; instead, …
- Had the engineers kept the voltage low, the cable would have lasted for years; instead, …
- Had the engineers kept the voltage low, the cable might have lasted for years; instead, …
- If the engineers would have kept the voltage low, the cable might have lasted for years; instead, …
Use this
From a museum guide to the Rosetta Stone.
First sentence: Scholars could not read the hieroglyphs on the stone with confidence until 1822, twenty-three years after it was unearthed near the town of Rosetta. That year Jean-François Champollion showed that the signs recorded sounds as well as ideas.
Zee is revising the first sentence. The writer wants it to open with the long wait, so the delay is felt before the scholars appear. Which revision works?
- Not until 1822, twenty-three years after the stone was unearthed near the town of Rosetta, could scholars read its hieroglyphs with confidence.
- Not until 1822, twenty-three years after the stone was unearthed near the town of Rosetta, could scholars not read its hieroglyphs with confidence.
- Not until scholars read its hieroglyphs with confidence in 1822 was the stone, unearthed near the town of Rosetta twenty-three years earlier, understood.
- Not until 1822, twenty-three years after the stone was unearthed near the town of Rosetta, scholars could read its hieroglyphs with confidence.
Use this
From an essay on the history of astronomy.
Sentence: The telescope made distant things visible, and it also made people aware of how much remained invisible, since each improvement in lenses revealed fainter objects that earlier observers had not suspected.
Ari is revising this sentence. The writer wants balanced halves that set seen against unseen and keep the role of each better lens. Which revision works?
- The telescope showed how much could be seen, and each better lens revealed that a great deal more existed out of sight.
- Each better lens showed how much could be seen, and the telescope showed how much could not.
- The telescope showed how much could be seen, and each better lens showed that most of the sky lies beyond any lens.
- The telescope showed how much could be seen, and each better lens showed how much could not.
Use this
From a town history.
Sentence: The town preserved the old market hall because residents valued it, and in return the hall, by giving residents a place to meet, preserved the sense of community that made them value it.
Esme is revising this sentence. The writer wants a chiasmus, with the second half reversing the first half's terms, and wants to keep “in return.” Which revision works?
- The town kept the hall, and in return the hall kept the town together.
- The town kept the hall, and in return the hall kept the town from changing.
- The hall kept the town together, and in return the town kept the hall.
- The town kept the old hall because residents valued it, and in return the hall gave them a place to meet.
Use this
From a nature center's annual report.
Sentence: Last spring the volunteers removed tires from the riverbed, they were testing the water every week, and the planting of willows along the banks, which slowed erosion where the bank was steepest.
Kira is revising this sentence. The writer wants a parallel series of three actions that keeps every fact, including where erosion slowed. Which revision works?
- Last spring the volunteers removed tires from the riverbed, tested the water every week, and planted willows along the banks, ending erosion where the bank was steepest.
- Last spring the volunteers removed tires from the riverbed, tested the water every week, and planted willows along the banks, slowing erosion where the bank was steepest.
- Last spring the volunteers removed tires from the riverbed, tested the water every week, and planted willows where the bank was steepest, slowing erosion along the banks.
- Last spring the volunteers removed tires from the riverbed, tested the water every week, and the planting of willows along the banks slowed erosion where the bank was steepest.
Use this
From a letter to an invented town's paper.
Sentence: It is true that the new bridge will shorten the drive downtown by ten minutes, but the old ferry, which takes longer, gives the neighborhood something a bridge cannot: a place where neighbors meet every morning.
Pia is revising this sentence. The writer wants balanced halves, the bridge first and the ferry's point last, no stronger than the original. Which revision works?
- The bridge would save the neighborhood ten minutes; the ferry gives it a meeting place worth far more than minutes saved.
- The bridge would save the neighborhood ten minutes; the ferry gives it a morning meeting place, which no bridge can.
- The ferry gives the neighborhood a morning meeting place; the bridge would save it ten minutes, which no ferry can.
- Though the bridge would save ten minutes, the ferry, slower as it is, gives neighbors a morning meeting place that a bridge cannot.