Category: Writing

Please read the poem and then answer the 7 multiple-choice questions on it.
AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze 5 Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him – At a loss. And having scared the cellar under him 10 In clomping here, he scared it once again In clomping off; – and scared the outer night, Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar Of trees and crack of branches, common things, But nothing so like beating on a box. 15 A light he was to no one but himself Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, A quiet light, and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, So late-arising, to the broken moon 20 As better than the sun in any case For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, His icicles along the wall to keep; And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, 25 And eased his heaving breathing, but still slept. One aged man – one man – can’t keep a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It’s thus he does it of a winter night. Robert Frost (1874-1963) An accomplished American poet whose numerous honours include four Pulitzer Prizes
The details in lines 1 to 3 establish most strongly the impression that the out-of-doors is likened to a A. void B. haven C. fantasy D. mystery That it is thin frost, rather than companions, that gathers (lines 2 to 3) reinforces the impression of the emptiness of the rooms in that frost is A. fine and layered B. cold and inanimate C. impossible to see through D. separated into distinct patterns The old man does not reflect the gaze of the world outside because A. his lamp blinds him to the darkness B. he is too old and decrepit to see clearly C. the darkness is emotionally overwhelming D. he is unable to see through the frosted windows The word choice and detail in lines 18 to 19 suggest the A. old man’s fading strength B. old man’s realized dreams C. clouds above the moonlight D. brightness of the moonlight
The old man regards the moon as being “better than the sun” (line 20) in that the moon will A. serve as a friendly companion B. preserve things the way they are C. provide light in the winter darkness D. give as much warmth as the winter sun In this poem, the old man in the darkness of the winter landscape is symbolized mainly by a A. frosty window pane B. crack of branches C. dwindling light D. burning log 7 In the poem, winter and night symbolize A. natural conflict B. vague memories C. unavoidable grief D. approaching death

Stand by Me -comprehension Questions
Reference: Stand By Me movie
1)Briefly describe the opening scene of the film,including a summation of film techniques. What does the newspaper headline read ?
2)What are the first words spoken by the narrator and how does this affect the expectations you have of the film so far ?
3)Describe the setting of castle Rock in 1959.
4)Give a description of each of the characters in the tree house.Do you agree with narrator’s comments about them ?
5) What information does vern share with the boys? How did he discover this information ?
6) How much do you know about the body that went missing and is allegedly dead ?
7)Why do the boys think finding the body will benefit them ?
8)Describe Gordie’s home life. Why is it like this ?
9)Summaries all the flashbacks between Gordie and his brother Denny. What do you think of their relationship ?
10) What does Chris show to Gordie that he plans to bring with them on their walk?

Answer the following  questions using  textual
evidence from the  memoir chapter 17 I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
https://baileysela.weebly.com/uploads/5/0/3/9/50398803/i_know_why_the_caged_bird_sings.pdf
1.       Explain why the family was so worried when Bailey didn’t come home before dark.
2.       Describe Bailey’s demeanor upon returning home late.  What did the other family members think of his change of personality?
3.       After a few days, Bailey reveals to Maya why he is so distant.  What reason does he give?
4.       How do Bailey Jr.’s actions throughout the chapter indicate a change in him?  What is happening to him?
Chapter 18
1.       How does the author reveal her own bias in the following passage?  “People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all.  I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will…”
2.       Describe the Church Revival meeting.  What is the setting?  Who is in attendance?  What is the general mood?
3.       Explain the following quote: “Reality began its tedious crawl back into their reasoning.”  How does this illustrate the meaning of religion to the members of this community?

Refer to a specific scene in Die Hard and name two aspects of film editing that director John McTiernan and editor John F. Link utilize to make the film intelligible as part of the action genre. How do these techniques refer back to the Soviet montage theorists in the previous lectures? How do they function in the scene that you’ve chosen to discuss—how do they further the film’s narrative or themes?

The New Fundamentalism
Gregg Easterbrook
Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2000
If John Scopes were alive today, he might be arrested for speaking against evolution in a public school, rather than in favor of it.
Scopes stood trial in Dayton, Tenn., 75 years ago this summer for using “Hunter’s Civic Biology,” a textbook containing a paragraph on Charles Darwin, in violation of a state law prohibiting the teaching of natural selection. The Tennessee law was embarrassingly wrong-headed. Evolution unquestionably occurs and is essential to understanding biology.
But today the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, with everyone from the Supreme Court to establishment media holding that students should hear only Darwin’s side of the debate. This situation is just as preposterous as the situation in Tennessee in 1925 — and just as bad for freedom of thought. Once you weren’t supposed to question God. Now you’re not supposed to question the head of the biology department.
Dogmatic Science
Consider the reporting on the actions of the Kansas Board of Education. Last year, when the board voted to delete some requirements for the teaching of evolution from the state’s nonbinding guidelines, the reaction was as if Galileo had been hauled back before the Inquisition. Headlines proclaimed Kansas had “banned” the teaching of Darwin, when the board’s action was strictly advisory. Local school districts were free to ignore the guidelines, and almost all did.
Last week, when the board members who had voted for the new guidelines were defeated in the state primary, assuring that pro-evolution guidelines will be restored, news accounts treated this as a last-second victory over the forces of darkness. They didn’t add that because of a copyright snafu, the 1999 guidelines were never actually promulgated. Not only had darkness not fallen over Kansas, from the standpoint of the classroom nothing had happened at all.
The 1999 guidelines did not endorse or even mention creationism. In 1986, the Supreme Court correctly ruled that public schools must not teach creationism because it is
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eectively a religious doctrine. The version of creationism that supposes that Earth was formed a relatively short time ago, and that man has no evolutionary antecedent, is a Biblical contention without any scientic support.
What Kansas’s board did do was suggest schools teach only part of natural selection theory. It advised that children be taught that living things evolve in response to changes in their environments. The evidence on this point, as Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould has noted, is as strong as the evidence that Earth orbits the sun. But the board advised against teaching that life began through a totally natural, undirected process. The board was wrong to try to edit contemporary biology in this way. Even if a wholly spontaneous origin of life turns out to be incorrect, it is today’s mainstream science and children need to learn it.
More objectionable, perhaps, was the board’s advice against teaching Big Bang theory. Big Bang theory enjoys almost unanimous support among cosmologists and even has moderate theological backing, for instance from the Vatican Observatory. This theory may or may not stand the test of time — all previous theories of the origin of the cosmos are now thought wrong, so don’t hold your breath for the Big Bang — but kids cannot understand astronomy without knowing the ideas behind it.
Yet though the Kansas board was wrong on some points, those who denounced it skipped the valid substance behind its thinking. There is a lively scientic debate these days on the absence of explanations for the origin of life. Evolutionary theory is commonly misunderstood to explain the origin of life; actually, it applies only to how organisms that already exist respond to their environments. All theories on origins, most recently the “RNA world” hypothesis (that life began with a chemical relative of DNA), are extremely conjectural. Darwin himself said he had no clue how life began, and considered creation an impenetrable mystery.
Inability to explain how life began hardly disproves natural selection. The question is simply outside the theory’s perimeter. But because today’s dogma assumes science can already explain everything, most of those who denounced the Kansas board didn’t seem to know that the origin of life and how life evolves are two entirely separate issues. The Kansas board was right to suggest that the origin of life is a huge unknown, and to be skeptical of applying what Mr. Gould has called evolutionary “fundamentalism.”
One small bit of editing by the Kansas board has been overlooked. The board changed the denition of science from “the search for natural explanations” — the wording preferred by the National Academy of Sciences — to the search for logical explanations. When it comes to intellectual rigidity, there’s little dierence between the national
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academy declaring that only natural forces may be considered, and the church declaring that only divine explanations may be considered. The quest for logical explanations for the world is a much richer and more engaging goal.
These concerns intersect at the evolving new theory of “intelligent design.” Unlike creationism, intelligent-design theory acknowledges that the universe is immensely old and that all living things are descended from earlier forms. But the theory goes on to contend that organic biology is so phenomenally complex that it is illogical to assume that life created itself. There must have been some force providing guidance.
Intelligent design is a sophisticated theory now being argued out in the nation’s top universities. And though this idea assumes existence must have some higher component, it is not religious doctrine under the 1986 Supreme Court denition. Intelligent-design thinking does not propound any specic faith or even say that the higher power is divine. It simply holds that there must be an unseen intellect imbedded in the cosmos.
The intelligent design theory may or may not be correct, but it’s a rich, absorbing hypothesis — the sort of thing that is fascinating to debate, and might get students excited about biology class to boot. But most kids won’t know the idea unless they are taught it, and in the aftermath of the Kansas votes, pro-evolution dogma continues to suggest that any alternative to natural selection must be kept quiet.
But then, just as in 1925 opposition to natural selection was not really about the theory but about sustaining a status quo in which people were not supposed to question clergy, so today’s evolutionary fundamentalism is not so much about the theory but about sustaining a new status quo in which people are not supposed to question scientists. Yet this discourages students from engaging in one of the most fascinating — if not the most fascinating — of questions: Why are we here?
Teach the Controversy
The obvious solution is to teach the controversy. Present students with the arguments for and against natural and supernatural explanations of life, and then let them enter into this engaging, fertile debate. Yet many school systems are steering away from teaching intelligent design, believing it to be an impermissible idea under the Supreme Court ruling. Editorials and columnists prefer not to mention the new theory, hoping to tar all non-Darwinian ideas as mere creationism. This isn’t freedom of thought — it’s the reverse. Where is the new Scopes who will expose the new dogma as being just as bad as the old?
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Mr. Easterbrook is a senior editor of the New Republic and BeliefNet.com. His latest book is “Beside Still Waters” (Quill, 1999).
QUESTIONS:
1) Why is the new fundamentalism of which Easterbrook speaks in his article, “The New Fundamentalism,” in conflict with diversity of ideas that schools are to encourage?
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2) In the case of the new fundamentalism, according to Easterbrook, who need protection concerning their first amendment rights to freedom of conscience (the freedom to choose and express openly what you believe?)
3) What is his suggestion for the classrooms in terms of expressing these rights? Do you agree or disagree with his suggestion? Explain your reasoning, being fair minded to all parties.

?      Identify your greatest strength and your greatest weakness in regard to professional or academic written communication. Provide an example for each.
?      What actions can you take to improve upon your writing weaknesses? Why do you believe these actions will help?
?      explain the importance of academic integrity and explain what actions you can take as a student to demonstrate your academic integrity.

e Activity: Discussing the America 5 of 6 Sa
What is the American identity?
What is your cultural background?
How does your culture fit into the American identity?
How have historical events contributed to the development of an American identity?
How has the American identity evolved over time?
What is the “American Dream”?
Is the “American Dream” synonymous to the American identity?

Brainstorm and write your own vignette where someone’s digital footprint has a positive impact on their future opportunities. Your vignette can be fiction or nonfiction but must include a situation where someone’s posts or online activity help them take advantage of a future opportunity (college admission, job hiring, etc.). Your vignette must include specific details from the list. Be ready to share your vignette with the class!

Macbeth
Annotate: In scene iv, lines 28-30, mark the metaphor, or implied comparison, in Duncan’s speech to Macbeth.
Question: What role is the king giving himself with regard to Macbeth and Banquo?
Conclude: What can you conclude abouth the king’s plans for Macbeth and Banquo?

4. Identify the correct parenthetical citation for a quote from page one hundred and three from this source: Keaveney, S. (2004). When MTV goes CEO. In D. Brundage & M. Lahey (Eds.), Acting on words (pp. 99-103). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pearson. a) According to Keaveney, “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the future” (103). b) According to Keaveney, “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the future” (Keaveney, 2004, p. 103). c) According to Keaveney, “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the future” (Brundage & Lahey, 2004, p. 103). d) According to Keaveney (2004), “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the future” (p. 103) e) According to Keaveney, “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the future” (S. Keaveney, “When MTV Goes CEO,” p. 103).