for APEng lang/comp scholars during fall break

AP Lang/Comp
Gatsby Chapter 1

Some content questions:

• Who is our narrator? Where is he from? Where did he go to school? What is he doing now? What has he done in the interim?
• What is West Egg? East Egg? What is the difference between them?
• Who is Tom Buchanan? How is he described? (Physically and otherwise?)
• Who is Daisy? How is she described? Why is her laugh described? What is its effect? What are her first words in the novel? What might this mean?
• Who is the other girl at the party? How is she characterized?
• Other human beings are present. Are they described as such? Why or Why not?


Close reading:

What are the first things our narrator reveals about himself? (pages 5-7) Think carefully about what he reveals and what it might mean. What’s all this about his father’s advice and his summary of how others understood him? Is he consistent? And then his statement about personality: “a series of unbroken gestures”? What does that mean? And his cryptic remarks about the title character: “unaffected scorn. . . something gorgeous about him . . . all right in the end” What might all this mean?

Questions to accompany "Targets of Aggression" by David Barash

AP English Language and Composition mcrawford
12 sets of questions to accompany “Targets of Aggression” by David Barash
(from the 5 Oct. 2007 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Ed.)


1. With what literary examples does Barash open his essay? How does he make use of these examples?

2. Which paragraph or paragraphs mark the transition from literary examples and introduction to the attempts by scientists to understand stress and misdirected aggression? How does Barash signal this transition?

3. Explain what has come of the experiments with rats. Are the conclusions drawn reasonable?

4. Why, at the close of the information about the experiments with the rats, does the writer put the words “good” and “natural” in quotes?

5. After brief mention of the town of Banja Luka in Bosnia as an example, Barash asks us to consider another more recent example. Explain. Why does he see this as misdirected aggression?

6. After the above example, he returns to the research of physiologists. What does he explain?

7. What is a scapegoat? What does the price of cotton example reveal?

8. Reconsider justice? Explain.

9. “Modern science may even owe its existence to scapegoating”? Explain.

10. What “difficult questions” arise from what Barash brings together in this article?

11. Why do you think he closes with a review of some religious ideas? Why the quote by Chesterton? What does it mean? What does it do for the essay?

12. What does he seem to be holding onto in the final sentence? What does he mean by “bio-logic?” What does this conclusion have to do with the concerns of question #4 above?

sentences about tomatoes.

Sentence Structures

simple sentence: one independent clause (must have at least a subject and verb and express a complete thought)
ex: I like tomatoes.
compound sentence: two or more independent clauses
ex: I like tomatoes and I eat them often.
complex sentence: one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses
ex: I like tomatoes that are organically grown.
compound-complex sentence: two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.
ex: I like tomatoes and I eat them often, but only if they are organically grown.

Sentence Types (in terms of purpose)

Declarative—makes a statement: I eat tomatoes.
Imperative—gives a command: Eat that tomato right now.
Interrogative—asks a question: Who can resist tomatoes?
Exclamatory—for emphasis—makes an exclamation: This tomato is delicious!

Sentence Styles

Periodic—begins w/subordinate elements, postpones main clause. (builds suspense?)
ex: Now truly depressed and sadly glancing at the trashcans while thinking, “here is a metaphor for my meaningless life,” he vowed to never again go a day without tomatoes.
Loose sentence—subordinate elements come at the end to call attention to them.
ex: He lost interest in school, sports, even tomatoes, caring only about the number of “friends” he had gathered on myspace.
Interrupted sentence—subordinate elements in the middle, often using dashes.
ex: Mikey—after months of eating only tomatoes while locked in his room—ran away with a girl he met online who shared his love of the delicious red fruit.
Parallel Structure—repeated grammatical structures.
ex: We must not ignore the schools without access to quality books, the children without access to quality healthcare, and the honest citizens without access to organic tomatoes.
Balanced sentences—grammatically parallel components balanced against each other.
ex: Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend; inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. (Groucho) ex2: His garden was well-tended and full of tomatoes but his brain was neglected and bereft of ideas.

Crucible Act 3 CRQs

English 11
The Crucible CRQs Act 3

A) When and where does Miller set Act 3? How does he set the scene? How does he describe the room? How might the set contribute to the tone of this part of the play?
B) How does Miller describe Judge Hathorne and Judge Danforth?
C) Explain Hathorne’s logic as he questions Martha Corey. When she denies knowing anything about witchcraft, how does Hathorne respond? Does this make sense? What does this reveal?
D) Who does Proctor bring to the court? What does she say? How does Danforth respond?
E) “Plow on Sunday!” (95) What does this mean? Who says it and why? What is being discussed?
F) What does Parris say about Cain and Abel? Why? What is his point?
G) Danforth reveals that Elizabeth Proctor has claimed to be pregnant. He then offers John Proctor a kind of deal. What does he offer? How does Proctor respond? Why does he respond in this way? What does Danforth mean then when he says, “Then your purpose is somewhat larger.” (97)
H) What happens when John Proctor and Francis Nurse submit a “testament” signed by 91 people? Who are these people and why did they sign this document? How does Danforth respond to this document? What does he decide to do with these people?
I) What kind of document does Giles Corey try to submit to the court? What happens to him?
J) Describe Reverend Hale’s changing sense of what’s happening. How does he feel about Rebecca Nurse having been condemned? (see page 104)
K) On page 105 Danforth explains the logic of his procedure for investigating witchcraft. How does he see it? What might be the problem with this logic?
L) How does Abigail respond to the content of Mary Warren’s deposition? When she does this how does John Proctor respond?
M) Near the end of this act, Elizabeth is brought in and questioned. In the end she lies. What does she lie about? Why? What will happen now as a result of this?
N) Why does Hale quit the court?

Poem of the Week by Thomas Lux

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently

is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head: it is spoken,
a voice is saying it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her voice, but the sound
of that voice is the sound of your voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word barn
that the writer wrote
but the barn you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally — some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows. . . .
And barn is only a noun — no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.

Thomas Lux
The New Yorker 14 July 1997

CRQs Act 2 The Crucible

Interesting poster from a performance in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

English 11
mcrawford
The Crucible CRQ Act 2

A) When and where does Miller set Act 2? How does he set the scene? How does he describe the room. What takes place—before any of the dialogue—that might help an attentive audience understand the relationship between the Proctors?
B) Copy down two or three sentences that reveal how Proctor’s earlier indiscretion with Abigail still hangs over the relationship between Proctor and his wife.
C) What differences are there between the court’s disposition toward Goody Osburn and its disposition toward Goody Good? Of what are they accused? Why will one hang but not the other?
D) “I saved her life today!” (page 63) Who says this? About whom? What is then revealed? What, after learning this, does Elizabeth Proctor urge her husband to do?
E) Rev. Hale comes to visit then “without the court’s authority.” Why has he come? What does he want to know about the Proctors? How does he go about investigating this?
F) What does Proctor say about “golden candlesticks”? What does he mean?
G) Which of the Ten Commandments does Proctor fail to remember? Is this significant? Why? Or why not?
H) How does Rev. Hale respond when Proctor reveals that Abigail told him that this all “had naught to do with witchcraft?”
I) When Giles Corey and Francis Nurse come in we learn that others have been accused and arrested. Who? How does Hale respond? How does Proctor respond? Elizabeth?
J) Explain why the doll (the poppet) plays such an important role. Who made it? To whom was it given? Why does Cheever get so worked up about it?
K) Why is Mary Warren scared to testify about the poppet? What does she tell Proctor to persuade him not to testify against Abigail? How does Proctor respond?
L) What does Proctor seem willing to do as the curtain falls on Act 2?

AP students. CRQs for "What Me? Showing Off?" by Judith Viorst

(the essay appears on page 108 of your Patterns of Exposition text.

A) Who wrote this essay? Where is she from? Where did she go to school?

B) Where did this essay first appear? For what kind of audience was it written?

C) Your editors describe this essay as having a "breezy, humorous" tone but with a more serious purpose. What is the serious purpose?

D) What major rhetorical strategy does the writer of this essay employ? (hint: in what section if your text does it appear?)

E) What is an NSO? A CSO?

F) In what paragraph does the writer explicitly state her thesis? What is her thesis?

G) In paragraph 17 the writer describes a "Phi Beta Kappa key gleaming in the cleavage." What kind of showing off is this? What message is being sent?

H) In the penultimate paragraph the writer quotes Lord Chesterfield. Why? What was Chesterfields advice to his sons?

I) In the final paragraph the writer does what might be described as a call to action. What does she suggest we do (or not do)?