Research Workshop: Writing and Presenting the Argumentative Essay, Part 1 — Cumulative exam

Question 1

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.What is the author’s purpose for including these sentences?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

to emphasize the significance of his critics’ letter

Question 2

Read the excerpt from part one of Trifles.HALE. “Why—where is he?” says I, not knowing what to say. She just pointed upstairs—like that (himself pointing to the room above).What does the word “pointing” mean in this stage direction?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

indicating

Question 3

Read the excerpt from the article "Indicted Her for Murder."The awful crime of which Mrs. Hossack stands accused is still fresh in the minds of every newspaper reader in Iowa.Which best describes the excerpt?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

It is an opinion because it cannot be proven using objective evidence.

Question 4

Read the excerpt from Fast Food Nation. Up and down Academy Boulevard, along South Nevada, Circle Drive, and Woodman Road, teenagers like Elisa run the fast food restaurants of Colorado Springs. Fast food kitchens often seem like a scene from Bugsy Malone, a film in which all the actors are children pretending to be adults. No other industry in the United States has a workforce so dominated by adolescents.How does Schlosser effectively build his argument in this excerpt?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

He uses analogical evidence to help the reader visualize his point about the workers.

Question 5

Read the sentence.The fake, counterfeit money, which isn't valid, was discovered in the crime investigation.What is the best way to revise this sentence to eliminate wordiness?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

The counterfeit money was discovered in the crime investigation.

Question 6

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.There is a tale, “The Ring of Gyges,” that Feldman sometimes tells his economist friends. It comes from Plato’s Republic. A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like Feldman’s economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible. With no one able to monitor his behavior, Gyges proceeded to do woeful things—seduce the queen, murder the king, and so on. Glaucon’s story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with Socrates and Adam Smith—for he knows the answer, at least 87 percent of the time, is yes.Feldman reaches the conclusion that most people are honest without receiving an incentive by

Revolt · Accepted Answer

studying his individual experiences and arriving at a broad generalization.

Question 7

Read the excerpt from Fast Food Nation. English is now the second language of at least one-sixth of the nation’s restaurant workers, and about one-third of that group speaks no English at all. The proportion of fast food workers who cannot speak English is even higher.Which type of evidence does the author use in this excerpt?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

statistical

Question 8

Read the lines from "The Weary Blues."Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.He played a few chords then he sang some more.The repetition of the word "thump" is an example of what literary device?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

onomatopoeia

Question 9

Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.I knew I could never let Mom hear the messages, because protecting her is one of my most important raisons d’être, so what I did was I took Dad’s emergency money from on top of his dresser, and I went to the Radio Shack on Amsterdam. It was on a TV there that I saw that the first building had fallen. I bought the exact same phone and ran home and recorded our greeting from the first phone onto it. I wrapped up the old phone in the scarf that Grandma was never able to finish because of my privacy, and I put that in a grocery bag, and I put that in a box, and I put that in another box, and I put that under a bunch of stuff in my closet, like my jewelry workbench and albums of foreign currencies.Which word best describes the tone of this excerpt?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

methodical

Question 10

What best describes an element shared by the article "Indicted Her for Murder" and the excerpt from Midnight Assassin?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

Both address the fact that Mrs. Hossack was in the house at the time of her husband’s murder.

Research Workshop: Writing and Presenting the Argumentative Essay, Part 1 — Cumulative exam Answers

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