English Practice - RI Boot Camp

English Practice - RI Boot Camp

Multiple Choice

Read the sentences from paragraph 1 of the excerpt from The Declaration of Independence.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

What is the meaning of usurpations as it is used in the sentence?

• making objections to laws

• creating unnecessary regulations

• taking someone’s power or property by force

• taking someone’s ideas and passing them as his own

Multiple Choice

Read the sentences from paragraph 1 from the excerpt from Gift from the Sea. I turn the shell in my hand, gazing into the wide open door from which he made his exit. Had it become an encumbrance? Why did he run away?

What does the word encumbrance mean as it is used in the sentence?

• a desire

• a failure

• a burden

• a disaster

Multiple Choice

Which quotation from the excerpt from Gift from the Sea supports the idea that the narrator wishes to live a simple life?

• “The shape of my life today starts with a family.” (paragraph 4)

• “I want to give and take from my children and husband, to share with friends and community, to carry out my obligations. . . .” (paragraph 4)

• “But I want first of all—in fact, as an end to these other desires—to be at peace with myself.” (paragraph 5)

• “It is true that a large part of life consists in learning a technique of tying the shoe­string, whether one is in grace or not.” (paragraph 6)

Multiple Choice

The reader can infer the author of the excerpt from Gift from the Sea claims her feelings about life are conflicted. Which quotation best supports the inference?

• “I too have run away, I realize, I have shed the shell of my life, for these few weeks of vacation.” (paragraph 1)

• “My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become!” (paragraph 3)

• “The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many other things; . . .” (paragraph 4)

• “. . . I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be ‘in grace’ and other periods when they feel ‘out of grace’. . . .”

Multiple Choice

Which quotation from the excerpt from Gift from the Sea supports the idea that the narrator is searching for meaning?

• “I turn the shell in my hand, gazing into the wide open door from which he made his exit.” (paragraph 1)

• “What is the shape of my life?” (paragraph 3)

• “And techniques can be cultivated.” (paragraph 6)

• “There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow.” (paragraph 6)

Multiple Choice

How does paragraph 3 from the excerpt from Gift from the Sea help the author develop the passage in its entirety?

My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become! Blurred with moss, knobby with barnacles, its shape is hardly recognizable any more. Surely, it had a shape once. It has a shape still in my mind. What is the shape of my life?

• by using a metaphor that foreshadows how she will detail her beliefs later in the passage

• by describing her environment to create a visual description of how she feels about her surroundings

• by contrasting her real world with the natural world so she can create a fantasy world later in the passage

• by providing a detailed description of her daily activities in order to explain how chaotic her life has become

Multiple Choice

Read the sentence from paragraph 1 of the excerpt from Walden. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

What does the word dissipating mean as it is used in the sentence?

• detesting

• diminishing

• oppressing

• pacifying

Multiple Choice

Read the sentence from paragraph 3 of the excerpt from Walden.

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.

How does the author use rhetoric to support his view on solitude in the sentence?

• He uses irony to emphasize his preference for solitude.

• He uses a metaphor to reinforce the solitude of his house.

• He uses hyperbole to embellish the loneliness of this solitude.

• He uses an allusion to emptiness to express his feelings of solitude.

Multiple Select

Read the sentences from paragraph 4 of the excerpt from Gift from the Sea.

The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many other things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires. I want to give and take from my children and husband, to share with friends and community, to carry out my obligations to man and to the world, as a woman, as an artist, as a citizen.

Which two quotations from the excerpt from Walden show Thoreau similarly reflecting on how people’s lives are shaped by societal expectations?

• “The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.” (paragraph 1)

• “We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.” (paragraph 2)

• “We meet at the post­office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, . . .” (paragraph 2)

• “The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.” (paragraph 2)

• “I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself.” (paragraph 3)

Multiple Choice

Read these sentences from paragraph 5 of the excerpt from Gift from the Sea.

But I want first of all—in fact, as an end to these other desires—to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.

Which quotation from the excerpt from Walden is the best example of Thoreau using self-­analysis, like the author in the sentences above, to express the same idea?

• “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” (paragraph 1)

• “Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.” (paragraph 1)

• “I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.” (paragraph 3)

• “The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun.” (paragraph 3)