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Worksheetsfrom Silent Spring
Total questions: 20
Worksheet time: 10mins
As described in the selection from Silent Spring, what is the town like before everything begins to change?
Unhappy, crowded
Troubled, secluded
Prosperous, beautiful
Ugly, deserted
In the selection from Silent Spring, why are doctors in the town puzzled?
More children are being born with birth defects.
People are reacting more violently to insect stings.
People are being attacked more often by wild animals.
More people are becoming sick from new kinds of illnesses.
What is most likely the cause of the great changes that happen to the town in the selection from Silent Spring?
Pesticides
Radiation
Bacteria
Floods
In the selection from Silent Spring, how do animal populations change after the town changes?
Animal populations mostly stay the same.
Birds are still plentiful, but most insects die.
Most birds disappear, but farm animals are fine.
Animal life in general disappears or does poorly.
In the selection from Silent Spring, how do plants change after the town changes?
Most plants become overgrown and weedy.
Some plants turn into a white powder.
Many plants wither and die.
Most plants burn in a fire.
A blight most likely cause farmer’s crops rot or die
true
false
The word ill tells how a person with maladies is most likely to feel.
true
false
- Which sentence best illustrates the meaning of deserted?
A caravan of traders moved slowly across the hot sand.
Late at night, not a soul was to be seen on Roosevelt Avenue.
We decided to wait and see the movie when Max was feeling better.
The beach was so crowded that we had trouble finding a place to sit.
In the selection from Silent Spring, who or what is responsible for the white powder that has fallen on the town and its surroundings?
To warn people about a dangerous practice
Humans living in or near the town
From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what do you conclude is the author’s main purpose in writing?
To warn people about a dangerous practice
Humans living in or near the town
In this sentence from Silent Spring, to which of the five senses does the imagery most strongly appeal?
Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the
mists of the fall mornings
Hearing and touch
Sight and hearing
Touch and taste
Smell and sight
Which set of words in this description from Silent Spring has the greatest negative connotations?
Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow of death.
Evil, sickened, died, death
Spell, community, shadow
Settled, mysterious, everywhere
Swept, flocks, chickens, cattle, sheep
Maladies
Illnesses
Deaths
A type of birds
A type of plants
deserted
Empty
Quiet
Sick
quick
What is the white powder?
Snow
Flower petals
Ash
DDT
PART A
From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what can you conclude about the town before the changes take place?
The town attracts visitors who enjoy outdoor activities.
The town is full of simple, poor, hard-working people.
The town is a settlement for recent immigrants.
The town is located in an industrial area.
PART B
Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the answer to Part A?
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to
live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a
checkerboard of prosperous farms....
Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half
hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its
bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring
and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came
to fish the streams....
So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised
their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Which phrase best describes the mood established in these sentences from
Silent Spring?
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.
mysterious and frightening
hectic and confusing
sad and regretful
bitter and angry
Part A
Which of these central ideas does Carson develop in the selection from
Silent Spring by using word choices with negative connotations?
Life in and near the town is being destroyed.
People often foolishly destroy what they love most.
Important changes can occur in a matter of moments.
Farmers are having trouble keeping insects off their crops.
Part B
Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the
answer to Part A?
Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs—the litters were small and the young survived only a few days.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them.
