Rhetorical Pre assessment
English 9 Honors
Persuasive Techniques
(1)
(2)
(3)
We who have from our earliest years had our minds filled with scenes of war of which
we have read in the books that we most revere and most admire, who have remarked it in
every revolving century, and in every country that has been discovered by navigators, even
in the gentle and benign regions of the southern oceans; we who have seen all the
intelligence, power and ingenuity of our nation employed in war, who have been
accustomed to peruse Gazettes, and have had our friends and relations killed or sent home
to us wretchedly maimed; we cannot without a steady effort of reflection be sensible of the
improbability that rational creatures should act so irrationally as to unite in deliberate plans,
which must certainly produce the direful effects which war is known to do. But I have no
doubt that if the project for a perpetual peace which the Abbé de St Pierre sketched, and
Rousseau improved, were to take place, the incredibility of war would after the lapse of
some ages be universal.
Were there any good produced by war which could in any degree compensate its direful
effects; were better men to spring up from the ruins of those who fall in battle, as more
beautiful material forms sometimes arise from the ashes of others; or were those who
escape from its destruction to have an increase of happiness; in short, were there any great
beneficial effect to follow it, the notion of its irrationality would be only the notion of narrow
comprehension. But we find that war is followed by no general good whatever. The power,
the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be enlarged. But the people in general, upon both
sides, after all the sufferings are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no
difference from their former state. The evils therefore of war, upon a general view of
humanity are as the French say, á pure perte, a mere loss without any advantage, unless
indeed furnishing subjects for history, poetry, and painting. And although it should be
allowed that mankind have gained enjoyment in these respects, I suppose it will not be
seriously said, that the misery is overbalanced. At any rate, there is already such a store of
subjects, that an addition to them would be dearly purchased by more wars.
I am none of those who would set up their notions against the opinion of the world; on
the contrary, I have such a respect for that authority, as to doubt my own judgment when it
opposes that of numbers probably as wise as I am. But when I maintain the irrationality of
war, I am not contradicting the opinion, but the practice of the world. For, as I have already
observed, its irrationality is generally admitted. Horace calls Hannibal, demens, a madman;
and Pope gives the same appellation to Alexander the Great and Charles XII:
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede.
(4)
(5)
How long war will continue to be practiced, we have no means of conjecturing.
Civilization, which it might have been expected would have abolished it, has only refined its
savage rudeness. The irrationality remains, though we have learnt insanire certa ratione
modoque, to have a method in our madness.
That amiable religion which "proclaims peace on earth" hath not as yet made war to
cease. The furious passions of men, modified as they are by moral instruction, still operate
with much force; and by a perpetual fallacy, even the conscientious in each contending
nation think they may join in war, because they each believe they are repelling an
aggressor. Were the mild and humane doctrine of those Christians, who are called
Quakers, which Mr. Jenyns has lately embellished with his elegant pen, to prevail, human
felicity would gain more than we can well conceive. But perhaps it is necessary that
mankind in this state of existence, the purpose of which is so mysterious, should ever suffer
the woes of war.
from "On War" by James Boswell
1. How does the author appeal to readers in paragraph 1?
A. as an audience with common interests
B. as an audience with cultural interests
C. as an audience with general interests
D. as an audience with diverse interests
E. as an audience with divided interests
Persuasive Techniques
2. In paragraph 3, the author appeals to the reader primarily through a (an)
A. skeptical approach.
B. ethical approach.
C. rational approach.
D. emotional approach.
E. inconsistent approach.
Drawing Inferences and Conclusions
(1)
(2)
My grandmother had a reverence for the sun, a holy regard that now is all but gone out
of mankind. There was a wariness in her, and an ancient awe. She was a Christian in her
later years, but she had come a long way about, and she never forgot her birthright. As a
child she had been to the Sun Dances; she had taken part in those annual rites, and by
them she had learned the restoration of her people in the presence of Tai-me. She was
about seven when the last Kiowa Sun Dance was held in 1887 on the Washita River above
Rainy Mountain Creek. The buffalo were gone. In order to consummate the ancient
sacrifice—to impale the head of a buffalo bull upon the medicine tree—a delegation of old
men journeyed into Texas, there to beg and barter for an animal from the Goodnight herd.
She was ten when the Kiowas came together for the last time as a living Sun Dance
culture. They could find no buffalo; they had to hang an old hide from the sacred tree.
Before the dance could begin, a company of soldiers rode out from Fort Sill under orders to
disperse the tribe. Forbidden without cause the essential act of their faith, having seen the
wild herds slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground, the Kiowas backed away forever
from the medicine tree. That was July 20, 1890, at the great bend of the Washita. My
grandmother was there. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision
of deicide.
Now that I can have her only in memory, I see my grandmother in several postures that
were peculiar to her: standing at the wood stove on a winter morning and turning meat in a
great iron skillet; sitting at the south window, bent above her beadwork, and afterwards,
(3)
(4)
when her vision failed, looking down for a long time into the fold of her hands; going out
upon a cane, very slowly as she did when the weight of age came upon her; praying. I
remember her most often at prayer. She made long, rambling prayers out of suffering and
hope, having seen many things. I was never sure that I had the right to hear, so exclusive
were they of all mere custom and company. The last time I saw her she prayed standing by
the side of her bed at night, naked to the waist, the light of a kerosene lamp moving upon
her dark skin. Her long, black hair, always drawn and braided in the day, lay upon her
shoulders and against her breasts like a shawl. I do not speak Kiowa, and I never
understood her prayers, but there was something inherently sad in the sound, some merest
hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. She began in a high and descending pitch,
exhausting her breath to silence; then again and again—and always the same intensity of
effort, of something that is, and is not, like urgency in the human voice. Transported so in
the dancing light among the shadows of her room, she seemed beyond the reach of time.
But that was illusion; I think I knew then that I should not see her again.
Houses are like sentinels in the plain, old keepers of the weather watch. There, in a very
little while, wood takes on the appearance of great age. All colors wear soon away in the
wind and rain, and then the wood is burned gray and the grain appears and the nails turn
red with rust. The windowpanes are black and opaque; you imagine there is nothing within,
and indeed there are many ghosts, bones given up to the land. They stand here and there
against the sky, and you approach them for a longer time than you expect. They belong in
the distance; it is their domain.
Once there was a lot of sound in my grandmother's house, a lot of coming and going,
feasting and talk. The summers there were full of excitement and reunion. The Kiowas are
a summer people; they abide the cold and keep to themselves, but when the season turns
and the land becomes warm and vital they cannot hold still; an old love of going returns
upon them.
adapted from The Way To Rainy Mountain, by N. Scott Momaday. Used with permission.
Copyright © 1969 University of New Mexico Press.
3. Which of the following can be inferred based on the author's description of his grandmother (paragraph
2)?
A. Memories are influential in affecting one's life.
B. Life ends in needless suffering and despair.
C. One must be spiritual to live a complete life.
D. The past has little bearing on present events.
E. Old age brings wisdom and understanding.
Drawing Inferences and Conclusions
4. From the context, what can the reader infer about the author's statement, "I do not speak Kiowa"
(paragraph 2)?
A. that the traditions of the Kiowa have been replaced
B. that the Kiowa culture has been weakened over time
C. that the author has little interest in the Kiowa culture
D. that the author was not raised around Kiowa people
E. that the Kiowa language is no longer spoken by its people
Organization and Purpose
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
I would have my fellow-critics consider what they are really in the world for. The critic
must perceive, if he will question himself more carefully, that his office is mainly to ascertain
facts and traits of literature, not to invent or denounce them; to discover principles, not to
establish them; to report, not to create.
It is so much easier to say that you like this or dislike that, than to tell why one thing is,
or where another thing comes from, that many flourishing critics will have to go out of
business altogether if the scientific method comes in, for then the critic will have to know
something besides his own mind. He will have to know something of the laws of that mind,
and of its generic history.
The history of all literature shows that even with the youngest and weakest author
criticism is quite powerless against his will to do his own work in his own way; and if this is
the case in the green wood, how much more in the dry! It has been thought by the
sentimentalist that criticism, if it cannot cure, can at least kill, and Keats was long alleged in
proof of its efficacy in this sort. But criticism neither cured nor killed Keats, as we all now
very well know. It wounded, it cruelly hurt him, no doubt; and it is always in the power of the
critic to give pain to the author—the meanest critic to the greatest author—for no one can
help feeling a rudeness. But every literary movement has been violently opposed at the
start, and yet never stayed in the least, or arrested, by criticism; every author has been
condemned for his virtues, but in no wise changed by it. In the beginning he reads the
critics; but presently perceiving that he alone makes or mars himself, and that they have no
instruction for him, he mostly leaves off reading them, though he is always glad of their
kindness or grieved by their harshness when he chances upon it. This, I believe, is the
general experience, modified, of course, by exceptions.
Then, are we critics of no use in the world? I should not like to think that, though I am not
quite ready to define our use. More than one sober thinker is inclining at present to suspect
that aesthetically or specifically we are of no use, and that we are only useful historically;
that we may register laws, but not enact them. I am not quite prepared to admit that
aesthetic criticism is useless, though in view of its futility in any given instance it is hard to
deny that it is so. It certainly seems as useless against a book that strikes the popular
fancy, and prospers on in spite of condemnation by the best critics, as it is against a book
which does not generally please, and which no critical favor can make acceptable. This is
so common a phenomenon that I wonder it has never hitherto suggested to criticism that its
point of view was altogether mistaken, and that it was really necessary to judge books not
as dead things, but as living things—things which have an influence and a power
irrespective of beauty and wisdom, and merely as expressions of actuality in thought and
feeling. Perhaps criticism has a cumulative and final effect; perhaps it does some good we
do not know of. It apparently does not affect the author directly, but it may reach him
through the reader. It may in some cases enlarge or diminish his audience for a while, until
he has thoroughly measured and tested his own powers. If criticism is to affect literature at
all, it must be through the writers who have newly left the starting-point, and are reasonably
uncertain of the race, not with those who have won it again and again in their own way.
from Criticism and Fiction by William Dean Howells
5. What is the primary function of the fourth paragraph?
A. to suggest a solution to a problem
B. to predict future trends in literature
C. to provide anecdotal evidence
D. to compare two forms of criticism
E. to defend a controversial theory
Organization and Purpose
6. The first two paragraphs of this passage serve to
A. compare the author to other critics.
B. evaluate the current practices of critics.
C. describe the scientific methods employed by critics.
D. reveal the author's bias against "many flourishing critics."
E. condemn the practice of literary criticism.
Argumentation
(1)
(2)
(3)
We who have from our earliest years had our minds filled with scenes of war of which
we have read in the books that we most revere and most admire, who have remarked it in
every revolving century, and in every country that has been discovered by navigators, even
in the gentle and benign regions of the southern oceans; we who have seen all the
intelligence, power and ingenuity of our nation employed in war, who have been
accustomed to peruse Gazettes, and have had our friends and relations killed or sent home
to us wretchedly maimed; we cannot without a steady effort of reflection be sensible of the
improbability that rational creatures should act so irrationally as to unite in deliberate plans,
which must certainly produce the direful effects which war is known to do. But I have no
doubt that if the project for a perpetual peace which the Abbé de St Pierre sketched, and
Rousseau improved, were to take place, the incredibility of war would after the lapse of
some ages be universal.
Were there any good produced by war which could in any degree compensate its direful
effects; were better men to spring up from the ruins of those who fall in battle, as more
beautiful material forms sometimes arise from the ashes of others; or were those who
escape from its destruction to have an increase of happiness; in short, were there any great
beneficial effect to follow it, the notion of its irrationality would be only the notion of narrow
comprehension. But we find that war is followed by no general good whatever. The power,
the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be enlarged. But the people in general, upon both
sides, after all the sufferings are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no
difference from their former state. The evils therefore of war, upon a general view of
humanity are as the French say, á pure perte, a mere loss without any advantage, unless
indeed furnishing subjects for history, poetry, and painting. And although it should be
allowed that mankind have gained enjoyment in these respects, I suppose it will not be
seriously said, that the misery is overbalanced. At any rate, there is already such a store of
subjects, that an addition to them would be dearly purchased by more wars.
I am none of those who would set up their notions against the opinion of the world; on
the contrary, I have such a respect for that authority, as to doubt my own judgment when it
opposes that of numbers probably as wise as I am. But when I maintain the irrationality of
war, I am not contradicting the opinion, but the practice of the world. For, as I have already
observed, its irrationality is generally admitted. Horace calls Hannibal, demens, a madman;
and Pope gives the same appellation to Alexander the Great and Charles XII:
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede.
(4)
(5)
How long war will continue to be practiced, we have no means of conjecturing.
Civilization, which it might have been expected would have abolished it, has only refined its
savage rudeness. The irrationality remains, though we have learnt insanire certa ratione
modoque, to have a method in our madness.
That amiable religion which "proclaims peace on earth" hath not as yet made war to
cease. The furious passions of men, modified as they are by moral instruction, still operate
with much force; and by a perpetual fallacy, even the conscientious in each contending
nation think they may join in war, because they each believe they are repelling an
aggressor. Were the mild and humane doctrine of those Christians, who are called
Quakers, which Mr. Jenyns has lately embellished with his elegant pen, to prevail, human
felicity would gain more than we can well conceive. But perhaps it is necessary that
mankind in this state of existence, the purpose of which is so mysterious, should ever suffer
the woes of war.
from "On War" by James Boswell
7. The author argues against war primarily on the basis of its
A. senselessness.
B. destructiveness.
C. costliness.
D. wretchedness.
E. deceptiveness.
Argumentation
8. In paragraph 2, the author argues against war on the fundamental principle that
A. the suffering endured is excessive.
B. the common masses gain nothing.
C. the evils outweigh the advantages.
D. the subject is overused in literature.
E. the outcome benefits a select few.
Syntactic Structure
(1)
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work in the
agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out
of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is
only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it
commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the
same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be
(2)
(3)
(4)
listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and
travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am
standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that
we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question:
When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has
forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good
writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be
afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for
anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which
any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion
and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of
defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all,
without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He
writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the
end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is
immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged
and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening,
that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still
talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He
is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but
because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The
poet’s, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure
by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and
compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice
need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him
endure and prevail.
Nobel Prize Speech by William Faulkner
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/lib_nobel.html
9. In the first sentence of paragraph 1, the word "work" in the phrase "but to my work" is parallel to
A. "me."
B. "award."
C. "life's work."
D. "man."
E. "spirit."
Syntactic Structure
10. The effect of using multiple conjunctions at the end of sentence 2 in paragraph 3 ("love and honor . . .
compassion and sacrifice") is to
A. arrange the elements as a series of afterthoughts.
B. slow the rhythm in order to emphasize each element.
C. build toward a culminating consequence.
D. group the elements into subcategories.
E. give the impression that the list is not complete.
Main Idea and Supporting Details
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
I would have my fellow-critics consider what they are really in the world for. The critic
must perceive, if he will question himself more carefully, that his office is mainly to ascertain
facts and traits of literature, not to invent or denounce them; to discover principles, not to
establish them; to report, not to create.
It is so much easier to say that you like this or dislike that, than to tell why one thing is,
or where another thing comes from, that many flourishing critics will have to go out of
business altogether if the scientific method comes in, for then the critic will have to know
something besides his own mind. He will have to know something of the laws of that mind,
and of its generic history.
The history of all literature shows that even with the youngest and weakest author
criticism is quite powerless against his will to do his own work in his own way; and if this is
the case in the green wood, how much more in the dry! It has been thought by the
sentimentalist that criticism, if it cannot cure, can at least kill, and Keats was long alleged in
proof of its efficacy in this sort. But criticism neither cured nor killed Keats, as we all now
very well know. It wounded, it cruelly hurt him, no doubt; and it is always in the power of the
critic to give pain to the author—the meanest critic to the greatest author—for no one can
help feeling a rudeness. But every literary movement has been violently opposed at the
start, and yet never stayed in the least, or arrested, by criticism; every author has been
condemned for his virtues, but in no wise changed by it. In the beginning he reads the
critics; but presently perceiving that he alone makes or mars himself, and that they have no
instruction for him, he mostly leaves off reading them, though he is always glad of their
kindness or grieved by their harshness when he chances upon it. This, I believe, is the
general experience, modified, of course, by exceptions.
Then, are we critics of no use in the world? I should not like to think that, though I am not
quite ready to define our use. More than one sober thinker is inclining at present to suspect
that aesthetically or specifically we are of no use, and that we are only useful historically;
that we may register laws, but not enact them. I am not quite prepared to admit that
aesthetic criticism is useless, though in view of its futility in any given instance it is hard to
deny that it is so. It certainly seems as useless against a book that strikes the popular
fancy, and prospers on in spite of condemnation by the best critics, as it is against a book
which does not generally please, and which no critical favor can make acceptable. This is
so common a phenomenon that I wonder it has never hitherto suggested to criticism that its
point of view was altogether mistaken, and that it was really necessary to judge books not
as dead things, but as living things—things which have an influence and a power
irrespective of beauty and wisdom, and merely as expressions of actuality in thought and
feeling. Perhaps criticism has a cumulative and final effect; perhaps it does some good we
do not know of. It apparently does not affect the author directly, but it may reach him
through the reader. It may in some cases enlarge or diminish his audience for a while, until
he has thoroughly measured and tested his own powers. If criticism is to affect literature at
all, it must be through the writers who have newly left the starting-point, and are reasonably
uncertain of the race, not with those who have won it again and again in their own way.
from Criticism and Fiction by William Dean Howells
11. The author introduces the example of Keats to support the idea that
A. many people believe critics are more influential than they actually are.
B. most literary movements are opposed by individual authors, not by critics.
C. kind words wield more influence than the sharpest criticism.
D. critics must walk a fine line between sentimentality and cruelty.
E. society unfairly denigrates critics even when their criticism is just.
Diction and Style
(1)
(2)
Rigid definitions in literature are, however, dangerous. At bottom, it is what we feel, not
what we think, that makes us put certain poems together and apart from others; and
feelings cannot be defined, but only related. If we define a poem, we say what we think
about it; and that may not sufficiently imply the essential thing the poem does for us. Hence
the definition is liable either to be too strict, or to admit work which does not properly satisfy
the criterion of feeling. It seems probable that, in the last resort, classification in literature
rests on that least tangible, least definable matter, style; for style is the sign of the poem's
spirit, and it is the spirit that we feel. If we can get some notion of how those poems, which
we call epic, agree with one another in style, it is likely we shall be as close as may be to a
definition of epic. I use the word "style," of course, in its largest sense—manner of
conception as well as manner of composition.
An easy way to define epic, though not a very profitable way, would be to say simply,
that an epic is a poem which produces feelings similar to those produced by Paradise Lost
or the Iliad, Beowulf or the Song of Roland. Indeed, you might include all the epics of
Europe in this definition without losing your breath; for the epic poet is the rarest kind of
artist. And while it is not a simple matter to say off-hand what it is that is common to all
these poems, there seems to be general acknowledgment that they are clearly separable
from other kinds of poetry; and this although the word epic has been rather badly abused.
For instance, The Faery Queene and La Divina Commedia have been called epic poems;
but I do not think that anyone could fail to admit, on a little pressure, that the experience of
reading The Faery Queene or La Divina Commedia is not in the least like the experience of
reading Paradise Lost or the Iliad. But as a poem may have lyrical qualities without being a
lyric, so a poem may have epical qualities without being an epic. In all the poems which the
world has agreed to call epics, there is a story told, and well told. But Dante's poem
attempts no story at all, and Spenser's, though it attempts several, does not tell them well—
it scarcely attempts to make the reader believe in them, being much more concerned with
the decoration and the implication of its fables than with the fables themselves. What epic
quality, detached from epic proper, do these poems possess, then, apart from the mere fact
that they take up a great many pages? It is simply a question of their style—the style of
their conception and the style of their writing; the whole style of their imagination, in fact.
They take us into a region in which nothing happens that is not deeply significant; a
dominant, noticeably symbolic, purpose presides over each poem, moulds it greatly and
informs it throughout.
from "The Epic: An Essay" by Lascelles Abercrombie
12. In the context of the second paragraph, "epic proper" refers to
A. a broad category that includes all long poems.
B. poems that serve to both educate and entertain.
C. a specific group of poems written in Europe.
D. poems that have lyrical qualities but no stories.
E. a category that includes all poems ever written.
Sentence Function
(1)
(2)
If there is any virtue in advertisements—and a journalist should be the last person to say
that there is not—the American nation is rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of
which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American
newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of
"physical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform
their duties with the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a
book the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect health could be
attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements
multiply and increase in size. They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in
a great deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried about the nonefficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve efficiency. In our more modest British
fashion, we have the same phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are
growing also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying on his
back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency.
I remember that once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my
delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I
contorted myself according to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the
magna charta of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars would
1
not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense profits, and I came to
the conclusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.
A strange thing—was it not?—that I never had the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour
a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental efficiency. The average body is a pretty
complicated affair, sadly out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind
is vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible
to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical
efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: "This will never
do." And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them off
(through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not, perhaps, occur to us that
the mind has its muscles, and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet
paramount, mental organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are
atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for
a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted that he can
scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or
he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a
prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind out for a
stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do?
Will he stay out all day, and return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It
is ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won't even
persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once. Will he remark with genuine
concern that his mind is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get it
into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly accept the status quo,
without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
from Mental Efficiency by Arnold Bennett
1
one who sells hosiery and legwear
13. The principal rhetorical function of the last sentence of the passage ("Do I make my meaning clear?") is
to
A. suggest that the author doubts his own mental efficiency.
B. reveal the author's contempt for the pursuit of mental efficiency.
C. support the acerbic tone used in the first paragraph.
D. contrast with the assertive tone used earlier in the passage.
E. emphasize the author's mocking attitude toward the reader.
Organizational Structure
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
The world war represents not the triumph, but the birth of democracy. The true ideal of
democracy—the rule of a people by the demos, or group soul—is a thing unrealized. How
then is it possible to consider or discuss an architecture of democracy—the shadow of a
shade? It is not possible to do so with any degree of finality, but by an intention of
consciousness upon this juxtaposition of ideas—architecture and democracy—signs of the
times may yield new meanings, relations may emerge between things apparently unrelated,
and the future, always existent in every present moment, may be evoked by that strange
magic which resides in the human mind.
Architecture, at its worst as at its best, reflects always a true image of the thing that
produced it; a building is revealing even though it is false, just as the face of a liar tells the
thing his words endeavor to conceal. This being so, let us make such architecture as is ours
declare to us our true estate.
The architecture of the United States, from the period of the Civil War, up to the
beginning of the present crisis, everywhere reflects a struggle to be free of a vicious and
depraved form of feudalism, grown strong under the very ægis of democracy. The qualities
that made feudalism endeared and enduring; qualities written in beauty on the cathedral
cities of mediaeval Europe—faith, worship, loyalty, magnanimity—were either vanished or
banished from this pseudo-democratic, aridly scientific feudalism, leaving an inheritance of
strife and tyranny—a strife grown mean, a tyranny grown prudent, but full of sinister power
the weight of which we have by no means ceased to feel.
Power, strangely mingled with timidity; ingenuity, frequently misdirected; ugliness, the
result of a false ideal of beauty—these in general characterize the architecture of our
immediate past; an architecture "without ancestry or hope of posterity," an architecture
devoid of coherence or conviction; willing to lie, willing to steal. What impression such a city
as Chicago or Pittsburgh might have made upon some denizen of those cathedral-crowned
feudal cities of the past we do not know. He would certainly have been amazed at its giant
energy, and probably revolted at its grimy dreariness. We are wont to pity the mediaeval
man for the dirt he lived in, even while smoke greys our sky and dirt permeates the very air
we breathe: we think of castles as grim and cathedrals as dim, but they were beautiful and
gay with color compared with the grim, dim canyons of our city streets.
from Architecture and Democracy by Claude Fayette Bragdon
14. Which of the following statements best describes the organization of the third paragraph?
A. The qualities of two societies are summarized and contrasted.
B. Several societies are compared to show similarities.
C. Key historical events are presented in chronological order.
D. A societal problem is discussed and solutions are suggested.
E. Several potential causes of feudalism are examined and dismissed.
Sentence Structure
(1)
(2)
If there is any virtue in advertisements—and a journalist should be the last person to say
that there is not—the American nation is rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of
which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American
newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of
"physical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform
their duties with the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a
book the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect health could be
attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements
multiply and increase in size. They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in
a great deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried about the nonefficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve efficiency. In our more modest British
fashion, we have the same phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are
growing also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying on his
back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency.
I remember that once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my
delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I
contorted myself according to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the
magna charta of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars would
1
not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense profits, and I came to
the conclusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.
A strange thing—was it not?—that I never had the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour
a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental efficiency. The average body is a pretty
complicated affair, sadly out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind
is vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible
to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical
efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: "This will never
do." And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them off
(through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not, perhaps, occur to us that
the mind has its muscles, and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet
paramount, mental organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are
atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for
a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted that he can
scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or
he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a
prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind out for a
stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do?
Will he stay out all day, and return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It
is ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won't even
persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once. Will he remark with genuine
concern that his mind is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get it
into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly accept the status quo,
without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
from Mental Efficiency by Arnold Bennett
1
one who sells hosiery and legwear
15. The author of this passage employs all of the following EXCEPT
A. exclamatory sentences.
B. rhetorical questions.
C. declarative sentences.
D. imperative statements.
E. interrogative sentences.
Answers
1. A
2. B
3. A
4. B
5. A
6. B
7. A
8. B
9. A
10. B
11. A
12. A
13. A
14. A
15. A
Explanations
1. The author appeals to the audience in paragraph 1 as a common group with common interests. The
author's repeated use of "we" and "our" assumes that the reader shares the author's concern and
understanding of war.
2. An author uses an ethical appeal to give the reader the sense of being a competent, fair, and trustworthy
person. In paragraph 3, the author does this by presenting himself as humble and doubtful of his own
judgment when it opposes others "as wise" as he.
3. The author's description of his grandmother in paragraph 2 takes the form of numerous "peculiar"
postures. He remembers her "standing at the wood stove," "going out upon a cane," and "praying," which
he says had the greatest effect on him. His impressions are presented as one-sided in the sense that we as
readers are not presented her point of view. Instead, the author presents us with a series of memories that
affected him in a meaningful way. The logical inference, therefore, is that memories are influential in
affecting one's life.
4. Through the course of the passage, it becomes evident that the speaker is a Kiowa descendent. His
grandmother was a Kiowa who participated in the last Sun Dance in 1887. However, the speaker states that
he does not speak the language of his ancestors. Drawing on the knowledge that Native American peoples
were discouraged, even forbidden, to practice their culture, one can infer that many Native American
children no longer know their ancestral language. The proper inference here regarding the passage is that
the Kiowa culture had been weakened over time.
5. In the fourth paragraph of this passage, the author evaluates a problem faced by critics—the fact that
their work seems "useless against a book that strikes the popular fancy." At the end of the paragraph, the
author proposes a solution to this problem by suggesting that critics should attempt to impact writers by
influencing readers. Additionally, the author reiterates his suggestion that critics should focus their
attention on new writers rather than attempting to change establish writers.
6. In the opening statement of this passage, the author states, "I would have my fellow-critics consider what
they are really in the world for." The author then describes what he believes should be the "office" of the
critic. In the second paragraph, the author evaluates the practices of "many flourishing critics" and states his
belief that they should base their judgments on feelings rather than facts.
7. The author essentially argues that war is senseless. In paragraph 1, the author makes the assertion that
war is an act of "irrationality" committed by "rational creatures." In paragraph 2, the author again refers to
its "irrationality" and states that this judgment would be proven wrong if any known good or "beneficial
effect" came from war.
8. In paragraph 2, the author makes the case that war does nothing to benefit or improve the quality of life
for the common person. For those with no power, it is "a mere loss without any advantage," and life returns
to ordinary after the suffering endured.
9. The first use of the word "work" is parallel to "me" in the preceding clause. The sentence establishes a
contrast between "to me" and "to my work" through the coordinating conjunction "but."
10. Polysyndeton is the use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause. The effect of the
polysyndetic structure in this sentence is to slow the rhythm in order to emphasize each element. The
elements themselves are examples of the "universal truths" that the author refers to earlier in the sentence.
11. In the third paragraph of this passage, the author states that many sentimental people hold the idea that
criticism has the power to kill authors. John Keats, an English poet who died of tuberculosis, is presented as
an example of an author popularly believed to have been killed by harsh criticism. The author, however,
believes that "criticism neither cured nor killed Keats." He introduces the example of Keats to show that
many people believe that critics have more influence than they actually do.
12. In the second paragraph, the author makes a distinction between poems with "epical qualities" and
poems that fall into the broad category of "epic proper." He then goes on to describe an epic proper as a
poem with a "great number of pages."
13. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, the author admits to spending almost no time in gaining
mental efficiency. By asking, "Do I make my meaning clear?" at the end of the paragraph, the author
appears to question whether his mental efficiency is adequate to express his meaning to the reader.
14. The third paragraph of this passage contrasts the qualities of feudal societies ("faith, worship, loyalty,
magnanimity") with the qualities of post-Civil War American society ("a vicious and depraved form of
feudalism").
15. The author of this passage does not employ exclamatory sentences, which are sentences that express
strong emotion and end with an exclamation point. The sentence beginning with "Surprise a man in his
bedroom of a morning . . ." is an example of an imperative sentence. "Will he stay out all day, and return in
the evening too tired even to read his paper?" is an example of a rhetorical interrogative sentence. The
author employs declarative sentences throughout the passage.