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Eng 22 3.18
Last Updated: Spring 2013
English 22: Beginning Composition
Instructor: Dennis Kawaharada / E­mail: [email protected]
Course Syllabus: Eng 22/Spring 2013
Lessons and Course Materials: Eng 22/Spring 2013
Laulima Website: https://laulima.hawaii.edu
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa at eTutoring.org (Writing Tutors)
Assignment 3.18: Quiz on Choosing Words Precisely
Due Monday, March 18, at 11:55 pm, at Assignments.
Total Points for Quiz: 3 points. (Up to 1 points for each of the three words you discuss).
Directions:
1. From the passage below (from "Way to Rainy Mountain " by N. Scott Momaday), look up in
Thesaurus.com, three of the boldfaced words and copy and paste a list of synonyms for
each of the words. Be sure that the synonyms are for the same kind of word—noun, verb, or
adjective—as the words used in the passage.
2. From the list of synonyms, identify two alternative words the writer could have chosen for
the sentence, instead of the word he chose.
3. At Dictionary.com, look up the three words (the original word, plus the two alternative
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Eng 22 3.18
words) and review their meanings. Then identify the word that you feel is the best word of the
three and explain why it is the best word, based on the differences in the denotations and
connotations of the three words.
Your answer could be that the word the writer chose is the best; or your answer could be one
of the other two alternative words is better. There may be more than one "right" answer to
this question, because word choice is complex and subjective.
However, the explanation you give as to why one word is better than the other two should be
based on the denotations and connotations of the words.
Passage from "Way to Rainy Mountain " by N. Scott Momaday
A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range.
For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy
Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot
tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil's edge. The
grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts
along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel.
At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire.
Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like
corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the
plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate;
there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look
upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense
of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and
A sample answer:
1. single
2. lone, solitary.
3.
“Solitary” would be an alternative word to “single.” “Solitary” might personify the
knoll, as the word has a person who acts or lives alone, although it could mean, like
“single,” “standing alone.” “Solitary” also has an association with “solitary
confinement,” a punishment, something that Momaday definitely does not want to
convey, as he sees the area as sacred, a place where Creation was begun. Perhaps
he also choose “single” because of the pleasing repetition of the “n” sound in “single”
and “knoll” and “plain.”
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