Honors Sophomore English Final Exam Study Guide 2011
1. Review the major literary periods we’ve covered 2nd semester—the civil war literature,
regionalism, realism, naturalism, the transitional poets, the Harlem Renaissance, and
finally 20th century authors (modernists). Be able to place an author/piece of literature
in his/her specific time period (i.e. show how Stephen Crane’s writing illustrates
naturalism, etc.). Don’t memorize when an author was born or when he died, but
rather what time period he is associated with and what elements of his writing/life are
reflected in his literature.
2. Review all literary terms we have covered thus far and be able to identify their use in a
piece of literature. (Example: Identify the tone of the following passage. Indicate what
type of figurative language is used here, etc.)
3. Review any old tests/quizzes we have taken on the material. Some test questions will
come directly from old tests.
4. The Great Gatsby – a portion of the final will include questions from the novel we
recently read in class
5. Grammar – Types of sentences (Simple, Compound, Complex, Compound-Complex),
difference between a sentence and a clause (dependent vs. independent), Correct Use
of Pronouns – Review worksheets/test. Questions may come directly from those
exercises.
6. The research process – review the steps/methods of research paper writing. Know how
to use MLA citation. A couple questions will deal with how/when to cite material, etc.
7. Reading Comprehension/Critical thinking skills. You will be asked to read a short story
and a poem and answer questions based on your reading.
8. Essay writing – responding to a piece of literature. Students will be asked to write an
essay responding to a poem or piece of literature. Students will be assessed on their
thesis, organization/structure, examples used, mechanics, etc. We learned the term
TTEB paragraph writing.
In short, memorization is not going to be as helpful as your ability to apply what you know. For
example, rather than memorize the definition of a simile… be able to pick out a simile in a
passage and explain what is being compared.
Test Format
Approximately 100 questions - Objective (Scantron)
Essay – 5 paragraph essay format
Literature of the Civil War
Authors/Literature/terms to review:
From Romanticism to Realism 1855 – 1870 p. 495 – 503
Selections to study/Authors to study
1. Poetry - Walt Whitman
―Song of Myself‖
―I Hear America Singing‖
―A Noiseless Patient Spider‖
―Beat! Beat! Drums!‖
―O Me, O Life‖ ―Oh Captain, My Captain‖
Leaves of Grass
Key ideas – free verse, parallelism, cataloging, enjambment, anaphora
2. Poetry - Emily Dickinson
―Because I Could Not Stop for Death‖
―I heard a fly buzz‖
―Success is counted sweetest‖
―Much Madness is Divinest Sense‖
―My Life Closed Twice‖
―The Soul Selects her own Society‖
―My Life had stood a Loaded Gun‖
Key Ideas – slant rhyme, syntax, quatrain, inventive punctuation
3. Slave Narratives ―Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass‖ by Frederick Douglass
**―Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl‖ by Harriet Jacobs
Key Terms – Style
Tone
Figurative Language (Simile, Metaphor, Personification)
Dialogue
Dialect
Conflict (external vs. internal)
Characterization (Direct vs. Indirect)
4. Abraham Lincoln –
―Gettysburg Address‖ – speech
Emancipation Proclamation – proclamation
5. Voices from the Civil War (Letters, Diaries, Speech) p. 570 – 574
Key Idea – Primary sources
6. ―An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge‖ – Ambrose Bierce
Key Terms
Realism p. 576-577 in textbook
Point of View (1st person, 3rd Person Omniscient, 3rd Person Limited)
Flashback
Regionalism, Realism and Naturalism
(1870 – 1910)
Historical Overview p. 618 – 627 in textbook
Regionalism and Local Color Writing
Regionalism - Outgrowth of Realism (p. 632 – 633)
Mark Twain
―Life on the Mississippi‖
―The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County‖
The greatest ―American‖ novel – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn p. 670 - 671
Key terms: tall tale, understatement, irony (dramatic, situational, verbal)
Brett Harte – Local Color Writing
―The Outcasts of Poker Flat‖
―The Luck of Roaring Camp‖
Realism
A new role for women
Right to vote
University education
Female Authors:
Willa Cather ―A Wagner Matinee‖ My Antonia
Charlotte Perkins Gilman ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖
Kate Chopin ―The Story of an Hour‖ and ―A Pair of Silk Stockings‖
Edith Wharton – Age of Innocence, novel/movie
Naturalism
Stephen Crane ―The Open Boat‖
The Harlem Renaissance and Modernism (1910 – 1950)
Read textbook p. 824 - 833
Be able to distinguish the Harlem Renaissance writers from the Transitional poets
– Consider the themes, styles, and forms of poetry the writers are known for
Transitional Poets
Edwin Arlington Robinson
―Richard Cory‖
―Miniver Cheevy‖
Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology – collection of 244 dramatic monologues
Example - ―Lucinda Matlock‖
Carl Sandburg
―Chicago‖
―Grass‖
Robert Frost
―Acquainted With the Night‖
―Nothing Gold Can Stay‖
―Out, Out—―
―The Death of the Hired Man‖
Literary Terms
Sonnet
Meter (monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter)
Iambic vs. Trochaic
Free Verse
Blank Verse
Alliteration
Form
Repetition
Figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification)
Imagery
Theme
Tone
Dialect
Diction
Irony
Mood
Apostrophe
Anaphora
Epithet
Symbol/symbolism
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Review open note quizzes and your notes
Aphorism
Allusion
Hyperbole
Simile
Metaphor
The Green Light
The Jazz Age
Prohibition (1920 – 1933)
The Modern Short Story
Ernest Hemingway ―Hills Like White Elephants‖
―A Clean, Well-Lighted Place‖
John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath
William Faulkner
―A Rose for Emily‖
-stream of consciousness
- Yoknapatawpha County
Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes
―Harlem‖
―I, Too‖
James Weldon Johnson
―My City‖
Claude McKay
―If We Must Die‖
The research paper process/MLA citation
Contemporary Literature (research paper)
TTEB Paragraph Writing
Vocabulary – 5 Lists of vocabulary words.
Honors Sophomore English Essay Topics:
1. Using examples that we have read in class this semester and selections from your
research paper, explain the relationship between American history and American
literature.
2. The Lost Generation – Gertrude Stein once said to Ernest Hemingway about the artists of
the1920s, ―You are all a lost generation.‖ Explain what it means to be ―lost‖ in this
context, and analyze how characters in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and in
Hemingway’s two short stories are representative of the lost generation of the 1920s and
1930s in America. Support your answer with as much evidence as you can.
3. A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability
to produce in the reader a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude. Select a literary
work we’ve studied this semester (other than The Great Gatsby) that produces this
"healthy confusion." Write an essay in which you explain the sources of the "pleasure and
disquietude" experienced by the readers of the work.