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AP English Language and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill
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AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 2. What is the speaker's primary purpose in using onomatopoeia in line four?

AP English Language and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill
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AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 7. What is the principal rhetorical function of paragraphs one to three?

AP English Language and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill
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AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill 1, Problem 8. The quotation marks in the third paragraph chiefly serve to what?

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AP English Language and Composition 3.2 Passage Drill 250 Views


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Description:

We don't know about you, but every time we've landed in a shallow pool of mud, we've been very much aware of the mud....not so much the stars. But hey, to each their own. Take a look at this AP English Language and Composition question and see if you can get the right answer.


Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:02

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a grimy mixture of clay and sand.

00:07

They say it's exfoliating, but we think it amuses them

00:11

to watch us rub dirt on our faces and then pay them for the privilege.

00:16

[ mumbles ]

00:24

All right, well, we're skimming, we're skimming. And we're just gonna jump in.

00:28

All right, the last line of the first paragraph - right here -

00:31

can best be described as... what?

00:33

And here are the potential answers.

00:35

[ mumbles ]

00:39

All right, well, this text might sound highfalutin,

00:41

but it's not so hard to understand when we break it down.

00:45

Throughout the first paragraph, the author talks about how dirt

00:48

can be turned into precious things, like

00:50

porcelain, opals, and diamonds.

00:52

Wish we could figure out how to do that with the dirt in our backyard.

00:56

The author ends the paragraph by pointing out

00:58

that when we look at a mud puddle,

01:00

we can either focus on the mud at the bottom of the puddle,

01:02

or the stars reflected in the water.

01:05

If you ask us, this idea is

01:07

pretty similar to what the passage has been talking about the whole time.

01:11

Commonplace, earthy things can lead to

01:13

fabulous, beautiful things.

01:15

Since we know the author isn't taking any major detours on the final sentence,

01:19

we can eliminate choices B and D.

01:22

B says that a shift in point-of-view is happening,

01:24

and D claims that some new theme is rearing its head.

01:28

But, as we just said, neither of these things are true.

01:30

The author is just finding creative ways to repeat himself.

01:33

Choice E doesn't come close to being right.

01:36

The paragraph doesn't mention any historical events

01:39

and the last sentence doesn't mention anything all that modern.

01:42

Let's face it, mud puddles are about as old school as it gets.

01:45

Option C tries to impress us with the fancy word "microcosm." Ooh.

01:50

Basically, a microcosm is a small thing that

01:52

can represent a bigger thing.

01:54

If a sports commentator were criticizing a bad

01:57

game, he might say,

01:58

"That game was bad. It was a microcosm for what's

02:01

been happenin' with this team all season."

02:04

That is, if sportscasters used words like "microcosm."

02:08

And they tried that with Dennis Miller on Monday night football,

02:10

and, uh, that didn't last.

02:11

Anyway, even though it's fun to use big words, we can't get along with choice C.

02:15

Noticing stars reflected in a puddle is a similar idea to

02:18

the others expressed in the paragraph.

02:19

It's not a mini-version that somehow represents a greater whole.

02:22

So this leaves us with choice A.

02:24

The last sentence is a parallel scenario which

02:27

just means the author is sticking to the same old, same old.

02:30

This guy should learn to live a little.

02:33

[ splash ]

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