Sophomore
Speed & Accuracy
Passage 1
29
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was
born on June 27, 1880, in
Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her
family lived on a homestead,
Ivy Green, that Helen's grandfather
had built decades earlier.
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Her father, Arthur H. Keller,
spent many years as an editor for the
Tuscumbia North
Alabamian, and had served as a
captain for the Confederate Army.
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Helen Keller was born with the
ability to see and hear. At 19
months old, she contracted an
illness described by doctors as
"an acute congestion of the stomach
and the brain", which might have been
scarlet fever or meningitis. The
illness left her both deaf and blind.
At that time, she was able
to communicate somewhat with Martha
Washington, the six-year-old
daughter of the family cook, who
understood her signs; by the age of
seven, Keller had more than 60
home signs to communicate with her
family.
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In 1886, Michael
Anagnos, the school's
director, asked former student
20-year-old Anne Sullivan,
herself visually impaired, to become
Keller's instructor. It was the
beginning of a 49-year-long
relationship during which Sullivan
evolved into Keller's governess and
eventually her companion.
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Anne Sullivan arrived at
Keller's house in March 1887,
and immediately began to teach Helen
to communicate by spelling words into her
hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the
doll that she had brought Keller as
a present. Keller was frustrated,
at first, because she did not understand that every
object had a word uniquely
identifying it. In fact, when
Sullivan was trying to teach Keller
the word for "mug", Keller became
so frustrated she broke the doll.
Keller's big breakthrough in
communication came the next month,
when she realized that the motions her
teacher was making on the palm of her
hand, while running cool water
over her other hand, symbolized the
idea of "water"; she then nearly
exhausted Sullivan demanding the
names of all the other familiar
objects in her world. Due to a
protruding left eye, Keller was
usually photographed in profile.
Both her eyes were replaced in
adulthood with glass replicas for
"medical and cosmetic reasons".
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Sophomore
Speed & Accuracy
Passage 2
192
Excerpt from The Story of My
Life by Helen Keller
The morning after my teacher came
she led me into her room and gave
me a doll. The little blind children at the
Perkins Institution had sent it and
Laura Bridgman had dressed
it; but I did not know this until
afterward. When I had played with it a
little while, Miss Sullivan
slowly spelled into my hand the word
"d-o-l-l." I was at once
interested in this finger play and tried
to imitate it. When I finally
succeeded in making the letters
correctly I was flushed with
childish pleasure and pride.
Running downstairs to my mother I
held up my hand and made the letters
for doll. I did not know that I was
spelling a word or even that words
existed; I was simply making my
fingers go in monkey-like imitation.
In the days that followed I learned
to spell in this uncomprehending way
a great many words, among them pin,
hat, cup and a few verbs like
sit, stand and walk. But my
teacher had been with me several
weeks before I understood that everything
has a name.
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One day, while I was playing with
my new doll, Miss Sullivan
put my big rag doll into my lap
also, spelled, "d-o-l-l" and tried
to make me understand that "d-o-l-l"
applied to both. Earlier in the day
we had had a tussle over the words
"m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss
Sullivan had tried to impress
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upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that
"w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I
persisted in confounding the two. In
despair she had dropped the
subject for the time, only to renew
it at the first opportunity. I
became impatient at her repeated
attempts and, seizing the new
doll, I dashed it upon the floor.
I was keenly delighted when I
felt the fragments of the broken doll
at my feet. Neither sorrow nor
regret followed my passionate
outburst. I had not loved the doll.
In the still, dark world in which I lived
there was no strong sentiment or
tenderness. I felt my teacher
sweep the fragments to one side of the
hearth and I had a sense of
satisfaction that the cause of my
discomfort was removed. She brought
me my hat, and I knew I was
going out into the warm sunshine. This
thought, if a wordless sensation may be
called a thought, made me hop and
skip with pleasure.
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We walked down the path to the
well-house, attracted by the
fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it
was covered. Someone was drawing water
and my teacher placed my hand under the
spout. As the cool stream gushed
over one hand she spelled into the other
the word water, first slowly, then
rapidly. I stood still, my whole
attention fixed upon the motions of her
fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty
consciousness as of something forgotten--a
thrill of returning thought; and somehow
the mystery of language was revealed
to me. I knew then that
"w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful
cool something that was flowing over my
hand. That living word awakened my
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soul, gave it light, hope, joy,
set it free! There were barriers still,
it is true, but barriers that could in
time be swept away.
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TOTAL FOR TWO PASSAGES: 894
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