Review Packet #3
Name: ________________________
Part I: Regents Prep
Directions: Read both passages and answer the multiple choice questions. For each question,
underline the context clue(s) found in the appropriate passage that supports the chosen answer.
Be sure to write question number next to the underlined evidence.
Each of the following poems was written by an American woman in time of war. Julia Alvarez’s
poem “How I Learned to Sweep” recalls how television brought the violent images of jungle
warfare in Vietnam into American living rooms during the 1960s and 1970s. “September, 1918”
was written by Amy Lowell when the final, horrific battles of World War I were claiming tens of
thousands of lives in France.
September, 1918
BY AMY LOWELL
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
How I Learned to Sweep
- Julia Alvarez
My mother never taught me sweeping.
One afternoon she found me watching
t.v. She eyed the dusty floor
boldly, and put a broom before
me, and said she'd like to be able
to eat her dinner off that table,
and nodded at my feet, then left.
I knew right off what she expected
and went at it. I stepped and swept;
the t.v. blared the news; I kept
my mind on what I had to do,
until in minutes, I was through.
Her floor was as immaculate
as a just-washed dinner plate.
I waited for her to return
and turned to watch the President,
live from the White House, talk of war:
in the Far East our soldiers were
landing in their helicopters
into jungles their propellers
swept like weeds seen underwater
while perplexing shots were fired
from those beautiful green gardens
into which these dragonflies
filled with little men descended.
I got up and swept again
as they fell out of the sky.
I swept all the harder when
I watched a dozen of them die.
as if their dust fell through the screen
upon the floor I had just cleaned.
She came back and turned the dial;
the screen went dark. That's beautiful,
she said, and ran her clean hand through
my hair, and on, over the windowsill, coffee table, rocker, desk,
and held it up-I held my breathThat's beautiful, she said, impressed,
she hadn't found a speck of death.
Multiple Choice Questions:
1. What mood is created by the images in the first eight lines of “September, 1918”?
A Deep longing
C Carefree innocence
B Looming dread
D Quiet sadness
2. How would you describe the speaker’s attitude in lines 9–18 of “September, 1918”?
A Losing hope
C Disillusioned and angry
B Troubled but hopeful
D Frightened of the future
3. In the implied comparison in lines 10–13 of “September, 1918,” the afternoon is
compared to a —
A glass globe
C child’s ball
B leaf from a tree
D piece of fruit
4. The irony at the center of Lowell’s poem is the contrast between the —
A beautiful fall day and the reality of war
B boys’ innocence and the speaker’s despair
C present and the past
D boys at home and the boys at war
5. In addition to the dust on the floor, what else is the speaker of “How I Learned to
Sweep” trying to sweep away?
A Her mother’s presence
C Her fear of dying
B Her dislike of housework
D The deaths of the soldiers
6. What is the tone of the last two lines of Alvarez’s poem?
A Angry
C Hopeful
B Ironic
D Disappointed
7. By the end of Alvarez’s poem, the dust on the floor has become identified with —
A the garden on television C the dead soldiers
B the dragonflies
D weeds underwater
8. Both poems make a statement about war by —
A directly stating their opposition to war
B showing how war hurts innocent people
C contrasting war with ordinary life
D graphically describing the horrors of war
Part II: Grammar:
Punctuation may seem like a small thing, but it can radically alter the meaning of a
sentence. For example, consider the difference between these two signs:
Private. No swimming allowed.
Private? No. Swimming allowed.
The words remain the same, but a change in punctuation gives them opposite meanings.
Find new ways to punctuate the following sentences so as to give them a different
meaning.
1. I’m sorry you can’t come with us.
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2. The butler stood by the door and called the guests’ names.
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3. Look at that man eating chicken.
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4. A smart dog knows its master.
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5. Call me “fool” if you want.
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Part III: SAT Vocabulary Skills: Analogies
DIRECTIONS: For each of the following items, choose the lettered pair of words that
expresses a relationship that is most similar to the relationship between the pair of
capitalized words.
1. INTERLOPER : INTRUDES ::
A plumber : toilet
B burglar : steals
C leader : follows
D drives : rides
2. TEPID : BOILING ::
F happy : ecstatic
G freezing : cold
H smooth : bumpy
J drenched : damp
3. VIRILE : FEMININE ::
A beautiful : gorgeous
B strong : courageous
C gentle : aggressive
D violent : demanding
4. MEDIUM : ARTIST ::
F painting : draw
G photographer : camera
H wood : carpenter
J hammer : nail
5. MORTIFIED : EMBARRASSED ::
A drizzled : flurried
B forgetful : regretful
C faithful : disloyal
D arrogant : proud
Part IV: Text-Analysis Response
Your Task: Closely read the text and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to
three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the
author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical
device) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support
your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text.
Guidelines:
Be sure to:
• Identify a central idea in the text
• Analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique
or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Examples include: characterization, conflict,
denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting,
structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.
• Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis
• Organize your ideas in a cohesive and coherent manner
• Maintain a formal style of writing
• Follow the conventions of standard written English
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Text
...It turned out to be true. The face of the water [Mississippi River], in time, became a
wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which
told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it
uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a
new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was
never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss,
never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some
other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest
was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with every reperusal. The
passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its
surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that
was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest
capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it, for it meant that a
wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever
floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous
to a pilot’s eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing
but all manner of pretty pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to
the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of
reading matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every
trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet,
I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which
could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out
of the majestic river! I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when
steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the
middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came
floating, black and conspicuous; one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the
water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many tinted
as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered
with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was
densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place
by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed
dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor
that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights,
35 soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily,
enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me,
and I had never seen any thing like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when
I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the
40 twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note
them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it
without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: “This sun
means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is
rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going
45 to kill somebody’s steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those
tumbling ‘boils’ show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up
dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the ‘break’ from a new snag, and
he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that
50 tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body
ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?”
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it
had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe
piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the
55 lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek mean to a doctor but a “break” that ripples above some
deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and
symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn’t he simply view her
professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn’t he
sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?
—Mark Twain
excerpted and adapted from Life on the Mississippi, 1901
Harper & Brothers Publishers
Graphic Organizer-Paragraph #1—Introduction:
 Hook in reference to the Central Idea (1-3 sentences)
 Thesis: TAG + Literary Element / Technique + Central Idea
Paragraph #2—Body Paragraph
 Topic Sentence
 Idea #1 + Example + Connection
 Transition to Idea #2 + Example + Connection
Concluding Paragraph
 Closing Transition + Summary Sentence (refer to both Ideas in body
paragraph)
 Go back to Hook
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