DIRECTIONS: Read the following descriptive paragraph and answer the questions 1-10. Note sentences are identified by the numbers that FOLLOW them.
THE ACTUAL DESCRIPTION CAN BE FOUND IN CHAPTER ONE IF YOU WISH TO CHECK YOUR ANSWERS
Maycomb was an old town, a tired old
town when I first knew it.(1) In rainy
weather the streets turned to red slop; the grass grew on the sidewalks.(2) There was a courthouse that sagged in the square.(3) Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer's day; mules hitched to carts flick flies in the
sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.(4) Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the
morning.(5) Ladies bathed before noon
and after there three-o'clock naps, yet by nightfall were like soft teacakes
with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.(6) People moved slowly then.(7) They walked across the square, shuffled in
and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.(8) A day was twenty-four hours long but
seemed longer.(9) There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to
go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.(10) Nothing to see outside the boundaries of
Maycomb County.(11)
1. One of the strengths of this piece of descriptive writing is
a. the action verb in sentence 1
b. the
simile in sentence 6
c. the
choice of adjectives in sentence 5
d. the
contrast in sentence 9
2. A wrong
word usage is found in sentence
a. sentence
2
b. sentence
4
c. sentence
6
d. sentence
7
3. Which group of words is a fragment?
a. sentence
5
b. sentence
8
c. sentence
9
d. sentence
11
4. Which
sentence needs to be corrected, and
what is the proper way to write the sentence?
a. Sentence
1 should have a comma before "when."
b. Sentence
4 should have an "-ed" added to "flick."
c. Sentence
5 should remove an apostrophe from "mens"
d. Sentence
7 should replace "then" with "than."
5 . How might sentence #3 be improved?
a. Sagging,
the courthouse was in the square.
b. The
courthouse sagged in the square.
c. There
stood the courthouse, sagging in the square.
d. In
the square there stood a sagging courthouse.
6. Which
sentence builds its impact through repetition?
a. sentence
1
b. sentence
5
c. sentence
8
d. sentence 11
7. What writing strategy
would improve sentence #3?
a. Reverse
the order and move the subject to the beginning of the sentence.
b. Use
a stronger action verb to replace "sagged."
c. Correct
the use of the pronoun.
d. Attach
it to the previous sentence with a colon.
8. What
would be the best verb for sentence #8?
a. rushed
b.
went
c. ambled
d. trotted
9. What
would be a good choice of adjectives
to improve sentence #4?
a. bony
mules
b. very
big hungry mules
c.
intelligent mules
d. greyish,
blackish, kind of dark mules
10. Which
sentence gains its strength from parallelism?
a. sentence
5
b. sentence
6
c.
sentence 10
d. sentence
11
