Midterm Practice Exam

The transcript of King's "I Have a Dream" opens with "Five score years ago", spoken in front of the memorial to Lincoln. Select every accurate statement about that phrase.

Select every option that applies.

• It is an allusion that echoes the opening of the Gettysburg Address.
• It is antithesis, because it sets two opposed ideas side by side.
• It marks the occasion's kairos, a century after the Emancipation Proclamation.
• It is anaphora, because it opens four sentences in a row.

A writer is choosing the opening sentence of an illustrative paragraph about riding the bus to campus. Which choice states a controlling idea, a claim the paragraph could go on to prove?

Select one.

• My bus commute.
• The bus stops in front of the library every half hour.
• The bus is annoying.
• A long bus commute can become a student's most reliable study time.

An illustrative campus flyer argues: "Either the college adds a free shuttle this year or every commuter will drop out." Which fallacy does the flyer commit?

Select one.

• Post hoc
• Hasty generalization
• Slippery slope
• False dilemma

Illustrative scenario: before hunting for the claim, a reader runs the five questions on a proposal for longer library hours that a neighborhood association posted on its website. Which answer belongs to the genre question?

Select one.

• The writer is the association's volunteer board
• It is a written proposal posted on a website
• The audience is the town's library trustees
• The purpose is to win longer evening hours

A draft about a community library has four illustrative candidates for the sentence that closes its introduction. Which one would work as a thesis?

Select one.

• Community library hours.
• Does the community library close too early?
• The community library closes earlier on weekends than on weeknights.
• The community library should stay open later on weeknights, because residents who work days now have no time to use it.

You asked a chatbot to summarize Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Its answer calls the speech flawless and includes a line in quotation marks that it credits to Lincoln. Select every step you should take before you use that summary.

Select every option that applies.

• Delete rating words such as flawless and report in neutral terms
• Trust the quoted line, because the chatbot names Lincoln beside it
• Look for the quoted line in the linked text of the address, and cut it if it is not there
• Ask the chatbot to confirm the line is real and accept its answer
• Check that the summary covers the whole address, not only one famous phrase

After a first draft, a writer cuts a whole body paragraph that did not support the thesis and writes a new one built around a stronger reason. What kind of change is that?

Select one.

• Proofreading, because the draft was checked closely
• Editing, because whole sentences were removed and others were added
• Reflection, because the writer thought about the draft
• Revision, because support and structure were re-seen

Which illustrative sentence about a town's proposal for later library hours is a response, rather than a reaction or a summary?

Select one.

• This proposal is pointless and dull.
• The proposal asks the town to keep the library open later on weeknights.
• Because it never says who would staff the extra hours, the plan is harder to accept than its goal.
• I loved reading this proposal.

Illustrative scenario: a tenant who agreed to collect money for a building's shared garden learns that the tenant must move out a month early. The tenant sends a text to a neighbor, an email to the garden group, and a note to the building manager. What is the exigence behind all three messages?

Select one.

• The early move that ends the tenant's collecting role
• The shared garden that the building keeps
• The building manager's rules for posting notices
• The neighbor's reply to the tenant's first text

In an illustrative story about a first shift at a bakery, the writer wants concrete words, the kind that name something a reader could see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. Select every concrete word.

Select every option that applies.

• embarrassment
• apron
• awful
• flour
• anxiety
• oven timer

Here are four illustrative sentences about "I Have a Dream", which King delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Which one is a summary, reporting what the speech says?

Select one.

• King's speech is the finest ever given, and anyone who disagrees has missed its point.
• King uses ethos to sound credible to the crowd.
• Setting "content of their character" against "the color of their skin" lets the crowd weigh two standards in one breath.
• King tells the crowd he dreams of a nation that judges people by their character rather than their skin color.

While annotating an illustrative argument about bus fares, a reader draws a small arrow in the margin beside one sentence. In this course's annotation habit, what does that arrow mark?

Select one.

• A turn, where the argument changes direction
• The claim, the writer's main point
• Support, a reason or piece of evidence
• The reader's own question or doubt

Illustrative scenario: an essay arguing for a later library closing must deal with the objection that late hours cost too much. Select every move that makes the writer's handling of that objection fair.

Select every option that applies.

• Shrink the objection to its weakest version so it is easy to dismiss
• Concede whatever part of the objection is correct
• Put the objection in terms its supporters would recognize as their own
• Mention that the people raising the objection tend to be lazy
• Reply to the rest of the objection with a reason

An illustrative thesis reads: "The college should probably run the campus shuttle later into the evening, because students leaving night labs now walk home after dark." Which word or phrase works as the qualifier?

Select one.

• "because students leaving night labs now walk home after dark"
• "probably"
• "The college should"
• "run the campus shuttle later"

A tutoring center is making a poster of the writing-process stages, listed from first to last as this course teaches them. Which order should the poster show?

Select one.

• Invention, drafting, editing, reflection, revision
• Invention, drafting, revision, editing, reflection
• Drafting, invention, revision, editing, reflection
• Invention, revision, editing, drafting, reflection

A writer opens a how-to guide on getting ready for a road test with this illustrative line: "Every new driver should be required to take a defensive-driving course first." Which mode does that line bring into the guide?

Select one.

• Exposition, because it gives general information about driving
• Narration, because it mentions new drivers and the courses they take
• Exposition, because it explains what drivers usually do
• Argument, because it asks readers to agree something should happen

Illustrative scenario: a student who will miss one lab session sends a 15-word text to a lab partner and a 58-word email to the lab coordinator. Which explanation of the difference in length fits this course's idea of rhetoric?

Select one.

• Coordinators judge students by how long their emails run
• The coordinator needs the absence, the reason, and a make-up plan
• Every email must run longer than every text message
• A longer message is always the more polite message

Illustrative paragraph: "A long bus commute can become a student's best study time. On a forty-minute ride, a rider can finish a full reading assignment with nothing else competing for attention. That matters because the ride is time the student would spend anyway, so the reading costs nothing extra from a crowded day. Planning around the commute is one way a busy schedule can work for a student instead of against one." In MEAL terms, which job does the second sentence do?

Select one.

• Main idea
• Evidence
• Analysis
• Link

A writer checking one paragraph builds a reverse outline, jotting two short notes in the margin beside every sentence. Which two notes does this course's check ask for?

Select one.

• What the sentence says and what job it does
• Whether it sounds formal and whether it is grammatical
• Its length in words and the transition it begins with
• A heading for it and the subject it mentions

Illustrative passage: "First, book the road test and gather the documents the licensing office asks for. Next, practice parallel parking on a quiet street until it feels routine. Then, on the morning of the test, arrive early and adjust the mirrors and seat. Finally, signal every turn and lane change, even when the road looks empty." Which rhetorical mode is this passage?

Select one.

• Narration, because it moves from the first step to the last
• Argument, because it tells the reader what to do
• Exposition, because it explains how to do a task and takes no side
• Narration, because it recounts the writer's own road test from start to finish

A student plans a message using only the classroom triangle of writer, audience, and subject. Select every rhetorical-situation question from this course's five that the student has not yet covered.

Select every option that applies.

• Who is writing the message
• What form the message will take
• What the message is meant to accomplish
• Who will read the message
• What time, place, and circumstances surround it

Illustrative scenario: a store sends a text advertising snow shovels on the morning the winter's first big snowstorm is forecast to arrive. Which appeal does the ad lean on most?

Select one.

• Kairos, because its force comes from its timing
• Pathos, because snowstorms are stressful
• Logos, because shovels clear snow
• Ethos, because the store is well known

Four illustrative sentences about the campus library are proposed as the opening claim of an argument. Which one is a claim a reasonable reader could dispute with reasons?

Select one.

• The library closes at nine on weeknights.
• Library hours.
• The library's reading room is the nicest room on campus.
• The library should stay open later during the last weeks of the term, because students who work evening shifts have no other quiet place to study.

A writer arguing about campus hours wants to predict a genuine result instead of building a slippery slope. Which illustrative prediction does that?

Select one.

• If the dining hall closes at seven, students whose labs run until eight will miss dinner.
• If the library adds one late night, soon it will never close, and then the staff will all quit.
• If one student gets an extension, everyone will want one, and soon there will be no deadlines at all.
• If the shuttle adds a stop, next it will add ten more, until it never reaches campus.

A writer drafting a narrative essay about a first road test wants to know which part of an academic essay the story's significance stands in for. What does this course say?

Select one.

• The hook that draws the reader in at the start of the introduction
• A transition linking two body paragraphs
• The thesis, the sentence that states the essay's main point
• A restatement of the introduction at the end of the essay