YEAR Question 1 Question 2 Question 3
1981 The Rattler”- analyze effect on reader – consider organization, point of view, language, detail. George Bernard Shaw letter – describe writer’s attitude toward mother & her cremation – diction and detail Thomas Szasz – argue for or against his position on the struggle for definition. Use readings, study, or experience.
1982 A reading on happiness – summarize his reasons for his opinion and explain why you agree or not with his opinion Analyze the strategies or devices (organization, diction, tone, detail) that make Gov. Stevenson’s Cat Veto argument effective. Describe a place, conveying feeling through concrete and specific detail.
1983 A quote on change - Select a change for the better that has occurred or that you want to occur; analyze its desirable and undesirable effects Excerpt from Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present – define Carlyle’s attitude toward work and analyze how he uses language to convince…. Agree or disagree with the position in the passage on living in an era of language inflation by considering the ethical and social consequences of language inflation.
1984 Explain the nature and importance of two or three means by which you keep track of time and discuss how these means reveal your person. (Hint given about “inner clocks.”) Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Milton – two very short quotes on freedom – describe the concept of freedom in each; discuss the differences. A passage on a boxing match between Benny Paret, a Cuban, and Emile Griffith – Analyze how diction, syntax, imagery, and tome produce an effect on the reader.
1985 Contrast stylistic and rhetorical differences between two passages on the Soviet Launch of the first space satellite Discuss the probable reasons for an anonymous writer’s additions and deletions and the ways in which those revisions change the effect of the paragraph. Two drafts that record