Review for Final Test
Sentences & Fragments
- A sentence is a word or word group that contains a subject and a verb that expresses a complete thought.
- Sentences begin with capital letter and end with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.
- A sentence fragment is a group of words that may look like a sentence, but doesn’t contain a subject and a verb or doesn’t express a complete thought.
- The subject tells whom or what the sentence is about, it may be in the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.
- The simple subject is the main word(s) that tell whom or what the sentence is about.
- The complete subject is all the words who tell whom or what the sentence is about.
- The four new students arrived early.
- The four new students = complete subject
- students = simple subject
- A compound subject consists of two or more subjects that are joined by a conjunction and that have the same verb.
- Paris and London remain favorite tourist attractions.
- Paris, London = subjects that have the verb remain
- An understood subject is a subject that isn’t written, but is understood.
- Be quiet during the play.
- The predicate of a sentence tells something about the subject.
- The simple predicate (verb) is the main word(s) that tells something about the subject.
- The complete predicate consists of the verb and all the words that describe the verb and complete its meaning.
- The pilot broke the sound barrier.
- A compound verb consists of two or more verbs that are joined by a conjunction and have the same subject.
- The team played well but lost the game anyway.
- played, lost = verbs that share subject
Kinds of Sentences
- A declarative sentence makes a statement and ends with a period.
- Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California.
- An imperative sentence gives a command or makes a request, it may end in a period or in an exclamation point.
- The subject of a command or request is always you, it may be an understood subject.
- (You) Stop!
- (You) Pass me that piece of sandpaper.
- Miguel, (you) please answer the phone.
- An interrogative sentence asks a question and ends with a question mark.
- Did the surfboard cost much?
- An exclamatory sentence shows excitement or expresses strong feeling and ends with an exclamation point.
- How terrifying that movie was!
Identifying Nouns
- A noun is a word or word group that names a person, a place, a thing, or an idea.
- Ling, teacher, chef (persons)
- Grand Canyon, city, kitchen, Namibia (places)
- lamp, granite, Nobel Prize (things)
- happiness, liberty, bravery (ideas)
- A compound noun is a single noun made up of two or more words used together, it may be written as one word, as a hyphenated word or as two or more words.
- grandmother, basketball (one word)
- mother-in-law, light-year (hyphenated)
- grand piano, jumping jack (two words)
- A proper noun names a particular person, place, thing, or idea and begins with a capital letter.
- Mark, Colorado, Buddhism, Eiffel Tower
- A common noun names any group of persons, places, things, or ideas and is generally not capitalized.
- A concrete noun names a person, place, or thing that can be perceived by one or more of the senses.
- photograph, music, pears, filmmaker
- An abstract noun names an idea, a feeling, a quality, or a characteristic.
- love, fun, freedom, beauty, honor
- A collective noun names a group in its singular form.
- audience, class, herd, team, family
- Number is the form a word takes to indicate whether the word is singular or plural.
- When a word refers to one person, place, thing, or idea, it’s a singular in number.
- When a word refers to more than one, it’s a plural in number.
Literary Terms
- genre – a category in literature, characterized by similarities in form, style or subject (fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry)
- fiction – written stories about people or events that are not real
- short story – a story that is shorter and less elaborate than a novel
- novel – a fictious prose narrative of book length, with some degree of realism
- novella – a short novel
- plot – series of events that form the story
- exposition – the first part or introduction
- rising action – a series of events build up the conflict
- climax – moment of highest interest and emotion
- falling action – things begin to solve
- resolution (denouement) – finale or solving of the conflict
- conflict – clash between opposing characters or forces
- external – outside forces conflicting (man vs man, man vs society, man vs nature)
- internal – within a character’s own mind (man vs himself)
- setting – time and place where the action of the story takes place
- characters – persons, animals, things or creatures around which the action revolves
- (protagonist/antagonist)
- (main/minor-secondary/reference)
- (dynamic-round, changes/static-flat, doesn’t change much)
- point of view – vantage point from which a story is told
- first person – one of the characters (using I), tells the story
- third person limited – narrator focuses on the thoughts and feelings of 1 character
- third person omniscient – narrator knows everything, including thoughts and feelings of characters
- theme – teaching, message the author wants to tell
- foil – character that is the complete opposite, or contrast, of another character
Stories
- Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
- Biography by Ann Petry
- Setting: A route from Maryland to Canada in December 1851
- Harriet Tubman (called Moses) is a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad that was once a slave. The Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, and under this law slaves who escaped to the northern United States were no longer safe because they could be returned to their masters in the South. So she takes slaves from masters in southern United States and liberates them by taking them to St. Catharines, Canada West. She took the Underground Railroad (symbolic name) in 1811 with a group of 11 slaves, the story narrates their long, and difficult journey to freedom. Along the way, the slaves were hungry, cold, and discouraged but were helped by some when Harriet said the password “a friend with friends”. One slave wanted to turn back, but Tubman said she’d kill them because they’d be forced to be traitors and they’d reveal the Underground Railroad. For the six years after the story ends she spent the winter in Canada, the spring and summer working in Cape May, New Jersey, or in Philadelphia, and made two trips a year into slave territory, one in the fall and another in the spring. She saved a lot of slaves in her life.
- Who are you today, María?
- Vignette by Judith Ortiz Cofer
- Setting: New York City, school, 20th century
- María lives with her abuela. She is told in school to come dressed as an outfit that shows the world how they really are for the Who You Are Day at school. There is people from many different countries and backgrounds in her school. Her English teacher, Mr. Golden, said in his class that they should think if they want to be poems or jokes. María chooses to wear things from people she loves (Mami, Papi, Uma, and Whoopee), including her abuela’s shawl, which she gave to her after noticing she had a piece from every important person to her. She felt elegant in school and when Mr. Golden asked her “Who are you today, María?”, she said “Today I am a poem”.
- The Medicine Bag
- Short Story by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
- Setting: a city in Iowa, Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, 20th century
- Every summer Martin (narrator) and his younger 10-year-old sister Cheryl always bragged about their 86-year-old Sioux grandpa (father of mom, Marie), Joe Iron Shell, who lived in the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. They exaggerated and made their grandpa’s reservations sound more glamorous since their friends only knew about Indians from TV and movies. They never showed grandpa’s picture. One day they saw grandpa coming down their neighborhood. He said he had undertaken a long journey (from South Dakota to Iowa) to come visit the family to know what their home was like and because he was lonely, but it was really because he thought he might not last until next summer and he had to pass the medicine bag to Martin. Martin didn’t want the medicine bag because it was a dirty leather pouch that was supposed to go on the neck. Martin was ashamed of his grandpa but when he brings his friends home one day grandpa somehow knew, and had dressed up nicely, his friends thought grandpa was awesome. The next day grandpa sends mom and Cheryl away to tell Martin about how his dad (Martin’s great-grandpa) had gotten the medicine bag from a vision quest to find a spirit guide for his life and how it had been passed for generations from the first Iron Shell. He gives Martin the medicine bag which contained a broken shell of an iron kettle, a pebble, and a piece of sacred sage (to which he must add a piece of prairie sage and neve open it again until it’s time to pass it on). Grandpa tells Martin there’s no need for him to wear it, which calms him down a lot. Grandpa soon dies and two weeks after Martin’s in the prairie of the reservation putting the sacred sage in his medicine bag.
- Paul Revere’s Ride
- Poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Setting: Boston, April 18, 1775
- This poem describes the night of April 18, 1775 (Paul Revere’s Ride). It starts in Boston, where Paul and a friend are talking about the British army. They think the soldiers are going to leave Boston that night, but they aren’t sure whether they will go by land or sea. Paul has a plan to warn people about the British coming, but he needs to know which direction they are taking. So the two men agree on a secret code: Paul’s friend will signal him by hanging one lantern in the church belfry (the tall tower in a church where the bells are hung) if the British are marching out on land, two lanterns if they are leaving in boats. After agreeing on this plan, Paul rows across the river and waits for the signal. Paul’s buddy in Boston snoops around and finds out that the British are going with the boats. So he climbs up to the church steeple, takes a moment to look around, sees the British ships, and hangs out his two lanterns. On the other side of the river, Paul is all ready to go. He sits on his horse, and watches the church. Suddenly, he sees the signal and takes off to let the people in the countryside know that the British are coming by sea. He races through the countryside, hitting a new town every hour and calling out to warn people in each place. By midnight he’s in Medford, by one he’s made it to Lexington, and by two, he gets to Concord.
- The Treasure of Lemon Brown
- Short Story by Walter Dean Myers
- Setting: Harlem, New York City, 20th century
- Greg Ridley is a fourteen-year-old boy who wants to play basketball after school. The problem is that his grades are not good. Greg’s father tells him that he cannot play basketball until his grades improve. To avoid another lecture from his father, Greg wanders off down the street. As the rain begins, Greg ducks in to an old abandoned building. There he meets Lemon Brown, a homeless man who has been staying in the building. Greg talks to Lemon Brown and learns that he was once a famous blues musician known as Sweet Lemon Brown. During their conversation, some young thugs enter the building to steal Lemon’s treasure. After Lemon runs the thugs off, he shows Greg his treasure, which was an old harmonica and fifty-year-old newspaper clippings praising his blues playing. Lemon tells Greg that his son was carrying this treasure when he died in the war, and that that’s one of the reasons why they have so much sentimental value to him.
- The Great Rat Hunt
- Memoir by Laurence Yep
- Setting: San Francisco, California, 20th Century
- When Laurence Yep was a boy, he had asthma, which made it hard for him to breathe. It was impossible for him to play sports with his father, Thomas, and brother, Eddy. He felt left out and thought his father considered him a failure and that his only true son was Eddy. A rat is found in the Yep’s grocery store in San Francisco They put traps which ended up being for mice and the rat just got the bait, poison pellets which the rat avoided, so Mr. Yep calls his exterminator friend, Pete Wong, the Cockroach King of Chinatown. They stayed with their Aunt Nancy and cousin Jackie while Pete fumigated the store. When the rat makes its way to the family house to escape the poisonous chemicals, Mr. Yep borrows a rifle from Henry Loo (a pharmacist who was one of the father’s fishing buddies) and asks his sons to help. He used to hunt quail so he had experience. Laurence agrees to help right away, but his brother refuses. When they’re hunting the rat it suddenly comes at them, he felt as it was the rat of all rats. Although they never do shoot the rat, hunting it together gives Laurence a different feeling about his father. The mother said they’d have to learn to live with the rat, but suddenly the rat disappeared; according to the father he scared it off, according to the mother it had laughed itself to death when Laurence and his dad ran. At the end dad goes to the storeroom and cuts and sandpapers a block of wood where he plans to hand the head as his and Laurence’s trophy for killing the rat of laughter, according to the mom. This was very meaningful to Laurence since Eddy and his dad always won sport trophies and he never won anything.
- My First Free Summer
- Memoir by Julia Alvarez
- Setting: Dominican Republic, 1960
- Julia Alvarez remembers never having a free summer. She attends summer school every year because she doesn’t see the point of learning to speak English. Her mother wants her daughter to learn English to prepare for political liberation of the Dominican Republic by the U.S. Alvarez’s father is, in fact, involved in an underground plot to help liberate the country from its dictatorship. At school Alvarez finally decides to concentrate, and she does win freedom from summer school. By this time, however, the friends and relatives she counted on as companions are fleeing to the United States. Secret police and massive arrests terrorize her family. One day, her mother announces that their papers and tickets have arrived. They are leaving for the United States. In the end they arrive at the U.S.
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