Week Five Assignment

10/2-4/2007

1.  Read and Respond:

 

      Tuesday:  Read Oliver Twist, chapters 1-3.  Answer the following questions in complete, thoughtful sentences (due October 4).

Chapter 1:  Tell what we know of the baby’s birth.  What dark hint does the narrator give us of the child’s future?

Chapter 2:  What impression do we have of the workhouse?  Of Mr. Bumble?  What does Oliver suffer punishment for?

Chapter 3:  Describe Mr. Gamfield.  How is Oliver saved from going with him?

                Thursday:   Read chapters 4-9.  Summarize each chapter in two or three sentences (due October 16).

 

2.  Vocabulary:

      Learn the definitions and spelling of the following words.  Use three of them somewhere in your writing this week (italicize or underline them).  Quiz Tuesday, 10/9.

1.  Inculcate:  To impress something upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instill.  "In the jungle, might is right, nor does it take long to inculcate this axiom in the mind of a jungle dweller, regardless of what his past training may have been" (Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Son of Tarzan).

2.  Infrastructure:  The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or a society, such as transportation, water and power lines, and public institutions, such as schools, post offices and prisons.

3.  Interpolate:  To insert or introduce between other elements or parts; to insert material into a text.  To change or falsify a text with new or incorrect material.

4.  Irony:  The use of words to express something different to and opposite of their literal meaning; incongruity between what one might expect and what actually occurs.

5.  Jejune:  Not interesting, dull; lacking maturity, childish.

6.  Kinetic:  Of, relating to, or produced by motion.

7.  Kowtow:  To kneel and touch the forehead to the ground in expression of deep respect, worship, oe submission, as formerly done in China; to show servile deference.

8.  Laissez faire:  An economic doctrine that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free enterprise system to operate.

9.  Lexicon:  A dictionary; a stock of terms used in a particular profession, subject, or style; a vocabulary.  The lexicon of anatomy includes terms such as "aorta" and "duodenum."

10.  Loquacious:  Very talkative; garrulous.

 

 

3.  Write:

       Think about the chain of events that brings Silas from despair to hope, and from isolation to community.  Write an essay in which you discuss the events, people, or ideas that influence Marner’s transformation.  Consider how the light (gold) imagery provides a ribbon that links it all together.  Begin by articulating the central issue of his development as you see it:  How is he different at the end of the story?  Then, in a simple declarative sentence, state the means of his change.  The sections of your paper should each consider and discuss one influence and how it worked on him.  Link them together with the symbols of light and gold (750 words; due Thursday, October 18).

                In the text of your paper include the following elements:  two colons; two appositives; two nominative absolutes.

4.  Finger Exercise:

      Bring your Kaplan SAT book to class on October 16.