Exam 4: Describing

Answer the following questions about the essay. -Lahiri speaks to her ____________ daily.

Answer the following questions about the essay. -Lahiri and her husband got married in _________________.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -What a difference from my early life, when there was no such way to describe me, when the most I could do was to clumsily and ineffectually explain.

How can you ensure that you are showing rather than telling your reader what they should know?

Mrs. McWeeney was dry, tight, small, and pig-eyed. She had hard gray hair pressed into waves that grasped her scalp like a migraine… . She wore a creaky white uniform and spongy ripple-soled nurse shoes that she painted white every week; we could watch the paint cracking and peeling off between Monday and Friday… . Mrs. McWeeney was unpredictable. She'd gnarl her face up for no reason while giving us our bedtime meds and slam back into the nursing station without a word. We'd have to wait for her to calm down before getting our nightly [medicine]; sometimes we waited for as long as half an hour. -Susanna Kaysen -What dominant impression does Susanna Kaysen communicate in these paragraphs?

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -My first book was published in 1999, and around then, on the cusp of a new century, the term "Indian-American" had become part of this country's vocabulary.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen.

Answer the following questions about the essay. -Jhumpa Lahiri begins her essay by stating that she has lived almost all of her life and intends to grow old in the United States. Why do you think this is relevant to the rest of the essay? Is this an effective way to begin the essay? Why or why not?

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -And the first thing I saw, the only thing I could see at first, was a magnificent bed.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -This was a wonderful clock to see, but after I heard it that first hour, then the next, and then always, this clock became an extravagant nuisance.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -I feel Indian not because of the time I've spent in India or because of my genetic composition but rather because of my parents' steadfast presence in my life.

Which of the following organizations is not common to descriptive writing?

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -There were no willows or sweet-smelling cassia trees, no garden pavilions , no benches sitting by a pond, no tubs of fish.

Choose the correct answer for each of the following questions about the essay. -What is the difference between Lahiri and her friends who identify as "Irish-American" or "Italian American"?

Choose the correct answer for each of the following questions about the essay. -How does the narrator feel about this time in her life?

A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil's edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire. Great green-and-yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun. -N. Scott Momaday -List three details that show rather than tell.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -In the evening, when there was nothing to do, we talked about the servants: who was clever, who was diligent , who was loyal.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -First Wife, her daughters … gone on a pilgrimage to another Buddhist temple.

Answer the following questions about the essay. -Explain why Lahiri's parents are so important to her identity as Indian.

Choose the correct definition for each of the following underlined words from the essay. -And then shehastily explained that Second Wife had told everyone not to expect us for another week at least.