AP* English Language and Composition Multiple Choice Emerson’s “Nature” Teacher Overview AP* is a trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board. The College Entrance Examination Board was not involved in the production of this material. Copyright © 2009 Laying the Foundation®, Inc., Dallas, TX. All rights reserved. Visit: www.layingthefoundation.org Multiple Choice Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature” Teacher Overview Levels of Thinking Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create Close Reading Grammar Composition Reading Strategies Phrases Annotation Participial Determining Author’s Purpose Clauses Determining Main Idea Dependent/Subordinate Generalization expletives Inference Independent Literary Elements Sentence Variety Character Sentence Beginnings antagonist/protagonist Sentence Combining motivation Syntax Techniques Detail Juxtaposition Diction Omission connotation asyndeton denotation ellipsis Imagery Parallelism Mood Polysyndeton Plot Rhetorical Fragment conflict suspense Point of View person perspective Style Theme Tone tone determined through diction, imagery, detail, point of view, figurative language, author’s style, and syntax Figures of Speech (Figurative Language) Metaphor Personification Simile Literary Techniques Characterization direct indirect Hyperbole (Overstatement) Irony Satire Understatement AP* is a trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board. The College Entrance Examination Board was not involved in the production of this material. Copyright © 2009 Laying the Foundation®, Inc., Dallas, TX. All rights reserved. Visit: www.layingthefoundation.org 1 Teacher Overview—Emerson’s “Nature” Multiple Choice Materials: Copies of this lesson. The final page of the lesson is designed to be taken out and used for later review. Instructions for the teacher appear in blue italics. Introduction: Test Structure Section I of the Advanced Placement* English exam is the multiple choice section. This section is 60 minutes long and consists of about 55 questions. The reading represents a variety of modes – AP Language: narration, argumentation, persuasion, description; AP Literature: poetry and prose, both fiction and nonfiction. The selections will vary in length from about 300 words to 700 words. Each selection is followed by 12 to 15 multiple choice questions based on content and style. The line-referenced questions will follow the order of the selections, but interspersed among them will be questions which cover the entire passage. The selection will give you everything you need to answer the questions, so it’s up to you to read carefully and think critically. You are not expected to have prior knowledge about the selection’s content. Use your knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses to form your strategy for getting the most correct answers you possibly can. By analyzing the questions you get wrong on practice tests and by determining why you missed them, you can begin to reach some understanding: • Do you read the stems too quickly? • Do you misread the choices and especially the correct ones? • Is one certain question type the hardest for you? • Can you see why the correct answer is better than your choice of a wrong answer? Copyright © 2009 Laying the Foundation®, Inc., Dallas, TX. All rights reserved. Visit: www.layingthefoundation.org 2 Teacher Overview—Emerson’s “Nature” Multiple Choice Activity One: Read the excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature” and answer the questions that accompany the text. This is intended to be a guided practice to work on as a larger group with the class. To speak truly, few adult persons can 1. According to Emerson, why do most people only see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At superficially see the sun? Most people only acknowledge the concrete (the heat, the light). They do not “see” clearly least they have a very superficial seeing. The enough to experience the joy in nature and in all its elements. sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but They do not acknowledge the connection between human beings and every part of the natural world, including the sun. 5 shines into the eye and the heart of a child. The 2. How does Emerson define “the lover of nature”? One whose inward and outward senses are truly adjusted to each lover of nature is he whose inward and outward other. He believes that a lover of nature experiences the senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who world with his senses and also with his spirit. 3. What might he mean by “the spirit of infancy”? The spirit has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of infancy is a way of looking at the world with innocence and a childlike openness to what it has to offer. of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and 4. Identify the metaphor in line 10. What is being compared? “…daily food” is the metaphor. The communion with nature 10 earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the is compared to food because to Emerson such communion is presence of nature, a wild delight runs through as necessary to the survival of the soul as is food to the body. 5. In context, what might “maugre” mean? Think of a the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- synonym to replace it. “maugre” means “in spite of” or he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent “notwithstanding.” 6. What is the antecedent of “he” in line 13? Man griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or 7. What is the effect of personifying Nature in lines 12-14? Nature becomes an entity with which man can have a 15 the summer alone, but every hour and season relationship. Nature is alive and real and dynamic, as if it yields its tribute of delight: for every hour and were a person. 8. In lines 14-19, Emerson employs what rhetorical device to change corresponds to and authorizes a different reveal the breadth of nature? Antithesis is the device. The juxtaposition of opposites highlights the broad spectrum of state of the mind, from breathless noon to everything in nature. grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits 9. “Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a 20 equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In mourning piece.” What does Emerson mean? Do you agree? Nature is the perfect place for man to exercise his heroism good health, the air is a cordial of incredible and survives in spite of his flaws. Answers will vary. virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow 10. What does it mean “to be glad to the brink of fear”? puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without What rhetorical device is employed in this expression? Both hyperbole and paradox are used in this phrase. having in my thoughts any occurrence of special Emerson suggests that the intense experience of communing with nature is both exhilarating and terrifying. 25 good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect 11. In the sentence in line 11, what words would normally be exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In considered contradictory to “special good fortune” (line 24- 25). “bare,” “puddles,”” twilight,” and “cloudy” the woods too, a man casts off his years, as a snake his slough, and at what period soever of 12. Explain the analogy of lines 27-28. Man sheds his way of looking at nature with jaded, limited vision for a new way that life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual is innocent and childlike. This casting off of the old for the new is repeated unceasingly throughout the natural world. 30 youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival 13. “Child” and “youth” are motifs representing what idea in is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should this paragraph? A perspective, and an attitude toward nature, open and unlimited. tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that Copyright © 2009 Laying the Foundation®, Inc., Dallas, TX. All rights reserved. Visit: www.layingthefoundation.org 3 Teacher Overview—Emerson’s “Nature” Multiple Choice 35 nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no 14. Of all things that might befall Emerson, what is the calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature one calamity that nature could not repair? Why would such a loss be devastating? He could not recover from cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- the loss of his eyesight because it is through the sense of sight that he experiences nature and maintains the my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted relationship with it. into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. 40 I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I 15. Discuss the paradoxes in lines 40-46. “ I am nothing-I see all.” “The name of the nearest friend see all; the currents of the Universal Being sounds foreign.” “To be brothers…is a trifle”. What circulate through me; I am part or particle of he means here is that to see nature in a new way makes the familiar now new and different. In addition, he God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then loses his individual identity but in becoming a part of the whole, he gains understanding. foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be 45 acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil 50 landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. 16. Define the word “occult” as it is used in line 55. The most appropriate denotation is “supernatural” or The greatest delight which the fields “mysterious.” and the woods minister, is the suggestion of an 17.