In the fullness
of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in the evening the
schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths and festoons of
foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in his great chair upon a raised
platform, with his blackboard behind him. He was looking tolerably mellow.
Three rows of benches on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by
the dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back
of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were
seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows
of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows
of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin
and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient
trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair. All
the rest of the house was filled with non-participating scholars.
The exercises
began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "You'd scarce
expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage," etc. -- accompanying
himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might
have used -- supposing the machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got
through safely, though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he
made his manufactured bow and retired.
A little
shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc., performed a
compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat down flushed and
happy.
First off, I want to say that I saw a great connection between Mark Twain and my author, Herman Melville. They both wrote similar types of novels, adventure novels that succeeded well in telling an interesting story, even though Twain’s novels involved less dark themes and constant death. They are both enjoyable and interesting authors. From the passage you used for the prose multiple choice questions, I got a sense of his writing style fairly quickly and it immediately reminded me of Melville.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading your questions, the one thing I would improve on would be to make them more specific. For example, the question in number 3 could have many different answers to it, and when I took it, I felt that it could have gone in multiple directions. Also, to make it AP style, each question typically has at least five answer choices, that fifth one makes it much more difficult. If you ever plan on making more multiple choice questions in the future, I remember that in AP Comp we looked at the types of answers that are usually included in each question, like the distracter, etc. and understanding the answers better helped me better understand the question.