You may use any of the following for practice with your class...the passages used here are not in the "reading passage bank" for the final exam, so there is no chance that your class would get any of these passages as their final exam.

In the following passage, a writer presents a problem having to do with the way a culture functions.

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever.

Write an essay that analyzes this problem. As part of this essay, you’ll need to summarize the writer’s perception of this issue as a problem and indicate the signs of this problem you’ve seen in your own experience and observations. Discuss the possible consequences of this situation, and possible ways to address it. How might we as a society manage this problem?

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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In the following passage, a writer describes a view of writing, using analogy to dramatize what is involved in the writing process.

Surgeons don’t learn cutting skills by turning the knife on themselves. It feels like cutting your own flesh to take your own writing apart, rearrange it, and throw away large chunks. Use the knife on other people’s writing and you will learn quicker not only the outward techniques of good revising, but also the essential inner reaction that will lead you to those techniques: an intolerance for something that doesn’t work and a willingness to make changes even if it means discarding wonderful stuff. Once you get comfortable wielding the knife and seeing blood on the floor, it turns out to be easier to wield it on yourself.

Write an essay that explores this writer’s definition of writing, using your own experience in Writing 101 this quarter. You’ll need to include a summary of this writer’s point and a description of how this view of writing applies to your own experience with writing this quarter. In what ways did this view of writing match your own experience? In what ways, did it not match your experience?

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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In the following passage, a writer describes a view of writing, using analogy to dramatize what is involved in the writing process.

Peter Elbow Writing with Power

Write an essay that explores this writer’s definition of writing, using your own experience in Writing 101 this quarter. You’ll need to include a summary of this writer’s point and a description of how this view of writing applies to your own experience with writing this quarter. In what ways did this view of writing match your own experience? In what ways, did it not match your experience?

    It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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In the following passage, the writer presents a point of view on a social issue.

[We have an environmental crisis, but we feel we can adapt to it, rather than solve it.] Believe that we can adapt to just about anything is ultimately a kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react in time to save our skin. But in my view this confidence in our quick reflexes is baldy misplaced; indeed, a laziness in our spirit has estranged us from our truest selves and from the quickness and vitality of the world at large. We have been so seduced by industrial civilization’s promise to make our lives comfortable that we allow the synthetic routines of modern life to soothe us in an inauthentic world of our own making. Life can be easy, we assure ourselves. We need not suffer the heat or cold; we need not sow or reap or hunt and gather. We can heal the sick, fly through the air, light up the darkness and be entertained in our living rooms by orchestras and clowns whenever we like. And as our needs and whims are sated, we watch electronic images of nature’s destruction, distant famine, and apocalyptic warnings, all with the bone-weariness of the dammed. "What can we do?" we ask ourselves, already convinced that the realistic answer is nothing.

--Al Gore, Environmentalism of the Spirit.

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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In the following passage, a writer describes a view of writing, using analogy to dramatize what is involved in the writing process.

Feedback from someone I’m close to gives me confidence, or at least time to improve. Imagine that you are getting ready for a party and there is a person in your house who can check you out and assure that you look wonderful or, conversely, that you actually do look a little tiny tiny tiny bit heavier than usual in this one particular dress or suit or that red makes you look just a bit like you have sarcoptic mange. Of course you are disappointed for a moment, but then you are grateful that you are still in the privacy of your own home and there is time to change.

--Anne Lamont, Bird by Bird

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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Gossip is often so interesting that it impels many of us to violate the Golden Rule to "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Although we are likely to acknowledge that we would want embarrassing information about ourselves kept quiet, many of us refuse to be equally discreet concerning others’ sensitive secrets.

-- Joseph Telushkin "Words That Hurt, Words That Heal: How to Use Words Wisely and Well"

 

Write an essay that lays out your own position on this topic in response to this writer.

As you write your essay, include a description of the main issue, a summary of the author’s point of view, and your own viewpoint supported by your personal experience and observations.

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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Freewriting [fastwriting] is a process that encourages writers to explore the far corners of their minds by writing without stopping (usually for a given period of time.) This process can help writers get past a "blocked" feeling and can lead to new ideas and approaches at any stage in the writing process.

-- Judith Stanford Developing Connections

 

As you write your essay, include a description of the main issue, a summary of the author’s point of view, and your own viewpoint supported by your personal experience and observations.

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.

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In the following passage, a writer presents a problem having to do with the way a culture functions.

"I am visible - see this Indian face - yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They’d like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t, we haven’t. ..The whites in power want us people of color to barricade ourselves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us off one at a time with their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash and distort our history. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A misinformed people is a subjugated people."

Gloria Anzaldúa La Conciencia de la mestiza; Towards a New Consciousness

It is important that you read the passage carefully. Think about the issues before attempting to draft a response. There is no one right answer, as long as you develop your essay.