Date

Midterm Review Slides

Vocabulary Review✤ Steep is a verb which means to immerse or saturate in a

quality or substance.

✤ You can use it to express immersion in a fluid, gas, or abstract concept.

✤ So you can use it in this way:

✤ The series of problems left me steeped in bewilderment; I felt more confused than when I started reviewing for the midterm.

✤ Be careful not to use it as an adjective:

✤ The flooded hill was very steep with water. ----> The flooded hill was steeped in water.

Vocabulary Review

✤ Bate is another verb which means to hold back, subtract or withhold.

✤ It’s most commonly used in the past tense: bated.

✤ You can use it this way:

✤ He waited with bated breath as she walked down the hallway- maybe today would be the day that she finally acknowledged that he existed.

Vocabulary Review

✤ Pale is a noun which means an enclosure or a closed space.

✤ Therefore, it can only be used to describe a place. Don’t misuse it as a verb to mean “enclosed.”

✤ You can use it this way:

✤ She retreated into the small pale in the woods in order to plan knavery at the expense of the foolish mortals.

✤ You should not use it this way:

✤ They paled their dog into its kennel.

Vocabulary Review

✤ Tender, for our purposes and in the context of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, means to offer. It can also be used as an adjective to mean supple or soft. However, you are responsible for knowing its verb form.

✤ So, you could say:

✤ He tendered his notice of resignation after his boss screamed at him for the tenth time that month.

✤ But you wouldn’t say:

✤ She tendered her approach to punishing him after she saw that he was in fact telling the truth.

Vocabulary Review

✤ Pelting means paltry, insignificant, or modest. Modest in this sense means modest in quantity or importance; it is NOT synonymous with the word humble.

✤ Therefore, you could say:

✤ I was ravenous, and I could tell that the pelting serving of pasta she gave me was not going to be sufficient.

✤ But you couldn’t say:

✤ He was a very pelting person; he never boasted about his achievements.

✤ Pelting means paltry, insignificant, or modest. Modest in this sense means modest in quantity or importance; it is NOT synonymous with the word humble.

✤ Therefore, you could say:

✤ I was ravenous, and I could tell that the pelting serving of pasta she gave me was not going to be sufficient.

✤ But you couldn’t say:

✤ He was a very pelting person; he never boasted about his achievements.

Part of Speech Review

✤ Noun: person, place, or thing (this includes ideas)

✤ 1. common noun: everyday people, places or things: students, schools, book

✤ 2. proper noun: specific people, places, or things:

✤ Charlenys, Columbia Secondary School, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

✤ *Remember, you capitalize proper nouns!

Verbs

✤ Verbs: conveys an action, or a state of being:

✤ run, jump, study, exist, dread, worry, celebrate

✤ *A clause contains both a subject (must be a noun) and a verb. A phrase is a group of words that’s missing either a subject or a verb.

Adjectives

✤ Words that describe nouns and pronouns (words that take the place of nouns: I, we, you, she, he, it, they...)

✤ They answer the following questions:

✤ 1) What kind? fuzzy, warm, fat, sleepy, smart

✤ 2) How many? seven

✤ 3) Which one? worst, best, that [one]

Adverbs

✤ Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives and other adverbs

✤ They answer the following questions:

✤ 1) How? swiftly, gracefully, artfully

✤ 2) When? suddenly, finally, today

✤ 3) Where? there

✤ 4) To what extent? somewhat, very, extremely, literally, completely, almost

Review: Diction✤ Diction refers to the author’s choice of words. The perfect word is

precise, clear, and captures a moment or concept exactly.

✤ When analyzing diction, pay attention to the way that an author illustrates a work and creates a vivid picture through the precision of language.

✤ For example, compare the effect of the two sentences:

✤ 1) The messy girl threw her pasta on the floor and broke her plate.

✤ 2) The spoiled brat hurled the slop of pasta onto the floor and smashed her plate into bits.

✤ How does diction influence the effect of each sentence?

Connotation vs. Denotation

✤ Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word. When asked for the denotation you can define it by looking up the definition in the dictionary. (Note all the D’s: d for dictionary!)

✤ Connotation is the meaning of a word based on the associations a reader brings to it. This meaning is generally a result of all of the cultural meanings we associate with certain words.

✤ In General: Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary.

Define connotation vs. denotation

✤ Read the following pairs of words. They have the same denotation, but elicit different connotations. Which of these words has a more positive connotation?

✤ thrifty vs. penny-pinching

✤ pushy vs. aggressive

✤ handicapped vs. crippled

✤ chef vs. cook

✤ pretty vs. beautiful

Review: Syntax✤ Syntax is the way words are arranged in sentences. In other

words, syntax is sentence structure. Syntax includes these important elements:

*Sentence parts*Word order*Sentence length*Punctuation

✤ When analyzing an author’s use of syntax, you examine how they use word order, sentence parts (subjects, verbs, phrases and clauses) and sentence length to effect meaning.

Syntax: subject and verb

✤ The subject is the part of a sentence that expresses what the sentence is about. It’s the noun in the sentence that acts.

✤ The verb is the part of a sentence that expresses action or connects the subject with the other words in the sentence.

Syntax: phrase and clause

✤ A clause is a group of related words that has a subject and a verb.

✤ A phrase is a group of related words that has no subject or verb.

✤ A sentence fragment is a group of words that is punctuated like a sentence but is not really a sentence. There may not be a verb, or the words may not express a complete thought. It looks like a sentence but does not meet all of the criteria for being a sentence. Whenever she sees me. Why not? Despite the fact that.

Analyzing Syntax

✤ An author may use fragments to draw attention to a certain idea, or to force a reader to stop in the middle of a paragraph.

✤ Syntax is directly related to narrative pace, or the speed at which you read. Consider how a suspenseful passage might include a series of short sentences so that the reader can read quickly and become engaged by the building tension. Or, the writer might choose to use long, rambling sentences to describe the rolling hills of a countryside or the incoherent musings of an unstable narrator.

✤ Syntax can affect the mood of a work, the tension or suspense in a piece, or the overall tone of a character.

Grammar Review: Subject and Object

✤ A subject acts

✤ An object is acted upon.

✤ Example: Marissa ate the apple.

✤ The subject is Marissa (because she’s the one doing something, or eating the apple)

✤ The object in this sentence is the apple (because it’s just sitting there, waiting to be eaten).

Using pronouns to replace a noun

✤ Marissa ate the apple.

✤ ------> She ate the apple.

✤ -------> She ate it.

How to use pronouns with subjects and objects

✤ If you bring pronouns into the picture, the difference between subjects and objects matter.

✤ In another example: Marissa gives Briana an apple

✤ We can replace the girls’ names with the following pronouns:

✤ She gives her an apple.

✤ This is because (look at your chart!) She is a third person pronoun that takes the place of a subject, and her is a third person pronoun that takes the place of an object.

✤ We wouldn’t say “She gives she an apple” because Briana is an (indirect) object in this sentence.

Let’s look at all of other pronouns that can replace objects in a sentence: “Hurray!”the students cried with joy.

✤ Give Prof. Hart the apple says Prof. Hart.

✤ --------> Give me the apple says Prof. Hart

✤ I’m going to give you the apple.

✤ I gave him the apple.

✤ He gave us the apple.

✤ She gave them the apple.

What happens when we bring in Shakespeare’s use of familiar pronouns?✤ In modern English when using the second person, we use

the term “you” to replace both subjects and objects; however, Elizabethans would distinguish between these.

✤ For example:

✤ In the following modern sentences:

✤ I will give you an apple.

✤ You need to give me an apple.

✤ The subject and the object are both replaced by you.

✤ How would these change if we used the familiar Elizabethan pronouns?

✤ I will give you an apple

✤ becomes -----> I will give thee an apple.

✤ (Thee is an object in this sentence)

✤ You need to give me an apple.

✤ becomes -------> Thou need to give me an apple.

✤ (Thou is the subject of this sentence)

✤ Or maybe it would be Thou needest give me an apple.

What about possessive pronouns? ✤ The possessive pronoun in modern English are: my, mine,

his, her, its, our, your, yours and their, theirs.

✤ In the following sentence:

✤ Your mother is an insufferable idiot.

✤ Your would be replaced with Thy: it’s a possessive pronoun that replaces a possessive adjective (look at your chart!) because it modifies a noun (mother)

✤ -------> Thy mother is an insufferable idiot.

✤ Or maybe it would be: Thy mother is a motley-minded cankerblossom.

Possessive Pronouns (continued)

✤ When using a possessive pronoun that replaces a possessive noun you use yours or thine.

✤ Here is an example:

✤ The pencil is yours.

✤ The pencil is thine.

One quick notes about plural pronouns✤ In English, when you speak to a group of people (using the

2nd person) and you use a pronoun, you just use “you.”

✤ For example, instead of saying: Euripides, Paula and David are all getting A’s on their report cards. (That’s in third person)

✤ I could say: You are all getting A’s on your report card! (Second person)

✤ In Elizabethan English, when speaking to more than one person in 2nd person, you use ye.

✤ ----> Ye are all getting A’s on your report card!

A couple of quick reminders:

✤ its and their = possessive pronouns My dog lost its collar.

✤ Their dog lost its collar.

✤ it’s = a contraction = it is It’s a wonderful life.

✤ there = pronoun = a place Look over there!

✤ they’re = a contraction = they are They’re the stars of the show.

Critical Lens Feedback and Improvement

✤ The task of a critical lens essay is to apply a lens, which on the Regents exam is a quotation, to two texts. Therefore, your argument needs to be focused on how this particular quotation reveals a common theme or truth about the two texts.

✤ On your critical lens essay with the Mailer quotation, you needed to apply Mailer’s definition of a hero to a character from Like Water for Chocolate and one of the quincenera stories.

✤ You’ve been practicing applying various critical lenses to your readings all semester, the only difference with this task is that the lens is an idea expressed by a quotation.

Structure of the critical lens essay: Introduction

✤ Purpose of the Introduction:

✤ 1) To introduce the critical lens

✤ 2) To provide an interpretation of the critical lens: what does it mean?

✤ 3) To introduce the texts that you’ll apply the critical lens to

✤ 4) To provide a thesis statement, or overarching argument that captures how this lens applies to both texts.

How to write a successful introduction

✤ 1) You need to provide the quotation or lens: don’t just refer to “this quote” or “this lens”- incorporate it into your introduction!

✤ 2) You need to explain what the lens means: analyze it and provide an interpretation of its deeper meaning.

✤ 3) You need to introduce the texts you’ll use and any significant context that will help your reader understand your evidence: introduce the authors and titles of each. If appropriate, briefly describe what each piece is about.

✤ 4) You must have a thesis that combines the lens and how it applies specifically to both texts. For this essay you needed to answer the question: According to Mailer, how are Tita and Monica heroes?

Body Paragraphs

✤ Components of successful body paragraphs:

✤ 1) Topic sentence that sets up the content of your paragraph and acts as “mini thesis” that ties into your thesis statement.

✤ 2) Properly set up and cited evidence.

✤ 3) Analysis that explains the connections between your evidence and the critical lens.

✤ 4) Concluding sentence that wraps up the main idea of your paragraph.

Organization / Structure

✤ It may be easiest to focus on one text for each body paragraph.

✤ Another approach is to focus on one component or topic per body paragraph using both texts for each.

✤ Be careful to focus all of your analysis on proving how the critical lens applies to both texts.

Reminder:

✤ Be careful to properly cite your evidence and texts:

✤ A novel, or play should be underlined on a handwritten essay: Like Water for Chocolate A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

✤ Short stories and poems should be put in quotations:

✤ “Turning Fifteen” “A Celebration of Life” “Sonnet 18”