E2.2.B

Description: Analyze context to distinguish among denotative, connotative, and figurative meanings of words.
Maps to Reading Plus skills: 4B, 4B

Exemplars

4B: Interpreting Analogies

4B: Interpreting Analogies

Description: Interpreting Analogies

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: L-21

L-21

Grade level: 12
Word count: 3146 words
Author: Stephen Crane
Synopsis: Four men, trapped in a small boat after their ship sinks, face an uncertain future.
Excerpt: A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco, and by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high.

Question: The narrator compares sitting in the lifeboat to
  1. riding a wild horse.
  2. running through a dark, unfamiliar woods.
  3. falling from a cliff.
  4. sitting in a speeding carriage.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Describe how an author can use figurative language to create suspense and give an example from a selection.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions

4B: Interpreting Analogies

4B: Interpreting Analogies

Description: Interpreting Analogies

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: L-31

L-31

Grade level: 12
Word count: 2141 words
Author: Luke Cooper
Synopsis: Landscape architect Frederic Law Olmsted was a mastermind of great urban sanctuaries, including New York's Central Park.
Excerpt: The ability to create the illusion of seclusion in the heart of one of the world's busiest metropolises is a feat unmatched before or since. "This isn't a piece of natural landscape that someone has put a fence around," observed writer Adam Gopnik. "Just the opposite. It's a stage set. ... It's every bit as artificial as Disney World."

Question: What did writer Adam Gopnik mean when he described Central Park as "a stage set"?
  1. It was a man-made site with every detail added for a specific purpose.
  2. It was a piece of natural landscape surrounded by a fence to protect it.
  3. It was a place where people had to be quiet to experience the sounds of nature.
  4. It was a stage on which people could act out their frustrations with city life.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Choose an essay or speech you have read and describe how the author's use of figurative language helped to make the essay or speech effective and/or meaningful. Use details from the selection to explain and support your answer.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions