08/08/20
Karen Medina
05.08 Multiple Choice: Find the Focus
Complete the following steps for your assignment
Step One:
1. Print the Stem Focus worksheet, which contains two passages and a series of questions similar
to the ones you’ll see on the actual AP Language & Composition Exam.
2. As you read, annotate the passages and stems.
3. For each question stem, write a sentence or two to describe what you think is the FOCUS of each
question.
Stem Focus Worksheet
Questions 1–10. Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.
(1) The town sits in a vale between two rounded-off, thickly wooded mountains. Hot mineral waters pour
out of the mountainsides, and the hills for miles around erupt with springs, some of them famous and
commercial, with bottled water for sale, others trickling under rotten leaves in deep woods and known
only to the natives. From one spring the water gushes milky and sulphurous. From another it comes
forth laced with arsenic. Here it will be heavy with the taste of rocky earth, there, as sweet as rainwater.
Each spring possesses its magical healing properties and its devoted, believing imbibers. In 1541, on the
journey that proved to be his last, Hernando de Soto encountered friendly tribes at these springs. For a
thousand years before him the mound-building Indians who lived in the Mississippi Valley had come here
to cure their rheumatism and activate their sluggish bowels.
(2) The main street of town, cutting from northeast to southwest, is schizoid, lined on one side with
plate-glass store fronts and on the other with splendid white stucco bathhouses, each with its noble
portico and veranda, strung along the street like stones in an old-fashioned necklace. All but one of the
bathhouses are closed down now. At the head of the street, on a plateau, stands the multistoried
Arlington, a 1920's resort hotel and a veritable ducal palace in yellow sandstone. Opposite, fronted in
mirrors and glittering chrome, is what once was a gambling casino and is now a wax museum. "The
Southern Club," it was called in the days when the dice tumbled across the green baize and my father
waited for the results from Saratoga to come in over Western Union. Lots of other horsebooks operated
in that same neighborhood—the White Front, the Kentucky Club—some in backrooms and dives in
which no respectable person would be seen. But the Southern was another thing. Gamblers from
Chicago strolled in and out in their ice-cream suits and their two-tone shoes and nothing smaller than a
C-note in their pockets. Packards pulled up to the door and let out wealthy men with showy canes and
women in silk suits and alligator pumps who owned stables of thoroughbreds and next month would
travel to Churchill Downs. I saw this alien world in glimpses as Mother and I sat at the curb in the green
This study source was downloaded by 100000858936669 from CourseHero.com on 01-21-2023 11:05:38 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/75243306/0508-Multiple-Choice-Find-the-Focusdocx/
, Chevrolet, waiting for the last race at Belmont or Hialeah to be over so that my father could figure the
payoffs and come home to supper.
(3) The other realm was the usual realm, Middletown, Everyplace. Then it was frame houses, none very
new. Now it is brick ranches and splits, carports, inlaid nylon carpet, and draw-drapes. Now the roads are
lined with a pre-fab forest of Pizza Huts, Bonanzas, ninety kinds of hamburger stand, and gas stations,
some with an occasional Southern touch: a plaque, for example, that reads "Serve-U-Sef." In what I still
remember as horse pasture now stands a windowless high school—windowless—where classes range up
to one hundred, and the teacher may not be able to learn everybody's name. My old elementary school ,
a two-story brick thing that threatened to fall down, had windows that reached to the fourteen-foot
ceiling. We kept them shut only from November to February, for in this pleasant land the willows turn
green and the winds begin sweetening in March, and by April the iris and jonquils bloom so thickly in
every yard that you can smell them on the schoolroom air. On an April afternoon, we listened to the
creek rushing through the schoolyard and thought mostly about crawdads.
1. The passage as a whole is best described as
What is the focus of this question?
Rhetorical Situation. This question focuses on the rhetorical situation since it focuses on the
text’s exinge, knowing what the authors exinge is could help know the type of passage this is
which has to do with knowing the context which makes the text focused on rhetorical situation.
2. The speaker's reference to Hernando de Soto's visit to the springs in 1541 (paragraph 1) serves
primarily to
What is the focus of this question?
Style. Knowing the writer’s choice to make a reference to Hernando Soto’s visit is word choice
with makes the question focus on style.
3. With which of the following pairs does the speaker illustrate what she means by "schizoid" in the
first sentence of paragraph 2?
What is the focus of this question?
Reasoning and organization. The question is asking which of the pairs does the authors choice
to use the word “Schizoid” which makes the question focus on Reasoning and Organization.
4. In describing the bathhouses and the Arlington hotel (paragraph 2), the speaker emphasizes
their
What is the focus of this question?
Style, this question empathizes the word choice.
5. The sentence structure and diction of the sentences "Lots of other horsebooks . . . travel to
Churchill Downs" (paragraph 2) suggest that the scene is viewed by
This study source was downloaded by 100000858936669 from CourseHero.com on 01-21-2023 11:05:38 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/75243306/0508-Multiple-Choice-Find-the-Focusdocx/
Karen Medina
05.08 Multiple Choice: Find the Focus
Complete the following steps for your assignment
Step One:
1. Print the Stem Focus worksheet, which contains two passages and a series of questions similar
to the ones you’ll see on the actual AP Language & Composition Exam.
2. As you read, annotate the passages and stems.
3. For each question stem, write a sentence or two to describe what you think is the FOCUS of each
question.
Stem Focus Worksheet
Questions 1–10. Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.
(1) The town sits in a vale between two rounded-off, thickly wooded mountains. Hot mineral waters pour
out of the mountainsides, and the hills for miles around erupt with springs, some of them famous and
commercial, with bottled water for sale, others trickling under rotten leaves in deep woods and known
only to the natives. From one spring the water gushes milky and sulphurous. From another it comes
forth laced with arsenic. Here it will be heavy with the taste of rocky earth, there, as sweet as rainwater.
Each spring possesses its magical healing properties and its devoted, believing imbibers. In 1541, on the
journey that proved to be his last, Hernando de Soto encountered friendly tribes at these springs. For a
thousand years before him the mound-building Indians who lived in the Mississippi Valley had come here
to cure their rheumatism and activate their sluggish bowels.
(2) The main street of town, cutting from northeast to southwest, is schizoid, lined on one side with
plate-glass store fronts and on the other with splendid white stucco bathhouses, each with its noble
portico and veranda, strung along the street like stones in an old-fashioned necklace. All but one of the
bathhouses are closed down now. At the head of the street, on a plateau, stands the multistoried
Arlington, a 1920's resort hotel and a veritable ducal palace in yellow sandstone. Opposite, fronted in
mirrors and glittering chrome, is what once was a gambling casino and is now a wax museum. "The
Southern Club," it was called in the days when the dice tumbled across the green baize and my father
waited for the results from Saratoga to come in over Western Union. Lots of other horsebooks operated
in that same neighborhood—the White Front, the Kentucky Club—some in backrooms and dives in
which no respectable person would be seen. But the Southern was another thing. Gamblers from
Chicago strolled in and out in their ice-cream suits and their two-tone shoes and nothing smaller than a
C-note in their pockets. Packards pulled up to the door and let out wealthy men with showy canes and
women in silk suits and alligator pumps who owned stables of thoroughbreds and next month would
travel to Churchill Downs. I saw this alien world in glimpses as Mother and I sat at the curb in the green
This study source was downloaded by 100000858936669 from CourseHero.com on 01-21-2023 11:05:38 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/75243306/0508-Multiple-Choice-Find-the-Focusdocx/
, Chevrolet, waiting for the last race at Belmont or Hialeah to be over so that my father could figure the
payoffs and come home to supper.
(3) The other realm was the usual realm, Middletown, Everyplace. Then it was frame houses, none very
new. Now it is brick ranches and splits, carports, inlaid nylon carpet, and draw-drapes. Now the roads are
lined with a pre-fab forest of Pizza Huts, Bonanzas, ninety kinds of hamburger stand, and gas stations,
some with an occasional Southern touch: a plaque, for example, that reads "Serve-U-Sef." In what I still
remember as horse pasture now stands a windowless high school—windowless—where classes range up
to one hundred, and the teacher may not be able to learn everybody's name. My old elementary school ,
a two-story brick thing that threatened to fall down, had windows that reached to the fourteen-foot
ceiling. We kept them shut only from November to February, for in this pleasant land the willows turn
green and the winds begin sweetening in March, and by April the iris and jonquils bloom so thickly in
every yard that you can smell them on the schoolroom air. On an April afternoon, we listened to the
creek rushing through the schoolyard and thought mostly about crawdads.
1. The passage as a whole is best described as
What is the focus of this question?
Rhetorical Situation. This question focuses on the rhetorical situation since it focuses on the
text’s exinge, knowing what the authors exinge is could help know the type of passage this is
which has to do with knowing the context which makes the text focused on rhetorical situation.
2. The speaker's reference to Hernando de Soto's visit to the springs in 1541 (paragraph 1) serves
primarily to
What is the focus of this question?
Style. Knowing the writer’s choice to make a reference to Hernando Soto’s visit is word choice
with makes the question focus on style.
3. With which of the following pairs does the speaker illustrate what she means by "schizoid" in the
first sentence of paragraph 2?
What is the focus of this question?
Reasoning and organization. The question is asking which of the pairs does the authors choice
to use the word “Schizoid” which makes the question focus on Reasoning and Organization.
4. In describing the bathhouses and the Arlington hotel (paragraph 2), the speaker emphasizes
their
What is the focus of this question?
Style, this question empathizes the word choice.
5. The sentence structure and diction of the sentences "Lots of other horsebooks . . . travel to
Churchill Downs" (paragraph 2) suggest that the scene is viewed by
This study source was downloaded by 100000858936669 from CourseHero.com on 01-21-2023 11:05:38 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/75243306/0508-Multiple-Choice-Find-the-Focusdocx/
