
Previously by this author: 7 Essential Modernist Literary Life Hacks.
A metaphor is a word or phrase in a foreign language that poets choose to include simply because they are pretentious.
The title of William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” provides an example of delusion.
When reviewing literature related to your essay topic, you should avoid sources that come from a country with which the United States has recently engaged in military conflict.
A discussion of a poet’s diction focuses on whether he or she wrote by hand, computer, typewriter, or Etch a Sketch™.
This week’s reading from Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft was about how a career in writing fiction is both lucrative and practical.
In a work of fiction, prose style is defined solely by the author’s choice of font (e.g., Courier New, Times New Roman, Book Antiqua).
Sentence length and prose rhythm are things that usually occur by accident, due to the nature of the English language.
In John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer,” Neddy Merrill never actually swims. The title is meant as a metaphor for Neddy’s attempts to “keep his head above water” in the “swimming pool of life.”
As an essayist, every piece of information you provide to your reader should be hypnotic.
The tone of your essay should seduce the reader with lyrical stylings the likes of which they have never encountered.
The following list includes the major components of rhetorical strategy often employed in a persuasive essay: panic, terror, outrage, catharsis.
Formal Reports are reserved for dealing with issues rooted in intergenerational conflict.
Formal Reports should never be handed in on Casual Fridays.
A Causal Analysis essay deals with a phenomenon or problem that isn’t really a big deal.
The body paragraphs of your essay should be printed in landscape format.
In Junot Diaz’s short story, “Fiesta 1980,” Papi’s relationship to “the Puerto Rican woman” can best be described as a collaboration between two avant-garde performance artists.
In your essays, you should not try to address anticipated objections to your arguments, because unless you are psychic it is impossible to know what other people are thinking.
Topic sentences must be presented at the end of an essay in an index.
In Kelly Link’s short story, “Stone Animals,” the child Henry loves most is Amanda the Panda.
In Kelly Link’s short story, “Stone Animals,” the child Henry loves most is Lil’ Peanut.
In Kelly Link’s short story, “Stone Animals,” the child Henry loves most is “the one he never had.”
In Stephen Marche’s essay “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, social media-induced loneliness is described as a worldwide epidemic, sparing only a tiny area on the U.S.’s northeastern seaboard known as “Rhode Island.”
Conclusions and recommendations at the end of an essay should always be written in Latin.
Your essay’s thesis statement should be a challenging puzzle, solvable by only the most quick-witted of readers.
The three types of proposal essays are: decent proposal, indecent proposal, Sharon Stone.
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SarahDances 143p · 525 weeks ago
The student who selected this response later went on to a lucrative career writing headlines for Fox News.
celtadri 122p · 525 weeks ago
(I thought the first one was going to be my favorite, until I got to "This week’s reading from Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft was about how a career in writing fiction is both lucrative and practical.")
Nimona 125p · 525 weeks ago
dakimel 122p · 525 weeks ago
charlie · 525 weeks ago
Also, some of these are correct, right?
tubatoothpaste 122p · 525 weeks ago
CleverManka 143p · 525 weeks ago
The tone of your essay should seduce the reader with lyrical stylings the likes of which they have never encountered.
Well, they're not bad goals...
gorebooth 120p · 525 weeks ago
I was surprised, on entering graduate school, to learn that this should have been the right answer.
CleverManka 143p · 525 weeks ago
Maryaed 109p · 524 weeks ago
bibliophibian 116p · 525 weeks ago
zwol 111p · 525 weeks ago
daisicles 95p · 525 weeks ago
littlehuntingcreek 135p · 525 weeks ago
bluewindgirl 111p · 525 weeks ago
RuncibleSpoon 107p · 525 weeks ago
bluewindgirl 111p · 525 weeks ago
RuncibleSpoon 107p · 524 weeks ago
ahhh · 525 weeks ago
Lethologica · 525 weeks ago
Bothari · 525 weeks ago
I worked a short-term temp job grading standardized tests once upon a time. My absolute favorite was reading the fourth grade essays/stories. "And then the alien said, 'I will suck your brain out with a bendy straw!'" "I screamed at the top of my big red lungs!"
Absotively 112p · 525 weeks ago
Bothari · 525 weeks ago
Some more favorites, now that I'm on my computer at home:
“I thinked and thinked and just to make a change of paste I thinked some more.”
“We were shivering with fearful, fearce, fear.”
“We went to monster.com but there were no monsters there. It was a grownup website.”
Maryaed 109p · 524 weeks ago
So wonderful! I would read a novel with that title.
anniekate76 107p · 525 weeks ago
http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Cheever_Swimmer.pdf
zachariahary 147p · 525 weeks ago
laylapalooza 93p · 525 weeks ago
NOOOOOOOOOO.
I don't know why this one made me cringe the most.
Unreadaethel 127p · 525 weeks ago
I mean, that's why we all read The Toast, so it seems like a reasonable answer.
Also, I hate troll options on multiple choice tests, because I always want to choose them. I'm not entirely sure what this reveals about my psyche, and I'm even less sure I want to.
redheadedwolf 115p · 524 weeks ago
betsymore 124p · 525 weeks ago
Though TBH I feel like if I made my students do this their essays would be a lot faster to grade.
redheadedwolf 115p · 524 weeks ago
I'm reminded of a time in my senior year of high school, we were surprised by a quiz on a Russian short story NO ONE had read. I got a 75%. I credit that to my decade-plus of years being a Voracious Reader giving me an edge in guessing what the most likely right answer was, and also because multiple-choice is often a crap way to test students.
nonvolleyball 98p · 524 weeks ago
one of my favorite teachers ever taught European History when I was in 11th grade; he was one of those awesome lovable curmudgeon types with a great sense of humor, & he was a big fan of joke answers on tests.
on one exam, there was a a multiple-choice question about the animal chiefly responsible for transmitting the plague, & almost everyone got it wrong, selecting "rats" instead of the correct answer, which was "fleas." after a heated debate--the fleas were ON the rats, so weren't the rats implicated as well, & also, the intro to the series of history-lesson videos we watched included a shot of rats climbing along ships' moorings with a title card referencing the Black Death--he begrudgingly gave credit for either answer.
...& then on the final, the same question appeared, & the choices were something like:
a) rats and only rats
b) rats being carried by fleas
c) fleas being carried by rats
d) fleas riding tiny flea-sized horses
e) unnecessarily forgiving history teachers
(I'm sure I'm not doing justice to the original, but I'm also sure that my parents wouldn't be interested in doing several hours worth of digging through the basement to see if a copy of a 15-year-old history test is among my personal archives, so you'll have to make do with this tribute, Tenacious D-style.)
Shannon · 517 weeks ago
Jen · 524 weeks ago
80% of them got it wrong.
Sigh.
Alyx · 524 weeks ago
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