Chapter 7 - Using Inference to Implied Main Ideas - Exercise

“CRCB” – Chapter 7: Using Inference to Identify Implied Main Ideas – Exercises

Learning Journal – Page 211:
In your journal, write down your definition of the term inference. What do you think it mean when someone says they inferred an idea from a reading? What do you think it means when your instructor says that an author implied a certain idea in a textbook chapter?

I am not entirely sure what the word inference means to be honest. When someone says they inferred an idea from a reading, I think that means they got or received an idea from a reading. If an author implies a certain idea in a textbook chapter, I think that means that they suggested an idea.


Exercise 7d - Setting the Tone – Page 219:
Read the following excerpts and circle the word in the list that follows each that you believe best matches the author’s tone. Use the italicized words as guides in making your decisions. The first one is modeled for you.
(Instead of circling the answers, I put them in red)

1. The body of Richard Milhouse Nixon was scarcely in the ground when the struggle for control of his legacy had begun. That day on the place, the dark forces that haunted Nixon in life seemed to reach beyond the grave. Somewhere between the two coasts, Ed Cox, Tricia’s New York attorney husband, brought up a plan to ensure the Nixon library would be tightly controlled by the family rather than by hired hands.

Source: Adapted from “Nixon Daughters Spar over Library,” The Detroit News, April 28, 2002, p.8a

The tone of this excerpt can best be described as:
A. Joyful
B. Sarcastic
C. Troubled
D. Inspirational

2. I used to dread coming home at night. I’d go around the side of the house, where there was a window that looked in the kitchen. I’d stand in the dark and look inside and try to judge what kind of night it was going to be. Mom had a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. When she was sober, she was the sweetest, most sensitive, loving, and intelligent person you could ever meet. But when she was drunk she was a holy terror.

Source: General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Peter Petre, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf: The Autobiography: It Doesn’t Take a Hero (New York: Bantam Book, 1992), p. 19

The tone of this excerpt can best be described as:
A. Intense
B. Religious
C. Angry
D. Sarcastic

3. Hassling innocent people for class-trip money is a cherished American student tradition. The trip to Washington is considered the be the ultimate educational event – a chance for your people to visit their nation’s capital and see, in person, how far they can stick their tongues into one another’s mouths. Because heavy petting in the back of the bus is a major element of every class trip. I don’t care if it’s the senior class of the Extremely Christian Academy for Unattractive Young People Wearing Chastity Belts; I don’t care if every single chaperone holds the rank of ayatollah or higher. Once those buses get rolling, there is gong to be some saliva exchanged.

Source: Dave Berry, Dave Berry Hits Below the Beltway (New York: Random House, 2001), p.67

The tone of this excerpt can best be described as:
A. Happy
B. Authoritative
C. Humorous
D. Angry

4. I want a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs, a wife who make love passionately and eagerly when I feel like it, a wife who makes sure that I am satisfied. And, of course, I want a wife who will not demand sexual attention when I am not in the mood for it. I want a wife who assumes that complete responsibility for birth control, because I do not want more children. I want a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me so that I do not have to clutter up my intellectual life with jealousies. And I want a wife who understands that my sexual needs may entail more than a strict adherence to monogamy. I must, after all, be able to relate to people as fully as possible.
If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the first wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free. When I am through with school and have a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties. My God, who wouldn’t want a wife.

Source: Judy Syfers, “I Want a Wife” from S. Barnet et al., Literature for Composition (New York: HarperCollins Customs Books, 1993), p. 776

The tone of this excerpt can be best described as:
A. Comforting
B. Mysterious
C. Sarcastic
D. Religious