Jessie O. Sizemore
Questions for “The Ambitious Guest”
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1. Why does the author begin the story with the fireside scene?
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2. How is the cheerfulness of the inside emphasized?
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3. What does the author mean by saying that the family had found the “herb, heart’s-ease?”
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4. Describe the White Hills.
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5. What picture does the word Notch suggest?
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6. Where does the story really begin?
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7. Give a brief sketch of the young stranger
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8. How does the young man’s enthusiasm affect the father; the mother; the grandmother; the daughter; the children?
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9. What is the “unutterable horror” of the catastrophe?
Composition
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1. Give a brief summary of the story in your own words.
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2. Prepare a newspaper story of the tragedy.
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3. Write a biographical sketch of the young man.
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4. Write a short, short story from one of the character’s points of view, assuming that the accident had not occurred.
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5. Write a paper telling about a related personal experience using a theme from the story:
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I. Explain the situation.
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II. Describe as effectively as you can your thoughts and feelings while involved in the experience.
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III. Explain the outcome; what people, event, or conditions helped you?
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IV. After the above assignment, write a character sketch about the person who might be involved in the situation you created. Be honest and objective, give personal qualities and background, important influences and experiences, and physical appearances.
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V. Take the character you have developed through the event you created by giving a full description of both, using dialogue and point of view.
I am hoping to get my students to understand the narrative technique of developing character and plot.
The American history teacher and I will work together to get students to understand the context and source of the materials we will be using. I will work to show how the form is the author’s vehicle for presenting his or her artistic creation.
Procedure
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1. Have students study the highlights of the times in which the author lived or lives. Better groups will be assigned entire stories; slower groups will be assigned parts, and I will read orally the beginning of the story to clarify different references and to introduce characters.
Questions for “Young Goodman Brown”
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1. Trace the background of Goodman Brown.
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2. What are the story’s main themes? Give a full explanation of each.
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3. Write a sentence or two which tell the story of Goodman Brown.
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4. What might the names symbolize: Goodman, Faith, etc.?
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5. How is the devil presented?
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6. How is the idea of tradition presented?
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7. How is the idea of salvation presented?
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8. Who might Goodman Brown be?
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9. How does the author present the past?
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10. How does Hawthorne present good and evil in his characters?
Questions of this kind should help students recognize Hawthorne’s style. Students will write character sketches, discuss and write about characters’ points of view, and describe settings.
Research
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1. New England Witchcraft.
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2. New England Indians: history and traditions.
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3. The Salem Delusion.
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4. The Puritan Stereotype.
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5. New England Towns in the late seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries.
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6. A school during these times.
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7. Law in New England during this period.
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8. Customs during this period.
These reports will be reviewed in class.
Write About the Story
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1. The name of the story.
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2. The author and something about him or her.
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3. A description of your favorite character.
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4. A short paragraph about an interesting minor character.
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5. Describe the opening or closing setting.
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6. Write a summary of the story in no more than six sentences.
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7. Describe or be able to discuss three of the following:
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a. The major character’s problems in growing up.
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b. The type of housing in the story.
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c. The clothing worn by the characters.
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d. The ideas of the major characters.
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e. The personality of a character.
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f. The education of a character.
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g. Your opinion.
_____ written by _____ is a(an) _____ story about _____ a _____ . The story, which takes place _____ during _____ is _____ .
The most important character(s) in the story is(are) _____ .
He/she/they is/are _____ who _____ .
His/her/their most important decision is when _____ .
The problem is finally solved when _____ .
I liked/disliked _____ because
The lessons that _____ teaches is that _____ .
I approve/disapprove of the ending because _____ .
The only change I might want to make in the story is that _____ .
I would recommend this book to other students who _____ because _____ .
Further Short Story Projects
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1. Have students research comments in American writers’ diaries, sketchbooks, notebooks, letters, etc.
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2. Have students discuss parallels to actual history.
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3. Try to get students to put characters into comparable roles in real life.
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4. Have them write descriptions of characters.
Suggested Reading
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories
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1. “The Gray Champion”
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2. “The Minister’s Black Veil”
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3. “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”
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4. “The Great Carbuncle”
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5. “David Swan”
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6. “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”
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7. “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
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8. “The Great Stone Face”
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9. “The Custom House”
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10. “Endicott and The Red Cross”
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11. “The Maypole of Merry Mount”
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12. “Peter Goldwaite’s Treasure”
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13. “Drowne’s Wooden Image”
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14. “Roger Malvin’s Burial”
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15. “The Snow Image”
Collections
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1.
Twice-Told Tales
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2.
Tales of the Province House
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3.
Mosses from An Old Manse
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4.
Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales
Novel
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1. Hawthorne’s Letters
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2. Edgar Allen Poe’s Review of Hawthorne’s
Twice-Told Tales
Individual reports will be given in class from this list.
Further Remarks on Teaching Literature
Universal themes will have to be explained to students. Man’s concern about birth, death, life, love, anger, parenthood, human relationships, ambition, fear, marriage, and family will help students understand character reactions in stories. Through the interaction of characters, they will understand that time and space do not change human behavior much. I will try to get students’ input in planning activities which will reveal characters’ internal and external conflicts. In a given situation, we will monitor individual responses to situations which create different behavior under pressures from other people, groups, and institutions. This will be done to motivate students to read selected literature. We will discuss how these outside pressures influence characters to act in specific ways.
We will get to know how an author reveals character. He may do so (1) by what a character says, (2) by how he says it, (3) by physical description, (4) by psychological description, (5) by probing what he thinks, (6) by what he does, (7) by what others say about him, (8) by his environment, (9) by his reaction to others, (10) by the reaction of other to him.
We will stress the importance of observation of surroundings and objects in the background and how important these things are to our reactions and responses. This will help reveal character in stories. Geographical locations, topography, and scenery will strengthen students’ awareness of physical settings. They will see how the author relates character to setting.
To get students to understand plot, we will start by finding out where and how they have heard the word “plot” used. I will let them plan things step by step. Then we will follow the chain of events in stories. We will follow character development through one episode after another to a climax and a conclusion. Some emphasis will be placed on how to identify a change of episode. I hope to get students to see how much unity can be given to human experience through the author’s plot.
Students will learn to associate fictional characters with human behavior. They will compare themes in the different genres we study. They will learn to contrast pastoral and mechanical, repose and tension, simple and complex, tranquillity and anxiety. We will look for other themes as we work with the unit.
Drama will help students realize how the power of language portrays human conditions. Students will see how playwrights create many-faceted characters as well as stereotyped ones. Students will get to know dramatic organization, the purpose of dialogue, climax, variety, human understanding, proportioning by the playwright, and humor and emotional warmth. Students will study transitions between scenes and settings, live action, the difference between comic and serious issues, and tragic consequences. We will discuss the division of plays, and they will create new dialogue and new scenes for a given play. I will review with them various techniques used by playwrights to reveal character. Some of the questions to be asked: What personal qualities do the characters reveal through conversation? Is there a change in character? What foreshadows a certain event or action? We will look for symbolism and imagery.
Students will learn how to do role-playing before classmates and will act out scenes they like. This will help them understand human beings and also themselves. They will realize that scripts are for the stage. Examples of class activities: Take a line or your favorite line and write a complete scene; divide class into troupes and rehearse scenes and present each to class; audition for character roles; direct a scene; write out the directions for a character to follow which correspond to the dialogue, including inflections, movement, gestures, lighting and sound; listen to dramatic recordings; and see live plays when possible.
Because the form is the meaning in poetry, the skill of reading poetry will be developed. We will discover imagery, symbols, metaphors, paradox, irony, metrics, rhythm, and patterns. Students will work to paraphrase poems and make judgments about them, and to recognize various forms. Working with poems will stimulate their imagination, stimulate their creative ability with words, and help them to understand life. We will collect the best in poetry that contains the ideas of innocence, tradition, salvation, and industrialism and the loss of innocence.
Students will get to know how poets use language to achieve a certain stylistic effect. After analyzing style, they should use alternative ways of expressing ideas, construct better sentences, and create a variety of sentences for the right occasion. Various forms of poetry will be studied, such as lyrics, sonnets, narratives, poems, and ballads. We will also touch upon the American hero in American folklore.
Writing will be a part of the entire course. Because of the immaturity of students’ construction and interpretation of sentences, I hope to see growth in these areas. I will get students to write all kinds of sentences; simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. This will help them become aware of the form of their language. Topics will be given which they will develop as fully as possible in one sentence. Sentences will grow into paragraphs, compositions, and themes. Well-constructed sentences from literature will be used. An example from The
Good Earth
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“All through the late spring and early summer the water rose and at last it lay like a great sea, lovely and idle, mirroring cloud and moon and willows and bamboos whose trunks were submerged.”
We will write paragraphs after students’ knowledge of sentence sense has increased. After they can write all kinds of sentences well, we will practice writing topic sentences and developing these topic sentences by using details, examples, comparisons, contrasts and summaries and conclusions. We hope to develop unity and clarity of thought. Besides emphasizing the presentation of ideas, we will give attention to the mechanics of writing. Class discussions will be held using the opaque projector to focus in on constant errors made by students. Persistence in errors will be dealt with in individual conferences.
During this year’s work, students will practice reading and writing about the best there is in American literature. We will continue to search for the best writings and a variety of styles, forms, and sources. I feel that before I can get my students to read and think critically about American literature, I have to use all the techniques 1 have included. I am expecting to get them to realize that American literature is a definite part of their heritage. I hope to see a change in their attitudes towards reading and in their choices of reading. I am sure students will gain insight into why America is America.
Sentence Sense
Subject
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Predicate
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What is talked about in a sentence.
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What is said about your subject.
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Simple Subjects
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Simple Predicates
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Talk about nouns and pronouns.
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Use verbs and verb phrases to talk about nouns and/or pronouns.
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Subjects Modified
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Predicates Modified
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Adjectives before and after nouns
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Adverbs before and after the verb
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and pronouns.
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and/or the verb phrase.
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Subjects with Prepositional
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Predicates with Prepositional
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Phrases
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Phrases
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Prepositional phrases used as
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Prepositional phrases used as adverbs.
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adjectives.
Noun Clauses as Subjects
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Noun Clauses in Predicates
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Gerunds as Subjects
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Gerunds in Predicates
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Infinitives as Subjects
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Infinitives in Predicates
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Participle Phrases in Predicates
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Sentence Patterns
S+V
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S+V+O
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S+V+IO+O
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S+LV+C
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S+V+C+OC
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Any pattern or any part of a pattern may be combined.
Notes
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1. Subjects are made from nouns and/or pronouns and can have modifiers.
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2. The verb or verb phrase introduces the predicate; everything after the verb is a part of the predicate.
Kinds of Sentences
Simple
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Compound
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Complex
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Compound-Complex
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Notes
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1. A
phrase
is a group of words used together.
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2. A
clause
is a group of words with a subject and a verb used together.
Noun Clauses
Students must be able to recognize noun clauses and how they work in sentences and also how they vary in position. They will work with transformation of sentences. Examples:.
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1. Someone discovered that the building was on fire.
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2. The trouble was that she had the pills, but no water.
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3. The idea that matter and energy are different forms of one reality occurred suddenly to the young scholar.
Notes
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1. Noun clauses are units of words which are used as nouns: subjects, direct and indirect objects, objects of prepositions, predicate nominatives, objective complements.
Making Complex Sentences
From these sentences make one sentence:
We streamed with perspiration.
We swarmed up the rope.
We came into the blast of cold wind.
We gasped like men.
We plunged into icy water.
Streaming with perspiration, we swarmed up the rope, and coming into the blast of cold wind, gasped like men plunged into icy water.
Identify each sentence as simple, compound, or complex.
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1. The rear tire needed no air, but the front tire did. _____
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2. The ball circled the rim of the basket and finally slipped in. _____
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3. Unless Henry can obtain a scholarship, he may not go to college next fall. _____
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4. Dad is unhappy about his golf score, which has not been improving lately. _____
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5. On this tour, you can take a side trip to Disney World at no extra cost. _____
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6. At the end of the season, the team was given a banquet and was presented with trophies. _____
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7. The campers said good-bye with regret; they would not meet again for a long time. _____
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8. The motor sputtered and then stalled. _____
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9. The motor sputtered before it stalled. _____
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10. Did you know that the onion is a lily? _____
Make a sentence for each of the kinds of sentences.