Textbook Excerpt Two

EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH: PREPARING FOR ADVANCED PLACEMENT (Longman, 1987) was co-authored with husband John. After offering dozens of exercises modeled after typical English AP questions, the book added a tongue-in-cheek example of the sort of challenge the test development committee might pose if it ever decided to include more creative tasks for candidates. The following challenge with illustration was based on actual published instances of one-sentence compositions, such as the one-sentence essay on Mississippi that runs for five pages and serves as the preface to BIG WOODS: THE HUNTING STORIES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER (Random House, 1955) or, with a short sentence to set it up, the 425-word one-sentence monstrosity that Ernest Hemingway inserted in GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA (Scribner's, 1935, pp. 148-50).                                                                 ©2021 Nedra Pezold Roberts