Essay test questions

Tomorrow is the Big day. Grade 4 kiddies take their end of the year sale unit test. The focus is on reading comprehension, listening and language arts. The speaking opportunity is next week. Everything must go!

It covers the final two chapters - history, time lines, bar graphs, maps, giraffes, gaffs, staffs and laughs.

Language Arts Essay Questions

Instructions. Read the questions. Answer the questions using complete sentences.

1. Why do you think it might be good to know your street address? Please explain.

2. When might you need a map? Can you tell why.

1. It's probably a good idea to know my street address inside the heavily fortified gated community on the old banana plantation because that's where older moronic perverse pedantic people take care of me. Actually two of them, the ones who connived me during a lustful interlude ten years ago leave early to make money. They take me shopping on weekends to reduce their abandonment guilt.

The other two - a comedy team from Vegas - do all the heavy lifting: washing, cleaning, cooking and rearranging antimatter. They pack my lucky lunch and tons of textbooks in a rolling suitcase, drive me to school in a black shiny SUV - the place surrounded by bamboo pavilions - and leave me alone to play with my catatonic friends and yell at high decibels.

I love noise and confusion and yelling. It's the only way to get people to pay attention to me!

2. The map is not the territory.

I hope I pass this test. My parents promised me a fantastic new toy if my score is higher than a bird can fly.

Metta.

Burad Badeed (sea bandit)

Dear Sea Bandits, burad badeed in Somali.

We are gathered here today to discuss our plans, options and future. Our ancestors, the great, magnificent, wise, and amazing visionaries were blessed with the ability to see and write the future.

They came from the vast deep interior. Wind swept dunes on shifting grains of sand. Time and water and boredom was their destiny. Their vision extended past mud, water, sand, gravel and volcanic sediment. They reached the churning violent sea of foaming blue. They fished. They repaired nets and roasted camel meat on open fires brimming with stars.

Sea became home. They worshiped currents.

Then, one day, large space ships invaded their coastal domain names, tribal connections, village dialects, identities, and simple way of life. The space ships plundered deep long and wide, cutting a swath of exploratory hatcheries.

Tuna, blue marlin, sharks, sardines, turtles, goldfish, squid, salmon, trout, octopus, sea snails, whales, manta rays and millions of minnows named Nemo departed their aqualung existence destined for plates and bowls of greedy capitalistic eaters.

Our children, wives, and families went hungry. They ate desert dust and deserted dreams.

Our council elders gathered. "We have lost of way of life. We are suffering. We need new delicious decisions and directions."

"Yes," agreed the young and restless. "Let's take to the high seas and become pirates and bandits and heroes. We will save the human race from extinction, from the space ships. We will intercept and board foreign vessels. We will hold the crew and cargo hostage. We will demand huge sums of cash."

"Cash is King! Long live the King!"

They sailed forth on their quest for adventure and booty led by Captain Hook and his merry band of pranksters.

"Ahoy mates and a bottle of rum, ho-ho heave ho here we go." They sailed into eternity's sunset.

Metta.

Sleepy Heads

It is a Monday at 6:45.

They call it Stormy Monday...and Tuesday is just as bad...

Someone wearing a shirt made from papyrus stands in front of an open rusty green iron gate to welcome green students.

Martial Catholic music blares from tinny loudspeakers. The church is under permanent construction. It is filled with towering grey artificial plastic golden arches made of compressed dust. Air conditioning ducts lie scattered in the vestibule, purple garments hanging by a broken thread in a chastity of lotus blossoms. A  sharp shaft of blessed light from heaven plays along a contorted floor wearing cracked bells tolling at a nearby school. The church has gone underground in deep dark shadows filled with sin, jealousy, regret, sloth, lies, and enough parking spaces for a choir of angelic forms in the rising middle class.

Miles of cars and black tinted SUVs pull up at the entrance. Sleepy-eyed kids extricate themselves from interior dull air conditioned nightmares. A green whistle blower directs traffic.

Blue clad office boys unload suitcases filled with text books, water bottles, lunch baskets, severed cultural connections and maps of the universe. Tired, sleep deprived children stand passive, waiting for someone - a maid, a driver, a mom, a dad, a perfect stranger to hand them a suitcase handle, a plastic grip on life.

They drag their cumbersome baggage along recently mopped tile floors, through a very narrow gate wearing a shiny silver lock, around corners and hoist it onto little shoulders, or drag it clattering up two flights of stairs.

Click-clack-click-clack, down long empty corridors filled with echoes of childhood.

An elementary girl waits in the sun. Her right hand is empty. Exhaust from idling cars and trucks fills the air. It is choking everyone.

She is exasperated. She looks angry, tired and completely bored. Suddenly she begins to rapidly open and close her empty right hand. It opens and closes with a desperate spasmodic fever. She stares straight ahead, her brown eyes locked on green gates. She sees a beautiful green tropical distinct distant rain forest. She smells wild purple orchids inside deep shade near a flowing river. It is cool and refreshing.

"Give it to me! Give it to me!" says her grasping hand. Someone hands her a plastic suitcase handle. She drags her baggage into a cave.

Metta.

Applied Appliance English

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. On. It rhymes with song, gong, long gone.

It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m. I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in the day. Class will meet twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and be prepared. Nothing more, nothing less.

We are gathered here today in the glorious People's Appliance Factory #8 to begin our basic, simple English lessons.

Your supervisor informs me you are here both by choice and chance. You have the choice and this is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance.

Now, I know most of you have been working since early morning in the factory. It is the end of another long mind numbing tedious grueling day on the killing floor.

English has brought us together. We face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said language with meaning. To hopefully become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

We will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills. Reading and listening are foundations in your learning process. Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as the Chinese say, said, did, done.

We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English connections.

They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens!

These machines are now an important part of everyone's life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It's like English, putting words together makes a simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish.

Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool I would like you to consider the following questions. Please answer them using your basic English.

Why am I here? Am I a machine, a tool? What exactly is a machine? What is my motivation to learn English?

Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to complete the assigned tasks and arrive on time. Her management style instructed me to use fear as a form of discipline with you. We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of failure. Fear of not meeting social expectations. Fear of ______.

Thank you for your attention. See you next week when we discuss parts and functions of a washing machine. 

Metta.

Before

Before planting MK 69

between a wild bonsai and bamboo he regained consciousness around 5:18 a.m.

The village was dark. "Twilight in reverse," sang the full throated song bird. It was in a large tree nearby. It cautioned him to be diverse, peaceful and open. It warbled one short trill, paused, trilled a long solitary note, paused, trilled short and silenced.

He heard it. Clearly. He lit a stick of Tibetan incense. He unlocked the front and back doors as a floor fan fanned new air. The bird trilled, hearing bolts slide open. He stepped out. A series of open white and purple orchids shared their aroma dream. Inhaling smells and bird songs he scattered bread crumbs on a path.

He whistled in return, establishing a connection.

People in the village woke before dawn. Young servant girls swept leaves from stones. Dark eyed laconic girls wrapped linens around skeletons, wringing their flesh, their fibers before hanging them on portable stainless steel collapsable folding structures to dry inside gray flowing fumes of billowing smoke from burning trash dancing over a chipped sky high wall decorated with gleaming shards of green glass and rusty barb wire - plastic bags, boxes, banana and coconut leaves, clothing, feathers, Styrofoam happy meals, cardboard, plywood, textbooks, comprehension checks and balances, monetary social addictions and so on.

Fear sang her song accompanied by a young girl spoon feeding Chinese children before they were stolen by a gang of traffickers from the coast. A young boy's value was between $3,500 and $5,000. Negotiate.

The one-child policy created a desperate daily search for heirs. Losing face in the village was tantamount to public humiliation.

Before a girl swept she wept.

Metta.

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