grade 8 english

Grade 8English

Oak Meadow

Coursebook

Oak Meadow, Inc.Post Office Box 1346

Brattleboro, Vermont 05302-1346oakmeadow.com

Item #b082010

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Grade

8 Contents

Introduction ...................................................................... ix

Lesson 1: The Giver, Chapters 1–6 ................................ 18Writing About Writing

Reviewing Outlines

Reading is Fundamental!

Lesson 2: The Giver, Chapters 7–11 .............................. 22Word Choice

Overdone Phrases & Empty Expressions

Synonym Toast, Part I

Lesson 3: The Giver, Chapters 12–16 ............................ 25Prefixes & Suffixes

Synonym Toast, Part II

Lesson 4: The Giver, Chapters 17–23 ............................ 28It Is What It Is

Lesson 5: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapters 1–4 .............................................................. 31Adjectives & Adverbs

Comparatives & Superlatives

Requiem for an Apostrophe

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Contents Grade 8 English

Lesson 6: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapters 5–13 ............................................................ 36Verbs

Dialect & Slang

Onomatopoeia & Alliteration

Clichés

Serious Serials

Lesson 7: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapters 14–24 ......................................................... 39Personification

Sentence DNA

Lesson 8: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapters 25–35 ......................................................... 43Prepositions

Between the Lines, Part I

Lesson 9: Lord of the Flies, Chapters 1–2 ....................... 46Symbolism

Colons & Semicolons

Parentheses & Dashes

Between the Lines, Part II

Lesson 10: Lord of the Flies, Chapters 3–4 ..................... 50Transitions

Don’t Quote Me

Lesson 11: Lord of the Flies, Chapters 5–7 ..................... 54Sentence Fragments & Run-Ons

In Parentheses

Lesson 12: Lord of the Flies, Chapters 8–10 .................. 56Hyperbole

Semi-Tough

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Grade 8 English Contents

Lesson 13: Lord of the Flies, Chapters 11–12 ................ 60Parallel Construction

Sic ‘em

Lesson 14: A Wrinkle in Time, Chapters 1–3 ................. 63Foreshadowing

Misplaced & Dangling Modifiers

Literally, Literally!

Lesson 15: A Wrinkle in Time, Chapters 4–5 ................. 68Each of None

Lesson 16: A Wrinkle in Time, Chapters 6–7 ................. 71Sentence Combining

A Case of Pronouns

Lesson 17: A Wrinkle in Time, Chapters 8–10 ............... 74Sentence Variety

We Are in Agreement

Lesson 18: A Wrinkle in Time, Chapters 11–12 ............ 76Repetition

Stream-of-Consciousness

License to (mis)Spell

Lesson 19: Call of the Wild, Chapters 1–2 ..................... 80Tone

Paragraphs

Do You, Like, Like “Like?”

Lesson 20: Call of the Wild, Chapters 3–4 ..................... 84Character Development

The Kids Are All Right

Lesson 21: Call of the Wild, Chapters 5–6 ..................... 87Another Lot of Bother

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Lesson 22: Call of the Wild, Chapter 7 ........................... 89Setting

Among, Between Friends

Lesson 23: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 1–5........................... 93Plot

Effect an Affect

Lesson 24: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 6–10 ........................ 98Dialogue

Point of View

Listen!

Lesson 25: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 11–16 .................... 101Three’s a Crowd

Lesson 26: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 17–24 .................... 104Drafting

Four’s a Crowd

Lesson 27: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 25–30 .................... 107Interviews

Love Letters

Lesson 28: Tom Sawyer, Chapters 31–35 .................... 111Reviews

Galling Gallicisms, Part I

Lesson 29: The Hobbit, Chapters 1–2 ......................... 114Simile & Metaphor

Galling Gallicisms, Part II

Lesson 30: The Hobbit, Chapters 3–4 ......................... 117Limericks & Haiku

If I Were in the Mood


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Lesson 31:The Hobbit, Chapters 5–6 .......................... 120Maps

Check Mate

Lesson 32: The Hobbit, Chapters 7–8 ......................... 123Greeting Cards

Tell it Slant

Lesson 33: The Hobbit, Chapters 9–11 ....................... 126Word Games

In Your Own Words

Lesson 34: The Hobbit, Chapters 12–14 ..................... 128Advertising

Trick and Treat

Lesson 35: The Hobbit, Chapters 15–17 ..................... 132Get Back

Lesson 36: The Hobbit, Chapters 18–19 ..................... 135News

All the News That Fits

Final Grammar Exam .................................................. 139

English Manual ..........................................219

Unit I: Spectacular Spelling ......................................... 223

Unit II: Great Grammar ............................................... 235

Unit III: Sensational Sentences .................................... 255

Unit IV: Concise Compositions ................................... 271

Grade 8 English Contents

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Notes


Student Planner—Lesson 3 Date__________

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Lesson

Grade 8

3The Giver, Chapters 12-16This week we’ll look at the structure of words — their roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Strunk & White also have a few words to say about style, which will be helpful as you begin to consider the essay you’ll be writing for The Giver next week.

Reading

1. Read page 7 in 100 Days.

2. Read Reminders 1-2 in Strunk & White (page 70).

3. Continue reading and taking notes for your essays on The Giver. This week, read Chapters 12-16. Begin working on the rough drafts of your responses to the questions about this book.

Vocabulary

abuzz council ecstatic placid

admonition counsel exempt seldom

assimilate daub obsolete sinuous

assuage distend ominous wry

Assignments

1. Choose five prefixes and five suffixes from page 7 of 100 Days, and, as described in the exercise, make your own list of words. You do not need to use all of the prefixes and suffixes listed.

2. Complete the exercise on page 8 of 100 Days. Write a short story about a real or imaginary trip. Your story should be at least several paragraphs long, and it should use a healthy selection of words with prefixes and suffixes.

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The Giver, Chapters 12–16

(continued)

Lesson 3 Grade 8 English

Synonym Toast, Part IILast week we discussed the way English acquired new words from Old Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries, while also retaining English words that had similar meanings.

The same phenomenon occurred again, on a much greater scale, when England was invaded by Norman conquerors in 1066. Normandy is a region in northern France, and the Normans tried to “Frenchify” all of England and make it part of their empire. Only French was spoken at the royal court. Law, business, and the arts were also conducted in French. Eventually, of course, English survived and thrived, but it had absorbed thousands of French words in the process. Again, many of the Old English words hung around even as they were joined by new words from French that meant substantially the same thing. Here is a brief sample:

Old English French

axe hatchet ask demand bit morsel wish desire room chamber start commence answer respond freedom liberty hard difficult

Social standing played an important role in how these words were used and adapted. Since the Normans were the conquerors, they, of course, were the rulers. They lived in castles and manors and lorded it over the countryside, while the English peasants worked the land. The English provided the food, and the Normans enjoyed it at table. This is why we have such different words for some of the meats that we eat, and the animals from whom that meat comes:

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Grade 8 English Lesson 3

Old English French

cow beef sheep mutton calf veal deer venison pig pork

Although the incredible variety of the English language can cause confusion and the occasional nervous breakdown, it’s this depth that gives English its flexibility, resiliency, and colorful character. As we ponder the daunting word choices we have available to us, we can be thankful that English has been through hard times in the past and emerged stronger and more diverse than ever.

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Notes


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Grade 8

4The Giver, Chapters 17–23By the end of this week you should finish reading The Giver. You’ll also read the first Rule in Strunk & White, which covers forming possessives. This week’s writing instruction also addresses this topic, and we have a related exercise for you to complete as well.

Reading

1. Read Rule 1 in Strunk & White (page 1).

2. Finish reading The Giver this week, and submit your essays. The essay questions appear below.

Vocabulary

augment impede malign solace

emphatic incision pastime taut

exquisite languid permeate vigilant

flag [verb] lethargy rueful yearn

Assignments

1. Complete your essay on The Giver. A 2-3 page discussion of at least three of the questions below is due at the end of this week.

This will be your first “combined essay,” in which you’ll write a single essay that answers at least three of the given questions. Choose which questions you’re going to concentrate on, arrange your essay in a clear, logical manner, and make sure that you address each question. The overall subject, or “thesis,” of your essay is up to you.

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Note: For each of the three questions you choose, include specific quotes and examples from the book to help present your thoughts and feelings. Proofread your answers carefully, making any necessary corrections. Type or write your final draft in pen, as neatly as possible.

a. What are the responsibilities of citizens of the community described in this book?

b. How do they compare with the freedoms and responsibilities you enjoy as a citizen of your community?

c. Why was the giving and receiving of memories both a joyful and painful thing?

d. Describe Jonas’s slow awakening and disillusionment with the society in which he lived.

e. What do you think about the way of life in Jonas’s world?

f. Discuss Jonas’s important decision at the end of the book, and the impact it would have on the whole community.

2. Read this week’s writing instruction, below, and complete the accompanying exercise.

It Is What It IsThe word it, so small and unassuming, gives us a lot of trouble. It’s no mistake that Rule #1 in Strunk & White concerns it. Study this rule, and complete the exercise below. We often have difficulty with the possessive form of it, because other possessives always use apostrophes. Therefore, we think, the possessive of it should have one too. But its is a possessive pronoun, along with mine, yours and theirs, and these do not use apostrophes.

Apostrophes, much maligned and often abused, have two proper functions. First, they denote contractions, meaning that one or more letters have been removed from a word or pair of words. Can’t, won’t, she’ll, I’d, and so forth. Second, they are used for possessives. The rules for creating possessives are simple, though they are often misunderstood:

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(continued)


To create the possessive of a singular noun, add an apostrophe and an s, no matter what. As Strunk & White point out, this rule holds true even if the result looks awkward:

Britney Spears’s new album the ox’s tail

jazz’s fans Alger Hiss’s autobiography

For plural possessives, check the end of the word first. If it ends in s, as most plural nouns do, simply add an apostrophe:

the cats’ owners a lovers’ quarrel

the drummers’ salute my glasses’ lenses

If the plural noun does not end in s, you simply provide one, preceded by an apostrophe:

the children’s hour the mice’s hiding places

the men’s room the oxen’s tails

Remember, however, that it does not follow these rules, because it is not a noun — it is a pronoun. Thus it only uses an apostrophe as a contraction, not as a possessive.

Exercise

Fill in each blank below with either its or it’s.

1. The flower opened _________ petals to the sun.

2. _________ not the heat that gets you, _________ the humidity.

3. _________ energy spent, the storm died down.

4. _________ time that dog showed us some of _________ tricks.

5. If the stock market continues _________ slide, _________ possible there will be a recession.

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Notes


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Lesson

Grade 8

23Tom Sawyer, Chapters 1–5This week you will begin reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. Your writing assignment for this book will be more creative than usual and, we hope, more fun. You’ll be inventing a new story for the characters of this book! This assignment will be due in Lesson 28, and is described in full there (page 112), but please note that this is not the short story assignment that you started working on in Lesson 20. That story, for which you have already created a character and setting, will be all your own. Your Tom Sawyer assignment, on the other hand, will be a new scene or incident involving characters and settings from Mark Twain’s novel.

Keep your dictionary handy as you read this book. Mark Twain is writing about young people, and largely for young people, but he loves to use big words! This is part of Twain’s charm as a humorist — he writes about plainspoken folks in a rural setting, but uses formal language to talk about it. The contrast is Twain’s voice, the sound of his narrator telling you the story, and it’s a major element of his style. It will also provide you an excellent opportunity to learn many new vocabulary words!

Your literary focus this week will be on plot, and you’ll start work on a plot for the character and setting you created in earlier lessons. Finally, you’ll complete an exercise in connection with this week’s writing instruction.

Mark Twain (1835–1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens grew up along the banks of the Mississippi River in Missouri, amid the river rats, slave traders, and

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Tom Sawyer, Chapters 1–5

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steamboat captains. After apprenticing for his hometown newspaper as a typesetter, he sought and received his own steamboat pilot’s license in 1859. He worked up and down the river until the outbreak of the Civil War.

He traveled extensively throughout the 1860s, visiting the western United States, the Mediterranean region, Europe, and the Middle East. In 1871, Clemens and his wife Olivia settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where his house can still be visited today.

Around 1863, Clemens chose his pen-name from the arena that he loved best: the Mississippi River steamboats. In order to measure the depth of the water in the river, riverboatmen would drop a sounding line from the deck, and call out the resulting measurement. Two fathoms, or approxi-mately twelve feet, was considered safe depth for a riverboat. Thus, “mark twain” (or two) was a familiar cry.

Twain’s first published work was the short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which appeared in the New York Saturday Press in 1865. This launched a career of humorous articles, letters, editorials, and stories which appeared in many national periodicals. He loved to travel and write travelogues: Innocents Abroad (1867) and Roughing It (1872) are his most popular pieces of travel literature.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, drawing on his childhood in Missouri. The book also introduced the character of Huckleberry Finn, whose own novel, published in 1883, is Twain’s most enduring work. (Oak Meadow students read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Tenth Grade English.) Other important works include The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

Twain had been born in 1835, a year during which Halley’s Comet had made one of its periodic visits near Earth. In 1909, he had this to say: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’”

Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910.

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Reading

1. Read pages 58-59 in 100 Days.

2. Read pages 43-45 in Strunk & White.

3. For the next six weeks, you will be reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. You will be asked to write about this book in Lesson 28. This week, read Chapters 1-5. Take special note of the way various characters are portrayed through their speech and actions. If you wish, turn ahead to Lesson 28 (page 112) to study the writing assignment, so that you may keep it in mind as you read.

Vocabulary

adamantine bight effect mien

affect construe effeminate restive

alacrity covet evanescent sagacity

august edifice facetious twain

Assignments

1. Review the character and setting you have created as part of the groundwork for your short story.

2. In connection with your short story, complete the “Create a Plot” assignment on page 59 of 100 Days. Include as much detail as you can, keeping in mind that you have already determined a setting and a main character, which may limit the kind of plot that will work. (If your main character is a mermaid, for example, will a setting in the jungle and a plot that involves flying to the moon actually fit together?)

Outline your plot, including an introduction, main conflict, climax, and resolution. Add as many details as you can. This will help you considerably when it is time to write the story in Lesson 26. Doing a skimpy job this week will make your work much more difficult later!

3. Read the writing instruction below, and complete the accompanying exercise.

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Effect an AffectEffect and affect are two very troublesome words in English, and both are often used incorrectly. Why is this? Is it because one is a verb and the other is a noun, and we get them mixed up? In fact, the situation is worse than that: Either word can be used as a noun or a verb. In a way, then, this gives us four meanings to disentangle.

Look up these words in your dictionary. You will find that effect is more common as a noun, while affect is almost always used as a verb. The other meanings, however, are just as valid and they have a hand in causing the confusion. Here are some sample sentences to help you keep them clear:

affect (verb)

Let’s go inside; the cold is starting to affect me.

His gift was generous and affected her in a peculiar way.

affect (noun)

His face was unfamiliar and showed a peculiar affect.

This affect of his, of pretending to be blind, was tiresome.

effect (verb)

By lowering prices, the company hopes to effect an increase in sales.

A great many positive changes have been effected by the efforts of science.

effect (noun)

Let’s go inside; the cold is having an effect on me.

The effects of this calamity are still being felt.

Overall, the distinction to remember is that affect is the doing, and effect is the result of the doing. You affect a soccer ball when you kick it, but you effect a goal because the goal is the result of the kicking.

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Exercise

Fill in each blank below with either affect or effect.

1. His personality has begun to __________ events.

2. In satire, physical attributes are often exaggerated for comic __________.

3. This telepathy machine can __________ the dreams of people miles away.

4. I’m afraid his sour mood will __________ a general exodus from our party.

5. All of this trauma has had a terrible __________ on my sinuses.

6. Asking biased questions can __________ the results of your survey.

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Notes


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Lesson

Grade 8

24Tom Sawyer, Chapters 6–10Continuing our study of the art of story, we focus this week on the mechanics of storytelling: dialogue and point of view. The first involves how your characters speak and what they say, and the second involves whose story is being told. Do we get only one character’s side of the story, a couple, or everyone’s? Both dialogue and point of view are important in getting the story across to your readers in the way you want to tell it. Your choices about the point of view you’re going to use, and how you’re going to write dialogue, should come early on in the writing process, since they’ll determine much of how your story sounds and fits together. So, you’ll get a chance this week to experiment with some dialogue and point-of-view writing of your own. This experience will help you with your Tom Sawyer writing assignment as well as with your own short story.

Reading

1. Read pages 60-63 in 100 Days, paying special attention to the rules for punctuating dialogue and the way dialogue gives information about a character.

2. You may wish to review the passage on Quotations in Strunk & White (pages 36-37), but it is not required.

3. Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapters 6-10.

Vocabulary

caterwaul expectorate odious stolid

cogitate faze portentous sublimity

escapade ferule quail upbraid

evocative miscreant scrawl vagrant

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Assignments

1. Write one page of dialogue that involves the main character you have created for your short story. Be sure to follow the rules of punctuation for dialogue. In Lesson 26, you can decide whether or not to use this conversation in your story, instead of or in addition to other conversations you may want to include.

Alternatively, you may do the writing assignment given with this week’s writing instruction, below. You may choose to do one or the other, or both, as you wish.

2. Do the assignment on page 63 of 100 Days, writing at least several paragraphs. Use the main character, setting, and plot that you have already developed for your short story. Perhaps you would like to write this episode so that it can fit in easily with the other scenes you create for your story when it finally comes together in Lesson 26. That will be up to you.

Listen!As a creative writer, one of the most important skills to learn is that of writing dialogue. Through this week’s assignment in Writing for 100 Days, you have already learned how to punctuate dialogue. But what should your characters say? In prose, you strive for clear sentences, evocative imagery, and powerful symbolism. But in dialogue, you want your char-acters’ speech to sound authentic. That is, the character’s words should paint a clear picture of the character’s personality, background, and heritage. Look at this exchange from Sam Shepard’s play Tooth of Crime:

HOSS: Ya know I had a feeling you were comin’ this way. A sense. I was onto a Gypsy pattern early yesterday. Even conjured going that way myself.

CROW: Cold, Leathers. Very icy. Back seat nights. Tuck and roll pillow time. You got fur on the skin in this trunk.

HOSS: Yeah, yeah. I’m just gettin’ bored I guesss. I want out.

CROW: I pattern a conflict to that line. The animal says no.

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The blood won’t go the route. Re-do me right or wrong?

HOSS: Right I guess. Can’t you back the language up, man. I’m too old to follow the flash.

CROW: Choose an argot Leathers. Singles or LPs. 45, 78, 331/3.

In this play, Crow and Hoss are rock stars with a long history of touring, jamming, and substance abuse. Their speech reflects the legends, traditions, and metaphors of the rock music scene that they have lived in. They would not speak with perfect English grammar, and probably could not. In fact, they come from different eras and even have difficulty understanding each other. The playwright, who certainly does speak with perfect English grammar, wrote their dialogue to sound like them, not him.

Similarly, you have probably noticed that the characters in Tom Sawyer sound nothing like the narrator. Mark Twain, in his role as narrator of the story, uses formal language, big words, and a dry tone. But his characters, especially the boys, speak nothing like this. It’s doubtful they would even know what he’s talking about! Twain has faithfully recreated the speech of boys of that age and era, and so his dialogue sounds wholly authentic.

How do you learn to do this? Like creative writing in general, it is a discipline studied over the course of a writer’s life, but the first step is simple: Listen! Listen to what people say; not only what they mean, but what phrases they use, what figures of speech, how their sentences are structured, and even their accent. Do they start and stop a lot before getting to the end of a sentence? Do they use certain phrases over and over again? Do they have a funny way of pronouncing or inflecting words? Do they know the rules of grammar, or only pretend to? The more accurately you listen to what people are really saying, the more genuine and lifelike your dialogue will become.

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Assignment

Eavesdrop on a conversation, and then write it down. We’re not asking you to invade anyone’s privacy! But listen to a short exchange at the dinner table, in the supermarket, at the park, or anywhere people are talking. (TV doesn’t count — it has to be unscripted speech!) When you get home, write down what was said, as accurately as you can. You may even choose to record the conversation, if possible, to aid your memory. Reproduce a conversation of one-half to one page, and send it to your teacher. You can do this assignment either in addition to or instead of your one-page dia-logue assignment.

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