Chapter 9: More Thought Patterns
Lab Activity 45: Textbook Skills tbskils.gif
 

tbskils.gif Objective
To apply your understanding of transition words and paragraph relationships to studying a textbook excerpt.

arrow.gifStep 2: Finish reading the textbook selection, and then answer the following questions about "Rock" and "Rap."

Rap

     In most cases, rock is a white male enterprise, though it has roots in African American jazz clubs. African Americans have been critical of the movement, claiming that, while it disguises itself as antiestablishment, it is a money-making operation that offers its audiences a chance to escape social responsibility though shaking and screaming to unintelligible lyrics. They have countered this trend with rap, which may have the incessant rhythms of rock but also sends forth words of strong social criticism... Rap has been criticized for sending out subliminal suggestions for everything from the overthrow of the government to mass suicide. At its best, it is a virtuoso exercise in language and a spontaneous kind of poetry.


—Janaro & Altschuler, p. 246–252.

      1. Rock, known variously as rock 'n roll, rock & roll, and rock and roll, has been such a pervasive phenomenon during the second half of the twentieth century that it surely belongs in a humanities text.

Pervasive means 

 
 
 
 
      2. Both acclaimed and denounced on all sides since it made the scene in the 1950s, rock has become a major way of defining in sound our era in history.

Acclaimed means  

 
 
 
 
      3. Both acclaimed and denounced on all sides since it made the scene in the 1950s, rock has become a major way of defining in sound our era in history.

Denounced means  

 
 
 
 
      4. Though it has many complex facets, ranging from the conscious artistry of trained musicians to the out-of-control bellowing of unintelligible lyrics by performers prancing around a stage, rock is first and foremost a celebration of the joy of life, of sexual release, of total disregard for social rules.

Bellowing means  

 
 
 
 
      5. The incessant, nervous rhythmic beat of "Rock Around the Clock" was derived from the music of African American dance clubs, which were usually smaller than many white establishments, had lower budgets, and needed only a few musicians instead of big bands that had drawn the ballroom crowds in the high-rent districts.

Incessant means  

 
 
 
 
      6. Many rock historians insist that the band that defined the movement and placed rock in the tradition of the humanities was The Beatles, emerging from Liverpool obscurity and introduced to American audiences in 1964 on the same television show that had presented Elvis Presley eight years earlier.

Obscurity means  

 
 
 
 
      7. Their name was whimsical and their appearance outlandish for the time.

Whimsical means  

 
 
 
 
      8. They have countered this trend with rap, which may have the incessant rhythms of rock but also sends forth words of strong social criticism.

Countered means  

 
 
 
 
      9. Rap has been criticized for sending out subliminal suggestions for everything from the overthrow of the government to mass suicide.

Subliminal means  

 
 
 
 
      10. At its best, it is a virtuoso exercise in language and a spontaneous kind of poetry.

Spontaneous means  

 
 
 
 
     

Which sentence is the topic sentence?  

     

Which sentence is the topic sentence?  

     

Which sentence is the topic sentence?  

     

Which sentence is the topic sentence?  

      15. The author mentions all of the following musicians as influential in rock except 

 
 
 
 
      16. Rock and rap have their roots in 

 
 
 
 
      17. Identify the kind of transition indicated by the words in bold print:

Rock has, of course, undergone many, many changes since 1956, the year in which Elvis Presley, who popularized the new form, was introduced to a huge television audience on the Ed Sullivan variety show, and also the year in which the movie Blackboard Jungle leaped onto the screen in a flash of music titled "Rock Around the Clock."  

 
 
 
 
      18. Identify the kind of transition signaled by the word in bold print:

Here and there in the history of humanities one takes note of a single work that has driven an audience into a frenzy. Ravel's Bolero, with it sensuous, unrelieved rhythm and the dance that accompanied the first performance, caused a riot that had audience members leaping onto the stage.  

 
 
 
 
      19. What kind of pattern do the words in bold print indicate?

Rock, known variously as rock 'n roll, rock & roll, and rock and roll, has been such a pervasive phenomenon during the second half of the twentieth century that it surely belongs in a humanities text.  

 
 
 
 
      20. The words in bold print indicate what kind of pattern?

As a contemporary musical form, rock realizes its full potential in the rock concert, in a given totality of work presented in a unique program that is almost never repeated after a particular performance on tour.  

 
 
 
 





Copyright © 1995-2008 by Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Longman. Legal Disclaimer