A Lesson Before Dying Chapters 5-6 Thinking Questions

Answer the following questions in complete sentences with adequate explanation.

When Mr. Farrell Jarreau, yardman and handyman to Henri Pichot, visits Grant to tell him to “come up by five this evening” (40), he has to pretend like he doesn’t know what the meeting is about, but Grant knows that he knows, (“He nodded to me, knowing that I knew he knew why Henri Pichot wanted to see me, and he walked away, head down”). How does this example make you feel:

a. about Henri Pichot?

b. about Grant’s ability to understand?

2. For each item listed below, explain how it is significant to the conflict and/or characters of Ch. 6.

a. a clock

b. a dinner plate full of food

the back door to the kitchen

the word “doesn’t” vs “don’t”

Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “even though tom was mary thought he was ” and the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “even though tom was foolish, mary thought he was ridiculous.” well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what tom could have been and what mary might have thought of him. so i never did well on tests like that. how does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? tan discusses the types of questions on achievement tests to support the idea that the tests limit students’ ability to write well. tan explains a question on a language achievement test to support the idea that the tests should include more interesting content. tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability. tan considers how her mother might answer a question on a test to support the idea that nonstandard english limits a person’s ability to communicate.