Daily Commentary

Practicing the ATC

Week 2
 Day 1: Diction
An aged man is but a paltry thing
A tattered coat upon a stick
--W.B. Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
ACECES Question
What does the authors
choice of the word
tattered communicate
about the speakers
attitude toward the
aged man?
Questions to consider:
What picture is created by
the use of the word
tattered?
By understanding the
connotations of the word
tattered, what do we
understand about the
speakers attitude toward
an aged man?
 Day 2: Detail
ACECES Question:
An old man, Don
Tomasito, the baker, How do the details in
played the tuba. When this passage express
he blew into the huge the speakers
mouthpiece, his face attitude toward
would turn purple and Tomasito and his
his thousand wrinkles music?
would disappear as Questions to Consider:
his skin filled out. The first sentence is a general
--Alberto Alvaro Rios statement. What details in
the second sentence enrich
The Iguana Killer and intensify the first?
What attitude toward Tomasito
and his playing is conveyed
by these details?
How is that attitude
 Day 3: Imagery
ACECES Question:
It was a mine town, Compare and contrast
uranium most the two images of
recently. Dust devils ground and earth.
whirled sand off the What emotions and
mountains. Even after ideas do these images
the heaviest of rains, evoke?
the water seeped Guiding Thoughts:
back into the ground, There are two images
between stones, and associated with land
(ground and earth) in
the earth was parched the third sentence. What is
again. depicted in each image?

--Linda Hogan, Making What emotions do these

images evoke?
Do Which words are most
important in creating these
 Day 4: Tone
What a thrill ACECES Question:
My thumb instead of an What is the poets
onion. attitude toward the
The top quite gone cut? Based on that
Except for a sort of a hinge attitude, infer Plaths
attitude toward life in
Of skin, general.
A flap like a hat,
Dead white. Questions to Consider:
Then a red plush. What words, images and
details create this tone?
--Sylvia Plath How does the use of colors
Cut: For Susan ONeill Roe intensify the tone?
(Dead white;
red plush)
 Day 5: Syntax
ACECES Question:
When I am too sad and How does the sentence
too skinny to keep
structure affect or
keeping, when I am a
tiny thing against so
reflect the on the
many bricks, then it is ideas and meaning
I look at trees. of this passage?
--Sandra Cisneros
Question to Consider:
The House on Mango What grammatical structure is
Street repeated in this sentence?
This is a sentence that delays
the subject and verb to the
end. What idea is
emphasized by the end-
focus in this sentence?