修辞练习——精选推荐

Choose the correct word(s) to complete each sentence.
1.The _______(preceding/proceeding) messafe was brought to us by
General Motors.
2.He says he would write an English course book if he could fing a(n)
_______(accomplice/collaborator) to deal with the less interesting parts.
3.The whole audience was _____ (affected/infected) by her sad story
and many burst into tears.
4.if you put too many patatoes in that bag, it will _______(burst/crack).
5.For many years, mark has been suffereing from the _______(delusion/
illusion) that he is a great man.
6.I cannot ________ (tolerate/suffer) any more of your nonsense.
7.Changing from solid to liquid, water takes in heat from all substances
near it, and this _______(transition/absorption) produces artificial cold surrounding it.
8.I didn’t say anything like that at all. Y ou are purposely ______
(revising/ distorting) my ideas to prove your point.
9.I ______ (acknowleged/ express) with thanks the help of my
colleagues in the prepareation of this new column.
10.To survive in the intense trade competition between countries, we
must _____ (enhance / gear) the qualities and varieties of products we make to the world-market demand.
11.I can’t ______(accept/ receive) your point of view, nor can I follow
your advice.
12.My uncle went ot the police station to _______ (claim/ demand) the
lost watch.
(key: preceding collaborator affected burst delusion tolerate absorption distorting acknowledge gear accept claim)
Delelte the superfluous word(s) in each of the following phrases. Give the reason for the deletion.
1. actual experience
2. valuable assets
3. adequate enough
4. completely eliminated
5. important essentials
6. mutual cooperation
7. assemble together 8. a variety of different people
(key:
1. actua l experience: we wouldn’t refer to it as an experience if it didn’t
actually happen
2. valuable assets: all assets have value
3. adequate enough: there are no degrees of adequacy
4. completely eliminated: elimination indicates completeness
5. important essentials: all essentials are important
6. mutual cooperation: there is no cooperation without mutuality
7. assemble together: assemble means putting together
8. a variety of different people: variety contains the idea of difference ) Delelte the superfluous word(s) in each of the following sentences. Give the reason for the deletion.
1.Beverage bottles and cans now comprise ten percent of all municipal
garbage and waste in the state of Texas.
2.I introduced and implemented a new textbook inventory system.
3.I am anxious and eager to help you with the Sulliven campaign.
4.We need your help and assistance next year
5.Please collect and gather together all the facts on Bufflo’s Hancock
Building.
6.I will communicate with you and write you at your business address. (key:
1.all garbage is waste—one of them can be eliminated without losing
any essential information. And waste should be deleted.
2.the act of introducing the system includes its implementation—and
implemented should be deleted.
3.anxiety includes eager desire—either anixous or eager should be
deleted.
4.all assistance is help—either help or assistance should be deleted.
5.collect means gather together—and gather together should be deleted.
6.writing is a means of communication—communication with you and
should be deleted. )
In each of the following pairs of sentences, pick out the more impressive one and give your reasons.
1.a. The child was happy.
b. The child giggled as the mother shook her toy monkey.
2. a. He stumbled along with his friend supporting him.
b. He seemed to have difficulty in walking alond.
3. a. One tottering windmill broke the flat horizon.
b. A feeling of loneliness and wasteness pervaded the scene.
4. a. I found that flies were practically wiped out in China.
b. during my two-week travel in China, I only saw two flies.
5.a. The animal gave a sign of restlessness.
b. The wolf paced back and forth, sniffing and ground; he raised his
head and howled sharply twice, then paced and sniffed again. (key: b a a b b)
Identify alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia in the following.
1.Speech is silver, but silence is golden.
2.little strokes fell great oaks.
3.the horrors I saw there—but I dare not describe that dreadful sight.
4.I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun solditery
plodding on like a swarm of crawling locust. (Winston S. Churchill)
5.The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow flollowed free (Coleridge)
6.May they wander stage by stage
Of the same vain Pilgrimage,
Stumbling on, age after age,
Night and day, mile after mile,
At each and every stile, withal,
May they catch their feet and fall. (Robert Graves) 7. I wish people wouldn’t rustle their programs while the orchestra is playing.
10、Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his wooes fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farm house near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year. (Robert Frost)
(key:
1.alliteration—speech, silver, silence
2.assonance—strokes, oaks
3.alliteration—dare, describe, dreadful
4.alliteration—dull, drilled, docile
assonance—swarm, crawling; docile, soldiery, locusts
5.alliteration—fair, foam, flew, furrow, followed, free
assonance—blew, flew; free, breeze
6.alliteration—stage, same, stumbling, stile; feet, fall
assonance—may, they, stage, same, vain, age, day; night, mile, stile consonance—stage, pilgrimage, age; mile, stile, withal, fall
7. onomatopoeia—rustle
10. alliteration—woods, watch, without
Assonance—know, though, snow; here, queer, near, year; think, it, village, will, fill, little; these, see, me, between,
evening; stopping, not , watch, stop )
Identify puns employed in the following. Explain how they work in each case.
1. Have a nice trip, buy-buy! ( A sign in front of a shop at the airport)
2. In Nature there is neither left nor right nor wrong. (John Masefield)
3. You will go nuts for the nuts you get in Nux. (ads for nuts)
4.To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal. (Shakespeare)
5. She guessed I’d go crazy if I didn’t sail, and yet certainly I’d go
crazy if I did.
6. Customer: I would like a book, please?
Bookseller: Something light?
Customer: That doesn’t matter. I have my car with me.
10. A: “Her husband leads a dog’s life.”
B: “That’s right. He growls all day and snores all night.”
Read each of the following sentences carefully. Tell what type of sentence it is. If it is a loose sentence, change it into a periodic one; if it is a periodic sentence, change it into a loose one.
1. She sang the National Anthem, holding the sheet music in her hand in case she forgot the words.
2. He chased the robber, ignoring his won safety and the likelihood that robber was alarmed.
3. Wondering what to say, nervously rubbing his nose, he stood silently for a moment.
4. Built at a cost of 16 million dollars, with a mile-long center span and supported at either end by stone towers that were once the tallest buildings in the country, the Brooklyn Bridge celebrated its centenary in 1983.
5. Bill Tilden, a master of court tactics with a flair for the dramatic who combined an overpowering forehand with a rifle-shot serve, dominated world tennis during the twenties.
6. He served the stew with embarrassment, knowing that several of his guests were excellent cooks who were too polite to complain.
7. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Indians were friendly, the Spanish invaders murdered or raped many of the Indians they met.
8. We are choosing the assistant manager from among several applicants since they have strong qualifications in accounting as well as being as being trained in customer service.
Combine or rearrange each of the following groups of sentences into a single smoother sentence by condensing one of the sentenced into a phrase.
1. The sports commentator listed the opponent’s many winning matches. He wanted to emphasize her experience.
2. The advertisement featured fresh peaches and plums. The advertisement caught my eye.
3. The driver flashed his lights and leaned on the horn. He brought the car to a screeching halt.
4. Our skis hang on brackets. The brackets are on the side of the garage. The brackets are just below the rafters.
5. Doris avoided talking nonsense. She decided to memorize her campaign speech.
6. Alfred Nobel was the Swedish inventor of dynamite. He established the Nobel Prizes with a bequest of nine million dollars.
7. The children were fascinated by the magician. They pressed closer in order to study his hands.
8. The defendant testified that she had been tortured. She showed the jury her scars.
9. The Olympic games are held every four years. They have developed political overtones.
10. The students had worked hard. They got high marks in their exams. Rewrite the following paragraphs by combining the choppy sentences. 1. We ran Lyndon City’s preservation project on a very low budget. Two clerical assistants and I worked out of offices provided by the city. We mailed letters to thousands of residents. We planned and coordinated promotional parties and information sessions. We developed grant proposals to federal and state agencies.
2. I never receive a bill for the school tax. I am told it was issued late in September. I was surprised when I received a bill for $1, 1142.50 plus the late payment fine of $75.87. I received this bill in January. I have since talked with the city tax collectors. They told me they sent the September bill to Mr. and Mrs. Graf. Mr. and Mrs. Graf are the former owners of the property.
Identify the figure(s) of speech used in each of the following sentences.
1. I was destroyed with fatigue.
2. Three of may friends were killed in the last three weeks in Chigaco. That certainly isn’t conductive to peach of mind.
3. every cloud has a silver linging.
4. To have such a relationship is no small thing.
5. He met his Waterloo in 1940, when the project he heavily invested waas collapsed.
6. The cost-saving program became an expensive economy.
7. I’ll teach you to make a fool of me.
8. Y ou want your pound of flesh, don’t you?
9. I am sorry to hear that your grandfather passed on.
10. I won’t send my watch to the watchmaker; I don’t want it to be damaged.
11. The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improved by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interest is a long process. The seeds musth be carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed.
12. What a noble illustration of the tender laws of his favored country!—they let paupers go to sleep!
13. “your grammar is...” she had intended saying awful, but she amended it to “is not particularly good.”(Jack London)
14. They said, when he stood up to speak, stars and strips came right out in the sky and once he spoke against river and made it sink into the ground. They said, when he walked the woods with his fishing rod, Killal, the trout, would jump out of the streams into his pockets,for they knew it was not use putting up a fight against hime; and, when he argued a case, he could turn on the harps of the blessed and the shaking of the earth underground. That was the kind of man he was, and his big farm up at Marshfield was suitable to him...A man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a moutain and eyes like burning anthracite—that was Danil Webster in his prime.
(key:
1.hyperbole—destroy
2.understatement—not conductive to peace of mind
3.allegory
4.no small thing—understatement
5.Waterloo—allusion
6.oxymoron—expensive economy
7.irony—teach you to make a fool of me
8.allusion—pound of flesh
9.euphemism—passed on
10.innuendo—to be damaged
11.a nalogy
12.irony—noble illustration, tender laws
13.euphemism—not particularly good
14.hyperbole )
1、There were fresh bows ,and the faces grew more and more serious each time the name Hiroshima was repeated .(synecdoche)-
1.But later my hair began to fall out , and my belly turned to
water .I felt sick ,and ever since then they have been testing and
treating me .(alliteration)
2.Acre by acre ,the rain forest is being burned to create fast
pasture for fast-food beef .(alliteration)-
3.And she stops and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.
(exaggeration)-
4.I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws
out .(exaggeration)
5.“Mama,”Wangero said sweet as a bird .“can I have these old
quilts?”(simile)
6.She gasped like a bee had stung her .(simile)
7.We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or
any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him
by sea, we shall fight him in the air. (Parallelism)
8.Just as the industrial Revolution took over an immense range of
tasks from men’s muscles and enormously expanded
productivity. (Metonymy)
9.Who can ever imagine me looking a strange white man in the
eye? rhetorical question)
O, Wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? rhetorical question Didn’t I tell you to hand in your paper by Friday? rhetorical question who wouldn’t have dreamed of becoming rich overnight? (rhetorical question)
they kept talking, talking, talking all night long. Repetition
there she stretched, growing warmer and warmer, sleepier and sleepier. (Repetition)
faith is a good guide, reason is a better guide, truth is the best quide. Repetition
extremely sorry I am for my mistakes. Inversion
what she had said I didn’t hear. Inversion
knock someone did on the door at midnight. Inversion
so eloquently did he speak that all of us were moved to tears. Inversion we are caught in war, wanting peace. We’re torn by division, wanting unity. (parallelism)
but the houses were cold, closed, unfriendly. (parallelism)
we can gain knowledge by reading, by reflection, by observation or by
practice. (parallelism)
what light is to the eyes, what air is to the lungs, what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. Climax
the drunkard smashed the glasses, upturned the table, and hit an old woman. Climax
he has gone, he has escaped, he has broken away. Climax
alas! Alas! What shall I do? I’ve lost my wife, my car and my best hat!
Anticlimax
Where shall I find hope, happienss, friends, cigarrettes? Anticlimax He lost his empire, his family and his foutain pen. Anticlimax
When I saw you last, rose,
You were only so high—
How fast time goes! (Austin Dobson) apostrophe Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caser loved him. (Shakespeare) apostrophe
To be prepared for war is one of the most efficient means of preserving peace. Antithesis
The life of the wolf is the death of the lamb. Antithesis
There is only one good, that is knowledge; thereis only one evil, that is ignorance. Antithesis
You should have here earlier. Understatement
war is not healthy for children and other living things. Understatement
I’m sort of angry at your rashness.
He had some cheerful wine at the party. Transferred epithet
Nurse Duckett reacted to the question with a startled gasp.
Transferred epithet
The child gazed in wide-eyed amazement. Transferred epithet
The parental discipline can be described as cruel kindness. Oxymoron
He passes an existence of competitive transquility. Oxymoron
Only the man who has known fear can be truely brave. Paradox
Those who have eyes apparenly see little. Paradox
fill in the form with plain words/ expressions or euphemistic words/ expressions as indicated
Plain Language Euphemistic Language
1 Steal
2 Fat person
3 Adult movie;X-rated/blue films
4 One-way mission
5 Madhouse
6 Ugly
7 The aged/ aging
8 Capital punishment
(key:
1.take without permussion
2.weight watcher; calorie countdown
3.pornographic movie
4.suicidal attack
5.mental home; mental hospital; mental health center
6.plain-looking; homely
7.elderly; senior; the still-youthful
8.death penalty。