Which three excerpts would best be characterized as expository texts? Excerpt 1 May 17, 1980, was a quiet day in Silver Lake, Wa
shington. If you had been there, you probably would have seen Mount St. Helens, one of the state’s famous mountains. The mountain looked like a cone capped with snow. It rose from a valley of deep green trees and bright blue lakes. Mount St. Helens is volcanic. Scientists were watching the mountain carefully that spring. For two months, they recorded small earthquakes near the mountain. Steam spewed from its top. And yet, from a distance, the mountain looked picture-perfect. A volcano can erupt when pressure underground builds and forces its way to the surface. Volcanos can be active, dormant, or extinct. An active volcano has erupted in the last 10,000 years and is thought to erupt in the near future. A dormant volcano has not erupted in the past 10,000 years, but is thought to erupt again. An extinct volcano is one scientists do not expect to erupt again. For example, in 1980, Mt. St. Helens was an active volcano. Excerpt 2 Anxiety sometimes manifests as an apprehensive feeling or worry that you are unable to explain fully. Stress is often a trigger. Symptoms can include tense muscles, churning stomach, nausea, diarrhea, headache, backache, heart palpitations, sweating, flushing, and numbness or “pins and needles” in arms, hands, or legs. With all these symptoms, it is easy to mistake anxiety for a physical illness. Everyone becomes anxious from time to time, but when anxiety interferes with life when there’s no real threat, or is present long after a real threat has passed, it is a problem. One of the best ways to deal with anxiety is to learn how to manage stress in your life. Relaxation techniques are also good. Meditation, breathing techniques, and yoga are all possible ways to help ease anxiety. Being healthy also helps. Follow a regular sleep pattern, get plenty of exercise, and maintain a healthy diet. All of these practices will help reduce anxiety and stress. Excerpt 3 Visiting a different country can be a great way to spend a vacation. As a tourist, you are there to see new sights and have new experiences. But living in a different country is not the same as visiting one. When you move to a new country, you move away from people you are close to and many things that you know. A new place may have different customs, different food and often, a different language. The climate and land may be very different. Buying food and getting to work may be a major challenge. You will have times of feeling afraid, angry and homesick. These feelings are examples of culture shock. Excerpt 4 There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting help to get her out of some faraway castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials—yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and commonsense a thing as that. No, everybody swallowed these people’s lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. (from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain) Excerpt 5 She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on—the other was on the table near her hand—her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking glass. (from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens)
