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Close Reading of informational Texts in social studies/history (continued)
ACTIvITy 3
Independent Practice
The following excerpt is from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. De Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian who spent nine months traveling around the United States. First published in 1835, the text contains his observations about American society. Read the text carefully, highlighting unfamiliar words and marking sentences that seem important. After you’ve read the entire passage, you will write a brief summary of his ideas.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the following passage silently. Your focus for the first reading is on understanding the meaning of the passage. As you read, practice diffusing by replacing unfamiliar words with synonyms or definitions for the underlined words. Use the definitions and synonyms in the margins of the paragraphs to help your understanding.
From
intercourse: dealings or communication between individuals or groups
antipodes: places at the opposite side of the globe
enmity: hatred or hostility
castes: divisions of society based upon differences of wealth, rank, or occupation
Chapter 2 of Democracy in America How Democracy Renders
The Habitual Intercourse oƒ The Americans Simple and Easy
by Alexis de Tocqueville
1 If two Englishmen chance to meet at the antipodes, where they are surrounded by
strangers whose language and manners are almost unknown to them, they will first stare at each other with much curiosity and a kind of secret uneasiness; they will then turn away, or if one accosts the other, they will take care to converse only with a constrained and absent air, upon very unimportant subjects. Yet there is no enmity between these men; they have never seen each other before, and each believes the other to be a respectable person. Why, then, should they stand so cautiously apart? We must go back to England to learn the reason.
2 When it is birth alone, independent of wealth, that classes men in society, everyone knows exactly what his own position is in the social scale; he does not seek
to rise, he does not fear to sink. In a community thus organized men of different castes communicate very little with one another; but if accident brings them together, they are
12 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
informational Text
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