full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jacqueline Woodson: What reading slowly taught me about writing

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Before coming to Brooklyn, my family lived in Greenville, sutoh caonlria, in a segregated nohbohigerod celald Nicholtown. All of us there were the descendants of a people who had not been allowed to learn to read or write. Imagine that: the danger of understanding how lrttees form words, the danger of wrods themselves, the danger of a literate people and their stories. But against this backdrop of being threatened with death for holding onto a naavrtrie, our stories didn't die, because there is yet another story beneath that one. And this is how it has always worked. For as long as we've been communicating, there's been the layering to the narrative, the stories beatneh the stories and the ones beneath those. This is how story has and will continue to survive.

Open Cloze

Before coming to Brooklyn, my family lived in Greenville, _____ ________, in a segregated ____________ ______ Nicholtown. All of us there were the descendants of a people who had not been allowed to learn to read or write. Imagine that: the danger of understanding how _______ form words, the danger of _____ themselves, the danger of a literate people and their stories. But against this backdrop of being threatened with death for holding onto a _________, our stories didn't die, because there is yet another story beneath that one. And this is how it has always worked. For as long as we've been communicating, there's been the layering to the narrative, the stories _______ the stories and the ones beneath those. This is how story has and will continue to survive.

Solution

  1. beneath
  2. narrative
  3. neighborhood
  4. carolina
  5. words
  6. called
  7. south
  8. letters

Original Text

Before coming to Brooklyn, my family lived in Greenville, South Carolina, in a segregated neighborhood called Nicholtown. All of us there were the descendants of a people who had not been allowed to learn to read or write. Imagine that: the danger of understanding how letters form words, the danger of words themselves, the danger of a literate people and their stories. But against this backdrop of being threatened with death for holding onto a narrative, our stories didn't die, because there is yet another story beneath that one. And this is how it has always worked. For as long as we've been communicating, there's been the layering to the narrative, the stories beneath the stories and the ones beneath those. This is how story has and will continue to survive.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
read slowly 4
finger beneath 2

Important Words

  1. allowed
  2. backdrop
  3. beneath
  4. brooklyn
  5. called
  6. carolina
  7. coming
  8. communicating
  9. continue
  10. danger
  11. death
  12. descendants
  13. die
  14. family
  15. form
  16. greenville
  17. holding
  18. imagine
  19. layering
  20. learn
  21. letters
  22. literate
  23. lived
  24. long
  25. narrative
  26. neighborhood
  27. nicholtown
  28. people
  29. read
  30. segregated
  31. south
  32. stories
  33. story
  34. survive
  35. threatened
  36. understanding
  37. words
  38. worked
  39. write