Worksheet Grade 11 English Language Arts
Ninety Years of Braddock Mills Water Reports: A Diction Worksheet
A grade 11 ELA worksheet comparing a fictional 1934 water works report with its 2026 successor, analyzing diction, audience address, and euphemism.
Objectives
- Students will analyze how diction and connotation position a reader as a member of the public or as a customer.
- Students will identify euphemism in institutional writing and state what the plainer term would be.
- Students will explain how each report's choice of what to count reflects the era's idea of progress.
Vocabulary
- Non-revenue water
- Water that a utility treats and pumps but never gets paid for. Most of it escapes through leaks in old pipes, and some is lost to broken meters or theft.
Also: diction, connotation, euphemism, institutional voice, level of service
Teacher overview
Two annual reports from the same water utility, ninety years apart, make the workings of institutional diction unusually visible, because the subject barely changes while the vocabulary changes completely. This worksheet gives students excerpts from the fictional Braddock Mills Water Works report of 1934 and the fictional Braddock Mills Water Department report of 2026, along with a table of what each document counted. Students often read the older document as merely quaint, so several items require them to name what the older report tells a reader plainly and the newer one does not.
Student Worksheet
Braddock Mills and both reports below are fictional, written for this worksheet.
Document A. From the fictional Report of the Superintendent of the Braddock Mills Water Works, for the year ending December 31, 1934
The Superintendent respectfully submits the following account of the year's work. During the year the Works laid 3.1 miles of new main on Reeve Street, Halloway Avenue, and the streets of the new north ward, and connected fifty-two services. Two hydrants were set at the school. The pumping engines were operated without interruption, and the supply was maintained at all hours.
The purity of the supply has been the constant care of this office. Samples were taken weekly and forwarded to the State Laboratory, and no adverse report was received. It is a source of satisfaction to your Superintendent that not one case of typhoid fever in this town has been traced to the public supply in the eleven years of his service.
Certain of the older mains in the mill district, laid in 1889, are of small diameter and have given trouble. Their replacement is a matter for the Board's judgment as funds permit. The Works stands ready to serve the growth of the community.
Document B. From the fictional Braddock Mills Water Department Annual Report, 2026
This report summarizes the department's performance against its adopted level-of-service targets for the year.
Asset renewal. The department replaced 1.4 miles of distribution main against an annual renewal target of 2.2 miles. Renewal is prioritized through a risk-based model that scores each segment on break history, material, diameter, and consequence of failure. The shortfall is attributable to construction cost escalation and to the deferral of the Halloway Avenue project pending easement acquisition.
Water loss. Non-revenue water was 19 percent of production, above the department's target of 14 percent. A leak detection survey of the mill district is programmed for the coming year.
Customer service. Average response time to a reported main break was 47 minutes. The department did not meet its target of 40 minutes in the fourth quarter. Customers may review the full performance dashboard on the department's website.
Comparison table: what each fictional report counted
| Measure reported | 1934 report | 2026 report |
|---|---|---|
| Miles of new main laid | Yes | No |
| Miles of main replaced | No | Yes |
| Services connected | Yes | No |
| Water lost before reaching a customer | No | Yes |
| Response time to a main break | No | Yes |
| Disease traced to the supply | Yes | No |
| Targets stated in advance and scored | No | Yes |
Answer each item in complete sentences unless the item says otherwise.
The 1934 report calls the utility "the Works" and refers to "your Superintendent." The 2026 report calls it "the department." Explain what each choice tells a reader about who is speaking and to whom.
Document A addresses "the community" and "this town." Document B addresses "customers." Explain the difference in the relationship each word assumes, and name one thing a customer can do that a member of the public cannot, or the reverse.
The 2026 report uses the term "non-revenue water." Write the plainer phrase that names the same thing, and explain what the official term keeps a reader from picturing.
Document A reports that "no adverse report was received" from the State Laboratory. Explain what that sentence does and does not tell a reader about the water, and name what a modern reader would want added.
Document B says a shortfall "is attributable to construction cost escalation and to the deferral of the Halloway Avenue project." Rewrite that sentence in plain English with a person or group as the subject of each clause.
Using the comparison table, state what the 1934 report counted as an accomplishment and what the 2026 report counts as one. Explain what each choice suggests about the era's idea of progress.
The 1934 report says the old mains "have given trouble" and that replacement "is a matter for the Board's judgment as funds permit." Explain how that sentence assigns responsibility, and compare it with how Document B handles a missed target.
Document B states three targets and reports missing all three. Explain how stating a target in advance changes what the report can be held to, and judge whether that makes the 2026 report more candid than the 1934 report or only differently candid.
Using the table and both documents, explain why the 1934 report has no line for water lost before it reaches a customer, and describe what would have had to change for such a line to exist.
Rewrite the first paragraph of Document B's "Asset renewal" section for a reader who has never heard the term "risk-based model," in no more than three sentences, without losing any information.
Choose one sentence from Document A whose diction a modern utility could not use, and rewrite it in the register of Document B. Then name in one clause what the rewrite loses.
Write two sentences for a fictional 2026 report that would do what the 1934 report's typhoid sentence does, namely state plainly what the utility's work has prevented. Use no term a reader would need a glossary for.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Answer: "The Works" and "your Superintendent" identify a named individual reporting to a board and to the town, with the possessive making the reader an owner of the office. "The department" is an institutional voice with no person behind it, which distances the writer from the account and makes the report the product of an organization rather than of someone answerable by name.
Answer: "Community" and "this town" assume a shared civic membership, while "customers" assumes a transaction in which the reader pays for a service. A customer can complain, compare, and in principle switch providers, while a member of the public can vote on the board and attend a hearing, which is a form of authority a customer does not have. Accept either direction if it is explained.
Answer: The plainer phrase is water lost to leaks and unbilled uses before it reaches anyone, or simply lost water. The official term names the money rather than the water, so a reader pictures an accounting category instead of water running out of a broken pipe underground.
Answer: It tells a reader that weekly samples were sent and that the laboratory raised no objection, which is a record of process rather than of results. It does not report what was measured, what the values were, or what standard the laboratory applied. A modern reader would want the parameters tested, the results, and the limits they were compared against.
Answer: Any rewrite that supplies human subjects, such as: "The department replaced less main than planned because construction bids came in higher than budgeted, and because the department postponed the Halloway Avenue project while it negotiated easements with property owners." Both clauses must name who acted.
Answer: The 1934 report counts new main laid, services connected, and hydrants set, so progress means extension of the system to more people. The 2026 report counts main replaced, water lost, and response time, so progress means maintaining and improving a system that already reaches everyone. The shift reflects a utility that has finished building and now has to keep what it built.
Answer: The 1934 sentence uses "have given trouble," which makes the pipes the actor and no one accountable, and it hands the decision to the Board "as funds permit," which defers responsibility without a date. Document B names its own shortfall against a stated target and gives reasons, so responsibility stays with the department even though the reasons are written in agentless language.
Answer: A target published in advance gives a reader a standard the utility chose and can be measured against, so the report cannot define success after the fact. That makes the 2026 report accountable in a way the 1934 report is not, though it is differently candid rather than simply more candid, since the 1934 report states a plain public-health result that the 2026 report never attempts.
Answer: In 1934 the utility counted what it built and delivered rather than what it lost, and metering, production records, and leak surveys sufficient to compute a loss figure were not in place or not reported. For such a line to exist, the utility would need reliable measurement of both water produced and water billed, along with a decision that the difference is worth publishing.
Answer: Any accurate three-sentence version that keeps the figures and explains the model, such as: "We replaced 1.4 miles of water main this year, short of our 2.2-mile goal. We choose which pipes to replace first by scoring each one on how often it has broken, what it is made of, how large it is, and how much damage a failure would cause. We fell short because construction costs rose and because the Halloway Avenue project waited on land agreements."
Answer: Any defensible pair, most often the typhoid sentence or "The Works stands ready to serve the growth of the community." A rewrite in the newer register might read: "No waterborne disease case has been epidemiologically linked to the public supply during the reporting period." The loss is the named person's satisfaction and the plain human claim, replaced by a construction that no one would say aloud.
Answer: Any plain-language pair that states a prevented harm, such as: "No one in Braddock Mills became sick from the water we delivered this year. Our crews found and repaired 31 leaks before they reached the street." Reject sentences that report activity without naming what it prevented.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students both documents with the terms "the Works," "your Superintendent," "the department," and "customers" already circled, and reduce the assignment to items 1 through 8. Provide item 5 with the two clauses separated onto their own lines. Allow item 6 to be answered by completing the two frames "In 1934 progress meant ___" and "In 2026 progress means ___."
Extension
Ask students to write the opening paragraph of a fictional Braddock Mills report for the year 1968, in a register that sits between the two documents, and to annotate three word choices that place it in that middle position. Strong responses will handle the shift from building the system to maintaining it as an argument the writer is making rather than a fact the writer is reporting.
ELL supports
Pre-teach connotation and euphemism with a paired list on a reference card, such as lost water and non-revenue water, or fired and separated from employment, and keep the card available. Provide a two-column chart labeled 1934 and 2026 for items 1, 2, and 6. Allow items 3 and 4 to be answered with a phrase plus a short reason, and permit item 12 to be drafted orally with a partner before writing.