Abstract Aptitude
Passage: The narrator describes his father’s stories as “well-worn legends, polished more by repetition than by truth.”
Question: The phrase “polished more by repetition than by truth” most strongly suggests that the narrator views his father’s stories as
(A) carefully researched accounts
(B) comforting but unreliable
(C) malicious fabrications
(D) deliberately confusing
What is (B) comforting but unreliable?
This Old English poem features a warrior battling Grendel, his mother, and later a dragon
What is Beowulf?
This grammatical mood expresses hypothetical or contrary-to-fact conditions, as in “If I were rich.”
What is the subjunctive mood?
This device repeats the same word at the beginning of successive clauses: “We shall fight… We shall never surrender.”
What is anaphora?
This narrative technique presents the story from a character’s perspective using “I” or “we.”
What is first-person point of view?
Passage: An essay on social media begins with the sentence, “We check our phones more often than we check on our neighbors.” The next paragraph introduces statistics about average screen time.
Question: The relationship between the opening sentence and the following statistics is best described as
(A) a concession that the statistics will refute
(B) a personal complaint that the statistics ignore
(C) a provocative claim that the statistics are meant to support
(D) a sarcastic remark that contradicts the statistics
What is (C) a provocative claim that the statistics are meant to support?
This Canterbury Tales story features a knight who must discover what women truly desire
What is "The Wife of Bath's Tale"?
In “The dog that I saw was brown,” the underlined clause is this type of dependent clause.
What is an adjective (or relative) clause?
This device uses parallel structure but reverses word order: “Ask not what your country can do for you…”
What is chiasmus?
This term describes when an object, person, or action represents an abstract idea beyond its literal meaning.
What is symbolism?
Passage: In a review of a new novel, the critic writes, “The book is ambitious, if not always successful, in its attempt to give a voice to those history prefers to footnote.”
Question: The critic’s description of the novel as “ambitious, if not always successful” primarily conveys
(A) unqualified praise for the novel’s stylistic innovation
(B) skepticism toward the novel’s subject matter
(C) a mixed evaluation of the novel’s execution but respect for its goals
(D) annoyance that the novel departs from literary tradition
What is (C) a mixed evaluation of the novel’s execution but respect for its goals?
This John Milton epic depicts Satan's rebellion and humanity's fall from Eden
What is Paradise Lost?
This type of verb requires a direct object to complete its meaning, unlike “sleep” or “laugh.”
What is a transitive verb?
This device uses connected words with contradictory meanings, like “deafening silence” or “cruel kindness.”
What is an oxymoron?
This term describes the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, or between expectation and reality.
What is irony (dramatic, verbal, or situational)?
Passage: An article about standardized tests includes the line, “We are told these exams measure ‘potential,’ though the students with the fewest resources somehow always seem to have the least of it.”
Question: The quotation marks around the word “potential” primarily serve to
(A) indicate a technical term the author endorses
(B) emphasize the author’s doubt about how the term is being used
(C) show that the term is grammatically incorrect
(D) signal that the author is quoting directly from a student
Answer: What is (B) emphasize the author’s doubt about how the term is being used?
This medieval romance follows Sir Gawain's test of honor involving a green knight and an axe
What is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?
This syntactic structure places the main clause at the end, building tension: “Although tired, she continued.”
What is a periodic sentence?
This device substitutes an attribute for the thing itself: “The crown announced new taxes” or “Hollywood loves sequels.”
What is metonymy?
This Russian formalist concept refers to making the familiar strange to renew perception of everyday objects.
What is defamiliarization (or ostranenie)?
Passage 1: A memoirist recalls her working-class childhood, noting that “we learned early that library cards opened more doors than our paychecks ever would.”
Passage 2: In an op-ed, another writer argues that “claims about ‘self-made’ success politely ignore the scaffolding of class, race, and luck.”
Question: Taken together, the two passages most strongly suggest which view of education?
(A) Education guarantees success regardless of background.
(B) Education is valuable, but narratives of purely individual achievement are incomplete.
(C) Education is largely irrelevant to questions of class and opportunity.
(D) Education primarily functions as entertainment rather than empowerment.
Answer: What is (B) Education is valuable, but narratives of purely individual achievement are incomplete?
This Anglo-Saxon elegy laments the loss of a lord and the passing of warrior culture
What is "The Wanderer" (or "The Seafarer")?
This error occurs when a modifier has no clear word to modify, as in “Walking down the street, the trees were beautiful.”
What is a dangling modifier (or dangling participle)?
This device places normally opposing terms side by side for effect: “the living dead” or “cruel to be kind.”
What is a paradox (or antithesis)?
This narrative structure begins in medias res, then uses flashbacks before returning to present action.
What is a non-linear (or disrupted chronological) narrative?