Literary Elements
ELA.8.R.1.1
ELA.8.R.1.1
Which of the following selections best explains the meaning of the passage below (paragraph 10)?
One day they would come to understand, she thought. She was not the land of her mother and father. She was her own country, with her own history of civil wars, revolutions, healing and growth. One day they would learn to keep their boxes away from her. One day they would see that she will never, ever, fit.
A. The people around her will grow to like her because of her pre-rehearsed answers.
B. Eventually she will move to a different place that is more welcoming to people of her identity.
C. She believes she will eventually reveal who she is on her own terms.
D. She plans to educate the people around her on the troubled history of her mother’s homeland.
C. She believes she will eventually reveal who she is on her own terms.
From "I'm Nobody Who are you"
Which of the following inferences about the speaker is best supported by the poem’s first stanza (lines 1-4)?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
A. The speaker assumes that the listener is on her side.
B. The speaker wants to change her name to something unfamiliar.
C. The speaker fears the judgment of others.
D. The speaker is tired of being famous.
A. The speaker assumes that the listener is on her side.
Which of the following best explains the figurative meaning of “it was grassy and wanted wear,” as it pertains to the road?
A. The road seems like a safer option and symbolizes making a life decision based on careful planning.
B. The road is bigger and symbolizes a life filled with more important things.
C. The road seems healthy and attractive, which symbolizes a more fruitful life.
D. The road is grassy and hasn’t been cut, but it’s beautiful.
C. The road seems healthy and attractive, which symbolizes a more fruitful life.
From "So Where are you from"...
Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the entire essay?
A. The reality of the author’s situation is a lot more painful than she chooses to share.
B. The problem with the question of the title is that there are so many children like this girl who do not know where they came from.
C. The author refuses to be bothered by the thoughtless question of the title.
D. The peers asking the author where she’s from are open to any response, no matter how uncomfortable.
A. The reality of the author’s situation is a lot more painful than she chooses to share.
From "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"
The second stanza (lines 5-8) adds to the development of the poem mainly by .
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
A. sharing personal details from the speaker’s own life
B. suggesting that the poem takes place in June
C. making it clear that the speaker of the poem is a frog
D. further explaining why the speaker wouldn’t want to be “Somebody”
D. further explaining why the speaker wouldn’t want to be “Somebody”
From “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
6. Then took the other, as just as fair,
7. And having perhaps the better claim,
8. Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
9. Though as for that the passing there
10. Had worn them really about the same,
Lines 6–10 best contribute to the extended metaphor in the poem by—
A. suggesting that there are no “right” choices in life.
B. showing that people make choices with the information they have.
C. introducing the idea that decisions are not important.
D. introducing the idea that decisions are not important.
B. showing that people make choices with the information they have.
What is most likely Mrs. Obama’s reason for including the following passage in her speech (paragraph 13)?
See, I learned respect from how my parents cared for my great aunt and uncle—how my mother would wake up in the middle of the night to check on my great aunt, how my father would prop himself up against the bathroom sink each morning, leaning hard on his crutches, to give my great uncle a shave.
A. To draw sympathy from the audience by detailing the difficulties her family went through
B. To show how she learned that one should sacrifice yourself to help others
C. To suggest that not everyone can have the amazing success and good fortune that she and her husband have had
D. To explain why her father could not be with them at the graduation
B. To show how she learned that one should sacrifice yourself to help others
Which of the following inferences is best supported by the passage below (lines 4-11)?
Mother starts sewing
at a factory;
Brother Quang begins
repairing cars.
The rest of us
must go to school,
repeating the last grade,
left unfinished.
A. Hà and her siblings all failed school the previous year.
B. Brother Quang is the youngest of the family.
C. Hà and her family moved to the United States in the middle of a school year.
D. Hà has been unable to find a job in the United States.
C. Hà and her family moved to the United States in the middle of a school year.
Which of the following figures of speech or sound devices is the best description of “wanted wear” (line 8)?
A. metaphor
B. extended metaphor
C. symbol
D. alliteration
D. alliteration
Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the passage below (paragraph 31)?
I’m reminded of how some of your communities have seeds that your ancestors have been planting and harvesting for thousands of years, long before America was even an idea.
A. The greatest way the students can pay tribute to their heritage is by working in agriculture.
B. There are visible signs around the students of the ways their ancestors invested in their future.
C. Educational struggles were not necessarily a big part of the Native American experience.
D. There is very little in common between the speaker’s roots and the culture that the students come from.
B. There are visible signs around the students of the ways their ancestors invested in their future.
The following passage (lines 100-106) mainly suggests that the narrator, Hà, .
Fire hair on skin dotted with spots.
Fuzzy dark hair on skin shiny as lacquer.
Hair the color of root on milky skin.
Lots of braids on milk chocolate.
White hair on a pink boy.
Honey hair with orange ribbons on see-through skin.
Hair with barrettes in all colors on bronze bread.
A. thinks her classmates look silly
B. is not used to seeing people who look like her classmates
C. is getting bored as she sits there in class
D. can’t tell her classmates apart
B. is not used to seeing people who look like her classmates
The author italicizes the word “originally” in the following passage (paragraph 4) most likely because .
There it was. Originally. The word suggesting that she cannot validate her sense of belonging to this place. The implication being that her ‘exotic’ genetic makeup excludes her from her right to belong to this land.
A. she does not understand its meaning
B. it is the title of something she is reading
C. she is proud of her “exotic” identity
D. the word has a very powerful effect on her
D. the word has a very powerful effect on her
Which of the following statements about Mrs. Obama’s point of view is best supported by the following passage (paragraph 34)?
But because they refused to be defined by anyone else’s idea of who they were and what they could be, because they held fast to their impossible dreams for themselves and their children, today, my two daughters wake up each morning in the White House.
A. She worries that her own children will not appreciate the struggles and sacrifices of their ancestors.
B. She believes that focusing on small ways to improve one’s future can have amazing and unforeseen consequences.
C. She believes that her ancestors were driven to see one of their great grandchildren become president or first lady one day.
D. She thinks it is important to keep one’s dreams realistic and not overly ambitious.
B. She believes that focusing on small ways to improve one’s future can have amazing and unforeseen consequences.
Which of the following inferences about the speaker is best supported by the first stanza?
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
A. The speaker prefers country life over city life.
B. The speaker thinks long and hard about his life’s choices before he makes them.
C. The speaker doesn’t like weeds.
D. The speaker is lonely for someone else.
B. The speaker thinks long and hard about his life’s choices before he makes them.
What is most closely the meaning of the word medium as it appears in the following passage (lines 125-129)?
Both laughing, chewing,
as if it never occurred
to them
someone medium
would show up.
A. noun | a form used to communicate something
B. noun | a person who claims to communicate with spirits of the dead
C. adjective | between two different extremes on a range or spectrum
D. adjective | cooked halfway
C. adjective | between two different extremes on a range or spectrum