Practice Test Answers

Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention". But Laura had gotten used to the life here. She did not want to go back to the old country where, de la Torre or not, she was only a wife and a mother (and a failed one at that, since she had never provided the required son). Better an independent nobody than a high-class houseslave. She did not come straight out and disagree with her husband's plans. Instead, she fussed with him about reading the papers in bed, soiling their sheets with those poorly printed, foreign tabloids. " The Times is not that bad!" she'd claim if her husband tried to humor her by saying they shared the same dirty habit. How do Laura’s interactions with her husband reveal the conflict she experiences?

Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention". " Sticks and stones don't break bones ," she chanted. Yoyo could tell, though, by the look on her face, it was as if one of those stones the kids had aimed at her daughters had hit her. But she always pretended they were at fault. "What did you do to provoke them? It takes two to tangle, you know.” What is the original meaning of the underlined idiom in this excerpt?

Read the conversation that takes place between Mrs. Flowers and Momma Henderson from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” "I don't need to see the inside, Mrs. Henderson, I can tell . . ." But the dress was over my head and my arms were stuck in the sleeves. Momma said, "That'll do. See here, Sister Flowers, I French-seams around the armholes." What allows the reader to infer that Mrs. Flowers is concerned about Marguerite’s feelings?

Read the passage from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Mrs. Bertha Flowers was the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She had the grace of control to appear warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private breeze which swirled around, cooling her. She was thin without the taut look of wiry people, and her printed voile dresses and flowered hats were as right for her as denim overalls for a farmer. She was our side's answer to the richest white woman in town. The author’s purpose in including this passage is to

Which sentence includes an example of hyperbole?

Which phrase includes an example of onomatopoeia?

Read the passage from “The Caged Bird.” A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. How does the figurative language in this stanza work as part of the extended metaphor?

Read the passage from “The Caged Bird.” But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. What is the literal meaning of stalks ?