Pretest Answers

Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I hate the fact that I had to leave Hidaya. But it only goes up to tenth grade because it doesn't have enough funding to offer eleventh and twelfth grades. My best friends, Leila Okulgen and Yasmeen Khan, moved on to a public high school close to Coburg, where they live. I begged my parents to let me go with them but Mom and Dad insisted that I go to a private school. What is the narrator’s tone in this passage?

Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Now the next thing, and it’s really very simple, is that while I’m not going to abandon my fashion sense—you’d better believe I’d never give up my shopping sprees—I’m sick of obsessing about my body, what guys are going to think about my cleavage and calves and shoulder-to-hip ratio. And for the love of everything that is good and holy I am really sick of worrying what people are going to think if I put on a few pounds or have a pimple. I mean, homeroom on Monday morning can be such a stress attack. Which statement best explains how the narrative tone reveals a unique perspective?

Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I can’t sleep. What will Adam say? Adam? Who gives a crap about Adam? Not me. Uh-uh. Nope. He’ll probably laugh. Hey, that’s not fair. He’s not like that. What is the narrator's tone regarding going to school in the hijab?

Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Because it’s pretty hard to walk around with people staring at your "towel-head” and not feel kind of pleased with yourself if you manage to get through the stares and comments with your head held high. That’s when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God’s watching you, knowing that He knows you’re trying to be strong and please Him. Like you’re both in on a private joke and something special and warm and extraordinary is happening and nobody else in the world knows about it because it’s your own experience, your own personal friendship with your Creator. I guess when I’m not wearing the hijab I feel like I’m missing out. I feel cheated out of that special bond. Which phrases from the excerpt best support the narrator’s confident tone? Choose three correct answers.

Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. The Religious/Scriptures/Sacred stuff: I believe in Allah/God’s commandments contained in the Koran. God says men and women should act and dress modestly. The way I see it, I’d rather follow God’s fashion dictates than some ugly fake-tanned old fart in Milan who’s getting by on a pretty self-serving theory of less is more when it comes to female dress. What does the narrator's tone in this passage reveal about her perspective?

Read the excerpts from Does My Head Look Big in This? and Persepolis . Excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? : I can’t image what my class will say if I walk in with the hijab on. Oh boy, does this give the walking-into-class-naked dream another dimension. Except in my case, I’m not walking in naked. I’m walking in fully covered and yet I’m still breaking out into a sweat. Come to think of it, though, it’s not like I’m not used to being the odd one out. I attended a Catholic elementary school because we lived too far away from the Islamic school and my parents didn’t have time to travel the distance twice a day. Plus, all that "love thy neighbor," "respect your parents," and "cleanliness is next to godliness" stuff was basically what I would have been taught in Religious Education in an Islamic school anyway. Excerpt from Persepolis : Expand Image What similarities do the narrators’ perspectives most reveal? Choose two correct answers.

Read the excerpts from Does My Head Look Big in This? and Persepolis . Excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? : My best friends, Leila Okulgen and Yasmeen Khan, moved on to a public high school close to Coburg, where they live. I begged my parents to let me go with them but Mom and Dad insisted that I go to a private school. I tried everything. At first I sucked up to them big time, making them coffee after dinner, offering to set the table before Mom had a chance to ask me, letting them watch PBS documentaries when I wanted to watch Big Brother . That didn’t work. So I turned political, ranting about them perpetuating the snobby bourgeoisie power trip of our educational system which forges aristocratic divisions between social classes (I got that from a PBS documentary). Talk about having no compassion or social conscience. They just laughed at me and gave me a pile of literature about the school. Excerpt from Persepolis : Expand Image Which statement is true about the narrators’ different perspectives?