The Power of Humor — Test Answers

This question has two parts. First, answer Part 1. Then, answer Part 2. Part 1 Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? I can’t stop thinking about Hidaya and I feel sick with longing for my friends and teachers. Sick with longing for a school where we learned what every other student in any other Melbourne school learned but we could also pray and fast and wear a hijab and keep on being a teenager without having to answer questions or defend ourselves against news headlines. Where we sang “Advance Australia Fair” every morning at assembly and got detention if we didn’t take it seriously. Where we could deal with puberty and the teenage angst thing and have crushes and go on diets without being a prefix to terrorism, extremism, radicalism, any ism. What is the overall tone in this passage?

Part 2 Which words from the passage best support the correct answer to Part 1?

What evidence supports the conclusion that "The Storyteller” uses satire to impart the theme that adults should respect children’s intelligence? Choose two correct answers.

Read the excerpt from "The Storyteller." "She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.” "Was she pretty?” asked the bigger of the small girls. "Not as pretty as any of you,” said the bachelor, "but she was horribly good.” There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life. How does the underlined sentence contribute to the theme that culture can limit our thinking?