Multiple Choice
Rebecca C. McFarlan
Multiple Choice Tips for Students
· If you gain steam, start with easy passages
· If you lose steam, start with the difficult passages
· If you are a part to whole thinker, help frame the passage by looking at thematic questions.
· If you are a whole to part thinker, circle strong details as you read.
· No matter what type of thinker you are, circle shift (transition) words.
· Do not spend too much time on any one question. Often the last questions become easier.
· Pay attention to bolded words such as “Except.”
· The difficult passages have the easier questions; the easier passages have the more difficult questions.
· Difficult passages don’t have as many overall theme questions. These selections tend to have questions that deal with specific line numbers.
· The easier passages will usually have questions that deal both with specific line numbers and will also ask you to synthesize overall theme or main idea.
· Identify speaker and audience, especially in poetry.
Multiple Choice Tips for Teachers
· Begin with easy passages to build confidence.
· Allow to work in pairs early in the year.
· Allow to correct errors and explain why the correct answer is the best one.
· Have students write questions.
· Remove the stem and have students write one based on the five choices; repeat the process by removing the choices and have students construct those. Compare to the original.
· Have students or teacher identify skills assessed in each question and look for patterns in those missed.
· Choose passages that approximate the unit of study.
· Have students go through the math for determining exam scores.
Multiple Choice Practice
Name: ______
· If you complete this packet satisfactorily, I will add ten points to one of your daily grades (excluding Literary Specialist).
· You can work with a partner or two other students. No more than three to a group.
· Spend an hour completing the passages individually. Mark your answers directly on the test.
· Get an answer key from me and put your name on it!
· Check your answers
· Analyze using the form below the types of questions and passages that give you difficulty.
· Turn in both this packet and the answer key.
AP Multiple Choice Reflection
Multiple Choice:
Number Correct ______Number Wrong ______
Types of questions most often missed:
First Choice vs. Second Choice:
Poetry vs. Prose
Pre-1800 vs. Post 1800
Time Management:
Other Reflections:
Rhetorical Analysis / Close Reading: Multiple-Choice Stems
From the AP Literature and Composition exam:
1. What is the author's attitude toward the subject of the essay?
2. What is this passage about?
3. What does the phrase, ______, mean?
4. How would you characterize the style of the passage?
5. Which of the following best summarizes the main point in lines _____?
6. What is the main point in _____? (the passage, the second paragraph, etc.)
7. How would you restate the meaning of ______?
8. How would you define the phrase ______?
9. What is the speaker’s purpose in ______?
10. What thought is reflected in the allusion ______?
11. What is the tone of the passage?
12. How would you define the word ______?
13. How would you describe the diction and style of the passage?
14. In lines _____, what is the speaker asserting?
15. Why is ______described as ______?
16. What is significant about the structure of sentence #____ in lines ____?
17. In sentences _____, what contrasts are developed or implied?
18. In lines ______, why does the author pair quotations?
19. In lines ______, what is the effect of pairing quotations?
20. What is the dominant technique used in lines ______?
21. In lines ______, what is the effect of using a metaphor?
22. In lines _____, juxtaposing ______and ______serves the purpose of ______.
23. What does the speaker accomplish in using ______?
24. By using the words ______, the speaker shows the belief that _____.
25. In lines _____, how is the speaker portrayed?
26. The shift in point of view from...has the effect of...
27. What is the theme of the ______(e.g., second paragraph, whole piece)?
28. In lines ____, the passage shifts from ______to ______.
29. Why does the author represent ______as ______in lines ____?
30. What is the purpose of the syntax in sentence _____?
31. What does ______symbolize in lines ____?
32. The speaker's attitude toward ______is best described as one of ______.
33. In _____, the author is asserting that ______.
34. The term _____ conveys the speaker's belief that ______.
35. The speaker assumes that the audience's attitude toward ______will be one of ______.
36. In the ______(e.g., first, second, last) paragraph, the speaker seeks to interest us in the subjects of the discussion by stressing the ______.
37. It can be inferred by ______that ______.
38. The ______(e.g., first, second) sentence is unified by metaphorical references pertaining to ______.
39. The speaker's mention of ______is appropriate to the development of the argument as an illustration of ______.
40. As the sentence in lines _____ is constructed, ______is parallel to ______.
41. It can be inferred from the description of ______that the qualities of ______are valued by the speaker.
42. According to the passage, ______is ______because ______.
43. In the context of the passage, ______is best interpreted as ______.
44. Sentence ______is best described as ______.
45. The antecedent for ______in line ______is ______.
46. What type of argument does the writer employ in lines ______?
47. Why does the speaker use the sequence of ideas in lines _____?
48. We can infer from ______that ______.
49. What pattern of exposition does the writer use in this passage?
50. What is the point of view in this passage/poem?
51. What is the purpose of the statement in lines _____?
52. What atmosphere or mood is established in lines ______?
53. The ______(e.g., first, fourth) sentence is coherent because of its use of ______.
54. What qualities are present in the scene described in lines _____?
55. What words and details suggest a ______(adjective) attitude on the part of the author?
56. In line ______, the use of ______instead of ______accomplishes ______.
57. In line______, the author emphasizes ______because he/she______.
58. The use of ______suggests that ______.
59. What is the function of the ______(sentence, detail, clause, phrase, and so on) in lines ______?
60. The subject of the sentence in lines ______is ______.
61. What assertions does the author make in the passage, and what is his/her purpose in doing this?
62. By ______, the author most probably means ______.
63. What meanings are contained in the word ______in line _____?
64. What can we infer from the passage about ______?
65. The author apparently believes that ______.
66. In lines______, the phrase______is used to refer to ______.
67. The author believes that we should______.
68. The ______(e.g., first, last, third) sentence of the passage is chiefly remarkable for its______.
69. What does the author want to encourage in a person?
70. What is the function of ______in relation to ______?
“Advice to a Prophet” - Close Reading Strategies
Group 1 – Finding Ambiguities
Individually: Highlight the parts of the poem that are puzzling to you.
Group: Share the highlighted lines and formulate interesting questions about the ambiguities. Write some plausible responses to the ambiguity. The responses should be in declarative sentence form.
Study Tip: Don't oversimplify to eliminate a possible contradiction or inconsistency; acknowledge ambiguity instead. REMEMBER GODOT!!
Group 2 – Rhetorical Strategies and Literary Devices
Identify at least one literary device or rhetorical strategy in each stanza (refer to handout). Make certain everyone knows the definition. Write at least one way in which the device adds meaning to the stanza and to the poem as a whole.
Group 3 - Grammar and Syntax
Examine verbs, nouns and pronouns and draw conclusions about how grammar impacts theme and tone.
Verbs: active or passive – imperative, indicative, subjunctive moods
Syntax – statement – question
Group 4 – Structure
How is the poem put together? How does structure reinforce theme?
Advice to a Prophet by Richard Wilbur
510
15
20
25
30
35
40 / When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?
Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,
If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip
On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus* once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.
*Xanthus: in Greek myth, a river scalded by Hephaestus, god
of fire.
* also - An immortal horse belonging to Achilles. Hera gave Xanthus the power of speech so that he could warn Achilles that he was about to die in the Trojan War. Achilles had already been warned by his mother Thetis, a goddess of the sea.
1. The speaker assumes that the prophet referred to in lines 1-12 will come proclaiming
(A) a new religious dispensation
(B) joyous self-awareness
(C) a new political order
(D) the horror of self-destruction
(E) an appreciation of nature
2. According to the speaker, the prophet’s “word of the weapons” (line 5) will probably not be heeded because
(A) human beings are really fascinated by weapons
(B) nature is more fascinating than warfare
(C) men and women are more concerned with love than with weapons
(D) people have heard such talk too often before
(E) people cannot comprehend abstract descriptions of power
3. In the phrase, “A stone look on the stone’s face,” (line 12) the speaker is suggesting that
(A) a stone is the most difficult natural object to comprehend
(B) such a stone is a metaphor for a human lack of understanding
(C) it is human beings who see a face on stones
(D) nature is a hostile environment for the human race
(E) the pain of life is bearable only to a stoic
4. In line 13 the speaker is doing which of the following?
(A) Anticipating the prophet’s own advice
(B) Despairing of ever influencing the prophet
(C) Exchanging his own point of view with that of the prophet
(D) Heeding the prophet’s advice
(E) Prescribing what the prophet should say
5. In lines 14-16, the speaker is asserting that we
(A) learn more or less about decay in nature according to our point of view
(B) can never understand change in nature
(C) are always instructed by an altering of our perspective
(D) have all experienced loss and disappointment
(E) realize that the end of the world may be near
6. The speaker implies that without “the dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return” (line 24) we would
(A) be less worried about war and destruction
(B) crave coarser pleasures than the enjoyment of nature
(C) have less understanding of ourselves and our lives
(D) be unable to love
(E) find ourselves unwilling to heed the advice of prophets
7. The phrase “knuckled grip” (line 20) implies that the jack-pine
(A) will never really fall from the ledge
(B) has roots that grasp like a hand
(C) is very precariously attached to the ledge
(D) is a rough and inhuman part of nature
(E) is very awkwardly placed
8. “The dolphin’s arc” (line 24) refers to the
(A) Biblical story of Noah
(B) leap of a dolphin
(C) hunting of dolphins with bow and arrow
(D) rainbow
(E) migration pattern of the dolphin
9. The phrase “that live tongue” (line 27) is best understood as
(A) a metaphor for nature
(B) an image of the poet’s mind
(C) a symbol of the history of the world
(D) a reference to the poem itself
(E) a metaphor for the advice of the prophet
10. According to the speaker, we use the images of the rose (line 29), the horse (line 30), and the locust (line 31)
(A) literally to denote specific natural objects
(B) as metaphors to aid in comprehending abstractions
(C) as similes illustrating the speaker’s attitude toward nature
(D) to reinforce images previously used by the prophet
(E) to explain the need for scientific study of nature
11. Which of the following best describes an effect of the repetition of the phrase “ask us” in line 33?
(A) It suggests that the prophet himself is the cause of much of the world’s misery.
(B) It represents a sarcastic challenge to the prophet to ask the right questions.