Domain 1: Language and Linguistics
1.1 Language Structure and Linguistics (ALL LINGUISTICS)
•
identify components of human language
1A
6. English orthography is only partially
regular (i.e., the spelling of a word is
not a perfect guide to its pronunciation).
Which of the following best explains
this fact?
A. The earliest forms of English
evolved from languages with
pictographic writing systems.
B. Careless transcriptions have
changed the spelling of many
English words.
C. In the transition to Modern English,
the pronunciation of many words
changed while their spelling did
not.
D. Words that are slang and jargon
have distinct pronunciation rules.
Correct Response: C. (SMR Code: 2.1) During
the transition to Modern English, the pronunciation
of
many vowels underwent rapid change. For
example, prior to this transition (known as the
Great Vowel
Shift), the words cook and mood both had the
same vowel sound as the modern word book. The
vowel
sound in mood then shifted to its current
pronunciation, while the vowel sound in cook
stayed the same.
Like other irregular spellings in Modern English, the
spelling of the word mood did not change to reflect
the new vowel sound it acquired during the Great
Vowel Shift.
1. Which of the following examples best
illustrates the dynamic nature of living
languages?
A. The words mouse and monitor have
acquired additional meanings.
B. Fourth and forth sound the same,
but they have different meanings.
C. The word story changes to stories
in the plural form.
D. Burst and spread are spelled the
same regardless of the verb tense.
1. Compared with standardized reading
assessments, one important advantage of
informal reading assessments is that they
allow the teacher to:
A. characterize a student's reading
proficiency in terms of typical
grade-level performance.
B. personalize reading assessments to
identify the needs of individual
students.
C. avoid bias in the administration
and interpretation of reading
assessments.
D. compare the reading performance of
individual students to other students
in the class.
1. In Language A, a particular phonological
word (cluster of sounds) means
"yes," while in Language B it means
"no." This is an example of which of
the following aspects of human
language?
A. the evolution of language
B. the interactional function of
language
C. the arbitrariness of language
D. the reciprocity of language
3. Which of the following events began the
transition from Old English to Middle
English?
A. the Viking invasions of the ninth
century
B. the Norman Conquest of 1066
C. the Statute of Pleading in 1362
D. the printing of the King James
Bible in 1611
1
7. Which of the following factors contributed
most significantly to the expansion of the
English language during the English
Renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries?
A. the creation of descriptive
compound words by joining two
native words together
B. the infusion of borrowed words
from Latin and Greek
C. the inclusion of Scandinavian
words derived from the language
of Danish settlers
D. the addition of words that were
shortened by common usage
20. Résumé, piano, and canyon are examples
of terms that came into the English
language through:
A. blending of parts of two other words
to form a new word.
B. the use of a Latin or Greek root as
the basis for a new word.
C. borrowing of words from other
modern languages.
D. the transformation of acronyms into
conventional words.
Correct Response: C. Many English words are borrowed from other modern languages.
Résumé is French; piano is Italian; canyon is Spanish. This borrowing explains the non-English
accent marks in résumé and the imitative spelling of the English word canyon, which substitutes
/ny/ for the original /ñ/ of the Spanish word.
•
demonstrate an understanding of phonology
1B
8. Which of the following components
6. A teacher is planning an activity in
of grammar determines the patterns
which students will count the phonemes
contained within various words. The
of sound, intonation, timing, and stress
in a language?
teacher begins by selecting words with
A. syntax
varying numbers of phonemes. Which of
B. morphology
following words selected by the teacher
C. semantics
contains five phonemes?
D. phonology
A. stamp
B. trail
C. brush
D. grape
2
•
demonstrate an understanding of morphology
1C
3. The smallest unit of meaning in a
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.1) A
language is known as a:
morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a
A. morpheme.
language and
B. syntactic unit.
cannot be further subdivided into meaningful
C. phoneme.
linguistic parts. There are two types of morphemes,
D. grapheme.
free
morphemes and bound morphemes. A free
morpheme stands alone as a complete word (e.g.,
the word
"bag"). A bound morpheme must be attached to a
word (e.g., the inflectional ending "s" in the word
"runs" is a bound morpheme).
18. An eighth-grade teacher wants to help
students improve their spelling of
scientific vocabulary, including the
terms listed below.
barometer
centimeter
dehydrate
hydrogen
microscope
telescope
thermal
thermometer
Which of the following instructional
strategies is likely to be most effective
for this purpose?
A. showing students how to divide
scientific terms into syllables to
facilitate accurate spelling
B. conducting practice drills to help
students memorize the irregular
spelling patterns of the words
C. familiarizing students with the
spelling and meaning of Greek
morphemes in scientific terms
D. helping students determine correct
spellings by dividing the words into
onsets and rimes
53. A middle-school teacher designs the
following instructional activity. Using the
board, the teacher writes and pronounces
dict. She explains that dict derives from
the Latin word for "speak." She then asks
students if they can think of English words
that start with or include dict. The teacher
uses students' suggestions to create the
diagram shown below.
This activity is likely to promote students'
vocabulary development primarily by
helping the students:
A. recognize common prefixes and
suffixes.
B. apply the techniques of concept
mapping.
C. use word roots to determine the
meaning of related words.
D. draw on a knowledge of phonics
to unlock word meanings.
14. For which of the following words would
it be most effective for a student to use
structural analysis to determine its
meaning?
A. guffaw
B. neurologist
C. hacienda
D. sonar
3
•
demonstrate an understanding of syntax, parts of speech, phrases and clauses, and
sentence types (e.g., simple, compound, and complex sentences).
1D
12. A middle school teacher wants to improve
students' comprehension of informational
texts by helping the students analyze
comparison/contrast text structures.
Which of the following instructional
strategies would best address this goal?
A. Students read two different texts
that address the same topic and then
meet in small discussion groups to
compare/contrast the two texts.
B. The teacher models for students
how to write a complex sentence
that compares/contrasts two
different items or ideas.
C. Each student outlines the main
ideas and significant details in two
comparison/contrast texts on a given
subject.
D. The teacher helps students create a
Venn diagram to summarize a
comparison/contrast text.
5. Use the diagram below to answer the question that follows.
This diagram represents the structure of
which of the following sentences?
A. The woman in the car drives to the
opera.
B. A rainy day is an opportunity to
stay at home.
C. The dog on the beach loves to play
frisbee.
D. A bird in hand is worth two in the
bush.
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.1) The diagram represents the structure of the sentence in
response choice A by dividing the sentence into its noun phrase ("The woman in the car") and verb
phrase
("drives to the opera"). These phrases are then subdivided into individual parts of speech (e.g., the article
"the," the noun "woman," and the prepositional phrase "in the car"). Each level of the diagram
corresponds to a level of syntactic structure.
4
13. Read the sentences below; then answer
the question that follows.
• Gabriel García Márquez is my
favorite writer.
• He is the author of One Hundred
Years of Solitude.
Which of the following sentences
combines the two sentences above using
an embedded appositional phrase?
A. Gabriel García Márquez, my
favorite writer, is the author of
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
B. Gabriel García Márquez is my
favorite writer; he is the author of
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
C. Gabriel García Márquez is my
favorite writer and the author of
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
D. Gabriel García Márquez, who is
my favorite writer, is the author of
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.4) An
appositional phrase identifies or describes a nearby
noun,
as illustrated in the way that "my favorite writer"
identifies Gabriel García Márquez. An embedded
appositional phrase is set within the body of the
sentence rather than coming at the beginning or
the end.
14. Which of the following sentences
contains an underlined word that
functions as a noncount noun?
A. These flowers are beautiful.
B. Every petal has a different hue.
C. I will put them in a vase with
water.
D. Thank you for this wonderful gift!
Correct Response: C. (SMR Code: 2.4) A
noncount noun, also known as a noncountable
noun or mass
noun, denotes a concept or substance (in this case,
water) that is indivisible into countable units and is
preceded in English indefinite constructions by
modifiers such as some or much rather than a or
one.
15. Which of the following word sets is
composed of verbs that function as
modals?
A. cooking, shopping, driving
B. sailed, ran, soared
C. can, would, must
D. shine, disperse, finish
Correct Response: C. (SMR Code: 2.4) Modals,
also known as modal auxiliary verbs, refer to a set
of
English verbs (including can, would, and must) that
are characteristically used with other verbs to
express
mood or tense.
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10. A ninth-grade teacher writes the following
sentence on the board:
Neither walking on the beach nor
running around the track cheered
Danny up.
The teacher prompts students to discuss
how the phrases that come just after
neither and just after nor are similar.
This exercise is most likely to enhance
students' reading comprehension by
helping them:
A. distinguish between explicit and
implied main ideas.
B. apply literal comprehension skills.
C. identify cause-and-effect
relationships.
D. recognize parallel constructions.
Use the information below to answer
the four questions that follow.
A sixth-grade teacher reads his students
the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" by
Lewis Carroll. The first four lines of the
poem are shown below.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
32. The teacher reads aloud the clause "All
mimsy were the borogoves" and asks
students what that might mean. One
student responds, "It means that the
borogoves were all mimsy!" This
student's response demonstrates skill
in which of the following reading
comprehension strategies?
A. applying relevant content
knowledge
B. recognizing cause-effect
relationships
C. analyzing the use of figurative
language
D. interpreting unusual grammatical
constructions
52. A fifth-grade teacher gives students the
following sentence:
Neither walking on the beach nor
running around the track cheered
Danny up.
The teacher asks the students how the
phrases that come just after neither
and just after nor are similar. This
exercise can promote students' reading
comprehension by helping them:
A. distinguish between explicit and
implied main ideas.
B. identify cause-effect relationships.
C. apply literal comprehension skills.
D. recognize parallel constructions.
6. Read the sentence below; then answer
the question that follows.
Does he remember El Paso?
What is the declarative form of this
sentence?
A. He remembers El Paso.
B. What city does he remember?
C. Remember El Paso.
D. Is he remembering El Paso?
6
1. Use the writing sample below to answer
the question that follows.
The students, who had studied hard
for their examination, which was
given at the end of the school year.
Based on this sample, the student
who wrote this seems to be having
difficulty making sure that:
A. the subject and verb of a sentence
agree.
B. a sentence contains a subject
and predicate.
C. a subordinate clause is placed after
the word it modifies.
D. the correct pronoun is used to begin
a subordinate clause.
2. Periodically throughout the school year,
a high school ESL teacher gives students
a checklist to complete individually.
Following are examples of the types of
statements found on the checklist.
Yes or No:
__ I look for word patterns in a sentence
to help me read and understand it.
__ I use note taking and flashcards to
reinforce new language and vocabulary
I have learned.
__ I make word associations when
learning new language and vocabulary.
__ I use visualization to help remember
new vocabulary.
Completing this checklist is likely to
benefit students most by:
A. helping them become effective at
evaluating their own language
proficiency.
B. helping them develop strategies for
overcoming misunderstandings
when communicating.
C. encouraging them to compensate
for gaps in their current language
knowledge and skills.
D. encouraging them to use various
cognitive strategies for internalizing
language.
2. Use the writing sample below to
answer the question that follows.
The students, who had studied
hard for their examination, which
was given at the end of the school
year.
Based on this sample, the student
who wrote this seems to be having
difficulty making sure that:
A. the subject and verb of a sentence
agree.
B. a sentence contains a subject
and predicate.
C. a subordinate clause is placed
after the word it modifies.
D. the correct pronoun is used to
1. Which of the following sentences is
written in the passive voice?
A. My best friend saw the play.
B. The play was seen by many people.
C. I could see the play tomorrow night.
D. Several critics have seen the play.
Correct Response: B. In the passive voice, the
subject of the sentence receives the action
instead of performing it. The subject of sentence B,
"The play," performs no action, but is acted
upon ("is seen by many people").
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begin a subordinate clause.
Parts of speech can be identified by their
function in a sentence. Which part of
speech can be used to complete the
sentence "The ________ jumped high"?
A. noun
B. adverb
C. pronoun
D. adjective
This item is from knowledge and skill area 1. Answer choice A is correct. The missing part of the
sentence is the subject, the performer of the action expressed in the verb jumped. Of the answer
choices, only a noun and a pronoun can function as the subject of a sentence, and a pronoun cannot be
modified by the article the. Therefore, the correct answer must be A, a noun.
7. Which of the following sentences
7. Which of the following sentences
violates the principles of conventional
contains a misplaced modifier?
syntax?
A. A plane landed on the runway with
A. Where is the rock greenly
a broken propeller.
sleeping?
B. The lawyer joined my brother and
B. Shun the fruminous Bandersnatch!
me outside the courtroom for a
C. The quertl chased from the room.
brief conference.
D. It could have been; but it was not
C. Driving along the road, we saw a
to be.
beautiful field of flowers.
D. The governor's major objective,
conserving our natural resources,
was well supported.
13. Students in a middle school class have
been learning about active and passive
verbs. Which of the following instructional
activities would best help students
recognize and understand differences
between the active and passive voice?
A. Working with partners, students
convert passive sentences to the
active voice; then the teacher guides
students to discuss how these
changes affect tone and meaning.
B. Students write a paragraph on an
assigned topic and then identify
whether each sentence in the
paragraph is in the active or the
passive voice.
C. Working in small groups, students
use active and passive sentences
provided by the teacher as models to
develop their own sets of active and
passive sentences.
D. Students keep ongoing lists of
memorable sentences they
encounter over several days and
decide whether each sentence is in
the active or passive voice.
8
•
demonstrate an understanding of semantics
1E
1. Which of the following best describes the
concept of Universal Grammar?
A. the grammatical rules that are
established before the introduction
of slang and jargon
B. a set of principles that apply to all
languages and are unconsciously
accessible to every human
language user
C. the grammatical rules that all the
dialects of a language have in
common
D. a set of principles that should be
followed when writing or when
speaking in a formal setting
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 2.1) According
to current linguistic theories, all human languages
share common underlying principles relating to
aspects of language such as phrase structure and
phonology. These principles are known as
Universal Grammar. Some theorists hold that
mastery of these
common principles is innate, and that this innate
linguistic knowledge enables the infant to acquire a
specific language so quickly.
2. Read the passage below; then answer
the question that follows.
When speakers of two mutually unintelligible
languages come into contact, the
need for communication often requires
that they develop a common code that
contains features of both languages. This
is then learned as a first language by
subsequent generations of children. The
vocabulary is gradually expanded, and
the grammar becomes more complex
over time, until the language is similar
in structure to other human languages.
Which of the following linguistic
phenomena is described in the above
passage?
A. creolization
B. hypercorrection
C. motherese
D. deep structure
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.1)
Creolization refers to the development of a
language through
the merging of two or more different languages.
This process occurs when language groups are in
close
contact. Initially, the merged language is a
simplified code containing features of the parent
languages.
Over time, new vocabulary is added and the code
expanded to follow increasingly complex linguistic
principles until it is similar in complexity to other
languages.
1. It would be most effective for a student
to use the semantic system of language
in order to determine:
A. whether the word trunk refers to
a compartment in an automobile
or a tree.
B. if the word contemplate can take
the suffix -able.
C. whether the final letters of the
word dough are silent or represent
the sound of f.
D. if the word slight rhymes with the
word write.
57. Structural analysis would be an especially
appropriate strategy for a student to use to
determine the meaning of which of the
following words?
A. impassable
B. elephant
C. interim
D. examine
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6. Which of the following is an example of
using syntactic clues to identify the meaning
of an unfamiliar word in a text?
A. looking for synonyms or descriptions
of the word within the text
B. applying graphophonemic analysis
to the word
C. determining the meaning of the
word's root and affixes
D. analyzing what the placement of the
word within a sentence suggests
about the word
3. Structural analysis is likely to be most
effective in helping a reader identify
which of the following words?
A. gossamer
B. heresy
C. fibula
D. irredeemable
10. Which of the following practices most
clearly demonstrates that a writer is aware
of the connotative meanings of words?
A. The writer revises written works
by replacing overused words with
appropriate synonyms.
B. The writer researches the etymology
of unfamiliar words before using
them in writing.
C. The writer is able to recognize
words that share a common root
word.
D. The writer uses well-known idioms
to describe people, places, and
events.
Correct Response: A. The denotation of a word is its explicit meaning; the connotations of a
word are its implied or associated meanings. For example, the words house and home can
have the same denotative meaning (i.e., a dwelling) but different connotations (e.g., home
connotes family, security, and comfort, while house connotes the physical structure of a
dwelling). When replacing overused words, a skilled writer will select synonyms that have
appropriate connotations for the context in which the original word is used.
10
•
demonstrate understanding of pragmatics
1F
4. Which of the following topics is part of
the study of pragmatics?
A. the acquisition of grammatical rules
in a second language
B. the change in the meaning of a
word over time
C. the relationship between a word's
structure and its meaning
D. the uses of different types of
utterances in different contexts
4. It would be most appropriate to
use a more formal language register
for which of the following types of oral
presentation?
A. participating in a discussion with
friends
B. presenting a talk at a town meeting
C. being interviewed by a classmate
D. asking a younger sibling a question
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 2.1)
Pragmatics focuses on language as communication
and is
concerned with the uses of different types of
utterances in different contexts and for different
purposes.
For example, different forms of speech are used to
make a request, to make an assertion, and to ask a
question. Pragmatic theory focuses on the
speaker's intention, as opposed to the literal
meaning of an
utterance
4. In which of the following situations is the
student clearly demonstrating pragmatic
competence in his or her response?
A. A teacher asks a student what her
favorite song is, and the student
answers, "Yankee Doodle."
B. A teacher asks a student, "What
should you be doing now?" and the
student returns to his seat.
C. A teacher asks a student, "Do you
need an eraser?" and she answers,
"Affirmative."
D. A teacher asks a student for a
synonym for "pretty" and he answers,
"beautiful."
Man 1: Excuse me. Do you know how to get to the Computer Warehouse from here?
Man 2: Sure. You've got to turn around and drive back down this road the opposite way you came
until you get to the intersection with Broad Street. Then you take a right and go two blocks.
You'll see it on your left. It's got a big sign that says "Computer Warehouse" right by the road.
Man 1: OK, I got it. Thanks a lot!
1. Which of the following does the driver need
to do first in order to get to the Computer
Warehouse?
A. Make a left turn.
B. Drive ahead two more blocks.
C. Pass through the next intersection.
D. Go back in the opposite direction.
2. Which of the following can be reasonably
inferred about the two speakers?
A. They are social acquaintances.
B. They are neighbors.
C. They do not know one another.
D. They are colleagues.
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2. Use the sentences below to answer the
question that follows.
Pardon me, sir, but would you
mind opening the window?
Open the window, will ya, buddy?
Open the window now.
Gee, it's hot in here.
Together, these utterances illustrate which
of the following important aspects of
language use?
A. monitoring
B. dialect
C. morphology
D. register
Correct Response: D. The four sentences differ from one another in register, or degree of
formality. They do not illustrate monitoring, which is a learning strategy rather than a general
aspect of language use, or morphology, which is the branch of linguistics dealing with the
internal structure of words. There are no clear dialectal differences among the four sentences.
5. An ESL teacher gives students individual copies of the form shown below. Use this form to answer the
question that follows.
Task Card
Directions:Read the list of phrases below. You are going to listen to a tape of
people having conversations. As it is playing, check ( ) any of the phrases you
hear. ___ Excuse me, do you know . . . ___ Would you mind . . .
___ Do you know where . . . ___
Have you seen . . .
___ Is there someplace where . . . ___ Could
you tell me . . .
This instructional activity would be a
particularly effective way for an ESL
teacher to introduce ESL students to:
A. acceptable language for continuing
different types of conversation.
B. polite ways to recognize another
person's social status.
C. standard methods used to conclude a
conversation.
D. appropriate forms of social requests
for information and assistance.
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6. Use the sentence fragment below to
answer the question that follows.
I am unable to go to the movies with him
and his friends tonight, . . .
Based on the stressed word in the
sentence fragment above, which of the
following sentence completions most
accurately interprets the speaker's
meaning?
A. . . . but I may be able to go to the
movies tonight with him alone.
B. . . . but I may be able to go
somewhere else with him and his
friends tonight.
C. . . . but I may be able to go to the
movies tonight with my own
friends.
D. . . . but I may be able to go to the
movies with him and his friends
tomorrow night.
•
demonstrate knowledge of dialects, idiolects, and sociolects
1G
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 2.2) Children
7. English-speaking children from different
from different sociocultural backgrounds may differ
sociocultural backgrounds are most likely
in the style and structure of their oral narratives.
to differ in which of the following aspects
Some children create open-ended narratives that
of language development?
develop
A. the syntactic structures that they
through association or analogy, while other children
find easiest to learn
construct narratives focused on a central topic or
B. the style and structure of their oral
conclusion. The differences in how narratives are
narratives
perceived often stem from sociocultural factors.
C. the use of coordinate structures in
oral language
D. the inferences they make about a
speaker's desires or intentions
10. A speaker uses the Standard English
dialect when interacting with strangers,
and uses a different dialect when
interacting with individuals whom she
recognizes as members of her own social
group. This illustrates which of the
following types of linguistic behavior?
A. hypercorrection
B. negative transfer
C. borrowing
D. code-switching
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 2.3) Codeswitching occurs when a speaker alternates
between
separate language dialects according to the
situation, or for effect. In code-switching, elements
of one
dialect are not incorporated into the other but
remain distinct. Code-switching ranges from shifts
in the
style of one language, as from formal to informal
speech, to shifts between two mutually
unintelligible
languages.
13
Which of the following statements about
dialects is most accurate?
A. The use of dialects hinders language
development.
B. Dialects are valid tools for
communication.
C. The use of dialects indicates a
disadvantaged student.
D. Dialects represent a stage in an
individual's language development.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 8. Answer choice B is correct. This question focuses on
the meaning of the often-misunderstood term dialect. Linguists define a dialect as a variety of a
particular language that has distinctive lexical, phonological, and grammatical rules. A given dialect
may be associated with a specific geographical region or social group; within that region or group, the
dialect is the commonly understood medium of oral communication. Everyone, including university
professors of English, speaks a dialect of some sort. Of the answer choices, only B reflects an
understanding of this concept.
4. To determine whether a fifth-grade
student is a fluent reader, which of
the following language skills would
be most important for the student to
demonstrate?
A. spelling high-frequency and
irregular words accurately
B. reading a text with appropriate
intonation and no hesitations
C. understanding vocabulary
associated with a particular field
or topic
D. writing paragraphs with topic
sentences and supporting details
2. Adolescents frequently develop
their own style of communication,
embellishing their language with
hyperbole and slang, and moving away
from the standards of speech modeled
by their parents. This occurrence is
best described as an attempt to use
language to:
A. move from one social class to
another.
B. demonstrate their ability to use
multiple modes of communication
to express themselves.
C. complete a rite of passage into
adulthood.
D. differentiate themselves from their
parents' social group and assimilate
into a community of their peers.
1. Which of the following samples best
illustrates the use of jargon?
A. "I've told you a million times—that
hole in the asphalt of the driveway
will be the death of me if we don't
get it repaired soon."
B. "We respectfully request that you
meet us at your earliest convenience
so that we may adequately prepare
for the party."
C. "The flash of the cameras was
blinding and the sound of cheering
gave me goose bumps as I made my
way into the movie premiere."
D. "If Myers Corporation continues to
use cost-plus pricing, we will have
to review both the demand schedule
and the income effect."
Correct Response: D. The phrases cost-plus pricing, demand situation, and income effect
are examples of jargon—the specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or other
grou
14
•
reflect on both the potential for differences among languages and the universality of linguistic
structures.
1EA
In which of the following ways are
students from diverse cultures most
likely to differ?
A. in the importance they place on
learning and academic achievement
B. in their perceptions about
appropriate classroom
communication and behavior
C. in the value they place on
friendship and relationships
with other students
D. in their ability to communicate
effectively in their primary language
This item is from knowledge and skill area 7. Answer choice B is correct. Language fluency is highly
individual, and most cultures promote positive attitudes toward the general value of learning and
human relationships. Classroom communication and behavior, however, are dependent upon many
separate and particular attitudes and beliefs, such as attitudes about power and authority, attitudes about
the status of teachers, and attitudes about class size and organization. Therefore, there are often
considerable differences in the expectations students from diverse cultures bring to the classroom, often
resulting in marked differences in behavior and styles of communication.
In analyzing a curriculum to determine
whether it is culturally inclusive, it would
be most important to determine whether
the curriculum is structured and
implemented in ways that:
A. address and acknowledge the
different cultural values among
students.
B. ensure that students from all culture
groups achieve at approximately
equal levels.
C. recognize that students from
different cultural backgrounds
may not need the same contentknowledge
base.
D. provide for student evaluation
according to flexible, culturespecific
criteria.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 8. Answer choice A is correct. A culturally inclusive
curriculum is based on a recognition of and a respect for the different cultural values and beliefs that
students bring to the classroom. Adjusting curriculum or assessment on the assumption that students
from different cultures cannot master or will not need challenging content ignores the individual
potential of all students. A culturally inclusive curriculum is not one that makes "allowances" for
perceived cultural "deficits," but one that provides opportunities for students to engage in serious
exploration of the different attitudes, values, beliefs, and social structures of diverse cultures.
15
The point of view that encourages racial
and ethnic groups to participate in general
civic life while maintaining their own
values and customs is commonly referred
to as:
A. assimilation.
B. pluralism.
C. enculturation.
D. accommodation.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 3. Answer choice B is correct. A culturally pluralist
society is one in which distinct cultural groups coexist, each preserving its own traditions and values,
but each participating fully in a larger, unified culture. Assimilation is the process by which members
of an ethnic or racial group are absorbed into the dominant culture. Accommodation is the process by
which individuals adapt to the mainstream culture. Enculturation is the process by which individuals
learn the patterns of their own culture. Unlike the others, pluralism envisions a dynamic relationship
among distinct groups in which cultural differences are valued both for themselves and for the benefits
they bring to the larger society.
15. A literacy professional is assessing the
oral reading proficiency of a student who
speaks a dialect other than Standard
English. The student reads aloud with
appropriate expression and at an even rate.
However, he often replaces specific words
or grammatical constructions in the text
with equivalent words or constructions
that are used in his dialect. This
information best supports which of the
following conclusions?
A. The student is accessing the
meaning of words in the text,
and there is no evidence that
he has a reading disability.
B. The student is a word-by-word
reader, which suggests that he
may have an underlying reading
disability.
C. The text is most likely at the
student's frustration reading level,
but there is no evidence of a reading
disability.
D. The student over-relies on context
clues for word identification, which
may signal an underlying reading
disability.
Correct Response: A. In this oral reading assessment, the student's miscues appear to reflect
dialect differences rather than reading difficulties, as his substitutions maintain the meaning of
the text. The fact that he reads smoothly and with appropriate expression further supports the
interpretation that he is accessing the meaning of the text. Based on this assessment,
student shows no sign of significant reading difficulties or disabilities.
16
The following exchange occurred in an
elementary school class during an English
language development lesson:
Teacher: What's this?
Students: Fish.
Teacher: It's a fish. Whose fish is that?
Is it yours?
In this exchange, the teacher is:
A. correcting the students' mistake.
B. modeling cognitively demanding
language.
C. scaffolding the conversation for the
learners.
D. providing context-reduced input for
the students.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 5. Answer choice C is correct. The teacher is using
scaffolding, a common technique in language teaching. The teacher supports the students' learning by
both reinforcing the language they produce and structuring the discussion to elicit language from them.
There is no mistake to be corrected, nor is the teacher's language cognitively demanding. The teacher
appears to be using an activity that provides context to enrich the students' learning, an approach that is
the reverse of answer choice D.
1.2 Language Development and Acquisition (ALL ESL STUFF)
•
identify the major theories that attempt to explain the processes of development and
acquisition.
1FA
In addition to basic academic instruction,
which of the following is generally given
the greatest emphasis in Latin American
schools?
A. musical performance
B. health and safety
C. competitive sports
D. oral poetry recitation
This item is from knowledge and skill area 2. Answer choice D is correct. Classroom practices in
Latin American public schools reflect the influence of the Catholic schools established by Spanish
colonial rulers. In accordance with tradition, language and history are taught through memorization
and repetition of literary texts and historical facts. To be well versed and well spoken is to be a
successful student.
17
Which of the following statements best
describes the appropriate use of the
students' primary language by a bilingual
teacher providing instruction for English
language development?
A. The teacher should avoid the use of
the students' primary language.
B. The teacher must respond in the
students' primary language to
questions asked in that language.
C. The teacher may use the students'
primary language to explain
difficult concepts.
D. The teacher should translate as
often as possible.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 3. Answer choice C is correct. A bilingual teacher who is
helping a group of students learn English should use English as the medium of instruction as much as
possible. However, especially in the early stages of learning, it may be necessary to use the students'
primary language to ensure that certain difficult concepts are understood. Absolute avoidance of the
students' primary language (answer choice A) is unnecessary, nor must the teacher respond in the
students' primary language to questions asked in that language (answer choice B). If the answer can be
framed in language the student is likely to understand, responding in English is better practice.
Translating from English to the students' primary language or vice versa (answer choice D) is generally
considered poor pedagogical practice and should be avoided.
29. Several students in the class have trouble
beginning assignments independently.
The librarian's best approach for helping
these students begin their research would
be to:
A. advise them to do a keyword search.
B. pull the resources prior to students'
arrival in the library.
C. provide them with a procedure
to enable them to assume responsibility
for the research process.
D. work with each of the students
individually to help them get started
on their projects.
18
Which of the following is the least
appropriate strategy for the delivery
of content instruction in a bilingual
classroom?
A. switching between the two
languages within sentences
B. using one language for math and
science and the other language for
reading and social studies
C. team teaching where you use one
language and your partner uses the
other language
D. speaking one language for the first
half of the day and the other
language for the second half
This item is from knowledge and skill area 1. Answer choice A is correct. The question asks for the
least appropriate strategy—the approach that would most often be a bad choice. Answer choices B, C,
and D describe appropriate ways of using two languages in bilingual instruction. Only answer choice A
is a poor technique. Routinely using both languages in a single sentence would create confusion and
hinder students' second-language acquisition and content area learning.
Which of the following strategies is most
appropriate to use first with a student
whose primary language is other than
English and who is having difficulty
understanding a concept explained in an
English language textbook?
A. Encourage the student to follow
along in the text while another
student with strong English skills
reads the passage aloud.
B. Use the student's primary language
to determine whether the student is
familiar with and understands the
concept.
C. Show the student how to look up
unfamiliar words from the textbook
passage in a dictionary or the book's
glossary.
D. Have the student read about the
concept from a primary-language
textbook written for younger
students.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 2. Answer choice B is correct. In this situation, the teacher
must determine the nature of the student's difficulty in order to choose an appropriate teaching strategy.
The major question to be answered is whether the student's problem is conceptual or linguistic.
Knowing the answer to this question would enable the teacher to appropriately address the student's
difficulty. The strategies described in answer choices A, C, and D would not provide an answer.
19
Compared with earlier waves of
immigrants, the people who came to
the United States during the 1980s:
A. were poorer and less educated than
previous immigrants.
B. concentrated in urban rather than
rural areas.
C. were victims of political oppression
or economic deprivation.
D. represented a more diverse range of
cultures.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 5. Answer choice D is correct. Although there have always
been individual exceptions, most immigrants to the United States have been men and women seeking
economic and educational opportunities they did not have in their native countries or fleeing from war,
civil strife, or persecution. Although some early immigrant groups settled in the Mississippi River
Valley and the northern prairies, since the middle of the nineteenth century, most immigrants have
clustered in larger urban areas. What most distinguishes the immigrants who came to the United States
during the 1980s is the diversity of their origins—not just Europe, which had been the main source of
immigrants during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but also Asia, Africa, South America,
Central America, and the Caribbean.
During specially designed academic
instruction delivered in English, a student
answers the monolingual Englishspeaking
teacher's question in a language
other than English. Which of the
following would be the most appropriate
teacher response?
A. Ask the student to try to give the
response in English.
B. Ask if another student in the class
can translate.
C. Say, "Thank you," and select
another student to respond.
D. Gently remind the student that
the lesson is to be conducted in
English.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 11. Answer choice B is correct. Asking another student to
translate the first student's response reinforces the first student's efforts to communicate his or her
understanding of the lesson. It also enables the teacher to monitor the first student's comprehension of
the instruction. Answer choices A, C, and D diminish the value of the student's contribution and
prevent the student from demonstrating his or her understanding of the lesson.
20
Which of the following is the most
appropriate first step to take for a student
whose primary language is not English,
who has been in U.S. schools for several
years, and who has still not made a
successful transition to English?
A. Refer the student to special
education for testing.
B. Provide the student with a bilingual
paraprofessional for tutoring.
C. Conduct a comprehensive
assessment of the student's language
skills.
D. Determine gaps in the student's
content knowledge and reteach
missing knowledge.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 5. Answer choice C is correct. The first step in evaluating
why a second-language learner is failing to progress is to determine whether the difficulty is primarily
language based. Only after that determination is made should other avenues—problems with content
comprehension or need for special education—be explored.
Which of the following is the primary
focus of the Natural Approach to Englishlanguage
development?
A. reading comprehension
B. writing proficiency
C. language structure
D. oral communication
This item is from knowledge and skill area 6. Answer choice D is correct. The primary focus of the
Natural Approach is oral communication in a noncoercive, low-anxiety environment. This approach
provides opportunities for second-language acquisition but does not force speech production. The
Natural Approach assumes that, given a low-stress learning environment, speech will emerge when the
learner is ready.
Compared with limited-English-proficient
(LEP) students in an English-only
program, students in an effective bilingual
program will most likely learn:
A. less English and less content.
B. less English and the same amount of
content.
C. more English but less content.
D. more English and more content.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 2. Answer choice D is correct. Effective bilingual
instruction reinforces and extends the cognitive skills and content knowledge that students have already
developed in their first language. This approach, rather than delaying or limiting students' acquisition
of English, enhances their ability to learn both the new language and the new content in areas such as
mathematics and social studies.
21
Which of the following statements about
attitudes toward language is least
accurate?
A. Attitudes toward a group and its
language can shift as a child moves
from kindergarten to first grade as a
result of peer influence.
B. Attitudes toward a particular
language and its speakers are fixed
at an early age and do not change.
C. One's ethnic group membership can
affect attitudes and behaviors
toward other groups and their
languages.
D. Children's attitudes often reflect
their parents' attitudes toward
speakers of other languages.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 6. Answer choice B is correct. All the answer choices
except B are accurate statements. People's attitudes toward a language and its speakers often change as
people gain experience and extend their understanding
22
Which of the following is the best
predictor of success in English reading for
nonnative English speakers in the United
States?
A. parents' literacy skills
B. age on arrival in the United States
C. primary-language literacy
D. length of residence in the United
States
This item is from knowledge and skill area 7. Answer choice C is correct. Research has shown that
primary-language literacy is the best predictor of success for nonnative speakers learning to read
English. Adults and children who come to the United States with literacy skills in their primary
language are familiar with the basic cognitive processes involved in reading. Their ability to apply
these processes to the task of reading in the new language gives them a significant advantage over
learners who have not yet developed literacy skills, regardless of other factors such as length of
residence in the United States.
23
Which of the following is the most
appropriate way to make a social
studies lesson delivered in English
understandable to students whose
primary language is other than English?
A. Include a filmstrip as part of the
lesson.
B. Use a larger number of worksheets
than used with fluent English
speakers.
C. Teach a comparable lesson from a
lower grade level.
D. Simplify the lesson by focusing on
only a few of the key concepts.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 4. Answer choice A is correct. In addition to providing
increased visual impact, the concrete events in the filmstrip would help contextualize concepts in the
lesson and decrease the level of abstraction. Teaching the lesson at a lower level or simplifying the
lesson by omitting content is demeaning to students. Using more worksheets focuses on only one form
of delivery and increases the reading load.
14. As an instructional format, role-playing
would be most effective for English
language learners who have which of
the following learning styles?
A. visual
B. tactile
C. auditory
D. kinesthetic
Correct Response: D. Kinesthetic learners learn best when they are physically active and
involved, using movement to reinforce comprehension and memory. Role playing is an
especially effective instructional format for these learners because of the physical movements
involved in the activity.
15. Which of the following is a fundamental
element of the sheltered approach to
English instruction?
A. helping English language learners
acquire academic English as they
learn academic content
B. using home languages for contentarea
instruction until students can
move into all English classes
C. teaching English language learners
about English using translation and
vocabulary activities
D. offering students instructional
activities that will reinforce their
communicative competence
Correct Response: A. Sheltered instruction is an approach used in content classes to provide
additional English language support to students while they are learning academic subjects.
Although native language support and development of communicative language skills may be
offered in tandem with a sheltered English program, they are not fundamental elements of this
approach.
24
2. A fifth-grade teacher wants to plan
an activity that will integrate reading,
writing, listening, and speaking to
promote students' skills in literary
response and analysis. Which of the
following instructional activities is likely
to be most effective in addressing this
goal?
A. Each student reads a story
independently, then creates a
story map and prepares an oral
presentation based on the map.
B. Students write in their reading
journals about stories they have
read, then take turns reading aloud
selected journal entries.
C. Each student reads aloud a favorite
story, then writes an original short
story for other students in the class
to read.
D. Students read and discuss a short
story, then collaborate to write a
sequel to the story and perform it
for Reader's Theater.
Correct Response: D. The teacher's goal is to develop students' skills in literary response
and analysis through an activity that integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
The activity described in Response D promotes in-depth understanding of a literary text by
involving students in integrated oral and written language interactions relating to the text. These
interactions proceed naturally from group discussion of the original text to collaborative creative
writing and Reader's Theater performance.
2. According to Stephen Krashen's
12. Which of the following best explains
acquisition-learning hypothesis, language
why developing phonemic awareness in
acquisition is best characterized as:
English may be especially challenging
A. the explicit conscious knowledge
for a student who is an English
students attain about the rules of a
Language Learner?
language.
A. The writing system of the
B. a predictable order in which learners
student's primary language may
master the particular structures of a
be non-alphabetic or logographic.
language.
B. Comprehension of the student's
primary language may require
C. an unconscious process that occurs
attention only to whole words,
when language is used in authentic
not to individual sounds.
communication.
D. a broad set of skills and knowledge
C. Some of the sounds that occur
that are necessary for accurate oral
in English may not occur in the
and written production.
student's primary language.
D. The syntax and morphology of the
student's primary language may
differ substantially from that of
Englis
25
3. Thematic units are particularly effective in
promoting the conceptual development of
ENL students primarily because such
units:
A. provide students with explicit
instruction in functional and
pragmatic aspects of language.
B. focus on higher-level thinking skills
such as comparing, analyzing, and
applying knowledge.
C. include multiple ways for students
to demonstrate mastery of content.
D. create a meaningful framework that
supports the comprehensibility of
instruction.
4. A new student in a sixth grade ENL
class is a recent immigrant. The student is
generally outgoing, has studied some
English previously, and is making
rapid progress in developing socialcommunicative,
reading, and writing
skills in English. The ENL teacher has
noticed, however, that despite these many
strengths the student seems very reluctant
to speak in class. For example, the student
never participates in class discussions
and declines to offer opinions on the
discussion topics even when prompted to
do so. Which of the following is the most
likely explanation for this behavior?
A. The student has attained language
knowledge but not linguistic
competence in English, making
spontaneous oral communication in
English difficult.
B. The student is struggling with an
undiagnosed hearing loss that
adversely affects the ability to
produce spoken language.
C. The student comes from an
educational system in which
students are expected to be passive
in the classroom and is therefore
uncomfortable speaking up in class.
D. The student has a predominantly
visual learning style, making
situations that require auditory
processing of language challenging.
5. An ENL teacher is teaching a sheltered
math class that includes a diverse group of
ENL students. Early in the school year,
the teacher observes that the students from
one particular cultural group respond well
to lessons that involve group work and
manipulation of concrete representations
of math problems. Students from another
cultural group prefer to learn through
lectures and assignments that focus on
traditional symbolic representations of
math problems and repetitive applications
of formulas. How can the teacher most
effectively use these observations to meet
the learning needs of this culturally
diverse group of students?
A. Separate the two groups of students
and give each group a different
lesson that matches the students'
respective learning preferences.
B. Ensure that a balance of learning
activities are included in each lesson
plan, and give students a choice of
options for demonstrating content
6. Which of the following best describes
the role of the Illinois Learning Standards
with regard to the ENL curriculum?
A. ENL teachers should use the Illinois
Learning Standards as a tool in
developing the ENL curriculum in
their schools, to ensure it is aligned
with statewide learning goals.
B. The Illinois Learning Standards
describe the state-approved
pedagogical methods that ENL
teachers may use to teach various
parts of the ENL curriculum.
C. ENL teachers can use the Illinois
Learning Standards to help them
identify specific instructional
materials and strategies to use when
teaching the ENL curriculum.
D. The Illinois Learning Standards
provide ENL teachers with a
detailed description of the statemandated
curriculum that must be
followed in ENL classes at each
grade level.
26
mastery.
C. Ensure that all students are given
regular practice in applying the
symbolic representations and
formulas traditionally emphasized
in math classes.
D. Use manipulatives and group work
to teach each lesson, then have
students complete a worksheet
independently that uses symbolic
representations and formulas.
8. Which of the following best expresses
the philosophy behind specially designed
academic instruction in English (SDAIE)?
A. ENL students develop English
language proficiency best by
studying English in an ENL class
and being immersed in mainstream
content-area classes concurrently.
B. Even beginning-level ENL students
can succeed in grade-level
mainstream content classes, if their
teachers carefully modify their
delivery (e.g., timing, vocabulary).
C. Primary-language support is
counterproductive in developing
ENL students' English language
proficiency, literacy skills, and
content-area knowledge and skills.
D. ENL students should acquire
English language skills through
modified content-area instruction
rather than by studying English as
an isolated subject.
4. Which of the following statements
most accurately describes a developmental
factor that generally has a
positive effect on high school students'
second-language development?
A. High school students' cognitive
development generally allows
them to use analytical skills to
help process and internalize
language rules.
B. High school students' concern
about social issues tends to make
them highly motivated to learn a
second language and interact
with people whose backgrounds
are different from their own.
C. High school students' cognitive
development generally allows
them to be uninhibited about
experimenting with a new
language and making errors,
which promotes language
learning.
3. The process of adapting to a new or
different culture is referred to as:
A. cultural variation.
B. acculturation.
C. biculturalism.
D. cultural diffusion.
2. Which of the following bilingual
education models incorporates the most
extensive instruction in the bilingual
student's native language?
A. submersion
B. transitional
C. immersion
D. maintenance
7. In cognitive methods of ESL instruction
in listening and speaking, language is
characteristically presented in:
A. the context of a meaningful
activity.
B. drill-and-practice exercises.
C. examples that illustrate rules.
D. cloze passages that demonstrate
grammar.
7. Which of the following factors is
likely to have the most positive effect
on an ESL student's development of
reading skills in English?
A. The student has strong basic
interpersonal communication
skills in English.
B. The student's first language is
alphabetic in its written form.
C. The student has developed ageappropriate
reading skills in his
or her first language.
D. The student enjoys viewing
videos, plays, and other visual
27
representations of fictional
narratives in English.
8. An ESL teacher gives students individual copies of the form shown below. Use this form to
answer the question that follows.
This instructional activity would be a
particularly effective way for an ESL
teacher to introduce ESL students to:
A. acceptable language for continuing
different types
of conversation.
B. polite ways to recognize another
person's social status.
C. standard methods used to conclude
a conversation.
D. appropriate forms of social
requests for information and
assistance.
9. A high school science teacher asks the
ESL teacher for strategies she can use
to teach students with limited English
proficiency. Which of the following
suggestions from the ESL teacher would
most effectively strengthen science
instruction for ESL students?
A. providing each ESL student with
a partner who is English proficient
and can complete complex tasks
for the student
B. using models, manipulatives,
and audio-visual materials to
supplement lectures and readings
C. giving supplementary reading
assignments in English to ESL
students to extend their science
knowledge and vocabulary
D. calling on ESL students frequently
to assess their comprehension of
new material
3. In the early stages of second-language
development, which of the following
factors in the classroom environment is
most likely to lower English Language
Learners' affective filters, thereby
lowering their inhibitions about using
English?
A. The teacher organizes instruction
based on a systematic, sequential
introduction of grammatical
structures.
B. The teacher uses concurrent
translation throughout each lesson.
C. The teacher provides corrective
feedback to improve students'
pronunciation.
D. The teacher emphasizes fluency over
mastery.
5. Read the list below of the main
features of an instructional method for
second-language development; then
answer the question that follows.
• Topics are taken from the major
content areas.
• Development of academic
language skills is emphasized.
• Explicit instruction is given in
learning strategies for both content
and language learning.
6. Which of the following standardized
language assessments is appropriate to
use to gain information about an English
Language Learner's oral proficiency in
academic English?
A. Bilingual Syntax Measure II (BSMII)
B. Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey
(WMLS-English)
C. Basic Inventory of Natural Language
(BINL)
D. IDEA Proficiency Test (IPT)
28
This list describes the main features of
which of the following methods?
A. Direct Method
B. communicative approach
C. grammar-translation method
D. Cognitive Academic Language
Learning Approach (CALLA)
4. A high school ESL teacher is working
with a class of beginning-level English
Language Learners. The teacher asks one
student to stand up. She asks another to
pick up a pencil. The teacher involves
each of the students at different points
during the activity. According to proponents
of the Total Physical Response
approach, this activity helps students
develop English language skills primarily
because it:
A. encourages them to use English
within authentic contexts.
B. allows them to discover a wide
range of concepts and rules related
to English grammar.
C. prompts them to use English to
accomplish different goals.
D. helps them to develop kinesthetic
connections to various English
words and phrases.
6. Which of the following best explains
why English Language Learners need
to receive direct instruction in the use
of nonverbal elements of English?
A. The meanings of gestures and
body language vary from culture
to culture.
B. People need explicit instruction in
nonverbal communication because
they lack instinctive communication
skills.
C. Cultures associated with English
tend to have more taboos related
to the body than other cultures.
D. Nonverbal gestures only have
meaning when they are connected
to specific phrases in the oral
language.
12. Which of the following best characterizes
the education of language-minority
children in the United States before World
War II?
A. There was no concerted effort to
assist non-English-speaking
students in school.
B. English as a Second Language
programs were common in larger
urban school systems only.
C. Children who did not speak English
could be prevented legally from
registering in school.
D. The majority of limited-English
speakers attended bilingual
parochial schools.
14. An ESL teacher teaches in a middle
school with a diverse student population.
In addition to providing her ESL students
with language and content instruction,
she also helps the students learn how to
articulate their feelings, provides them
with practice in taking the perspective of
others (e.g., through role plays, debates),
and encourages the expression of diverse
points of view. These practices are
particularly effective in:
A. recognizing and responding
to the linguistic diversity of the
students.
B. promoting students' academic
achievement.
C. reducing student conflicts that
result from cultural and other
misunderstandings.
D. resolving students' cultural identity
crises.
15. A middle school ESL teacher regularly
includes news and magazine articles in
the ESL curriculum that focus on multinational
organizations or businesses
and that highlight careers in which it
is advantageous or essential to have
knowledge of more than one language.
17. Educators in the ESL program at an
elementary school involve students'
families in program decision-making
and support families' participation in other
school activities and projects. These
practices best reflect an awareness of
which of the following factors affecting
29
The use of such reading materials in the
ESL program is beneficial for English
Language Learners primarily because the
materials will help students:
A. identify the features of different
types of speech communities and
networks.
B. recognize the benefits of being
bilingual and bicultural in a global
society.
C. understand the circumstances that
may have brought their families to
the United States.
D. decide where they would like to live
and work when they grow up
language development?
A. English Language Learners whose
families have positive opinions
about school and learning are more
likely to develop English language
proficiency.
B. Family members are students' first
teachers, and the more they know
about language instruction, the
better they can teach their children
specific aspects of language.
C. Family involvement in school
activities provides students with a
model of the kind of purposeful
communication that is the ultimate
goal of language instruction.
D. Students' family members are better
able to evaluate the effectiveness of
language instruction when they are
familiar with the curriculum.
•
apply knowledge of the development of first language acquisition (acquisition orders)
1GA
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.2) Research
8. Convergent research suggests that infants
suggests that the difficulty second-language
start out able to discriminate between
learners
all the phonemes that occur in human
have in recognizing certain phonemes in the target
language. However, they soon lose the
language is related to the fact that there is a limited
ability to distinguish between phonemes
developmental period during which infants can
that they do not hear being used in their
discriminate between all phonemes in human
environment. This finding would help to
speech. This
explain the fact that:
also helps to explain the widely observed tendency
A. second-language learners often
for older learners of a second language to retain an
have trouble recognizing and
accent. However, with practice many adult secondproducing certain phonemes in
language learners eventually recognize most
the target language.
targetlanguage
B. there are rules that govern the
phoneme
combinations of phonemes that
can occur in any given language.
C. the sounds associated with letter
combinations in English have
changed over the history of the
language.
D. children's first utterances tend to
involve the repetition of simple
syllables.
1. Which of the following utterances
illustrates a child's overgeneralization
of a language rule?
A. "Daddy, milk."
B. "All gone car."
C. "Yesterday we goed shopping."
D. "I no want apple."
Correct Response: C. Overgeneralization of a language rule occurs when a child extends
the rule to include a situation in which the rule does not apply. In this case, the child has
overgeneralized the rule for converting a regular, present-tense verb to its past-tense form
by adding the suffix "ed." As an irregular verb, the word "go" does not follow this rule, which
applies only to regular verbs.
30
1. Which of the following is an accurate
statement regarding typical oral language
development?
A. Some children learn principles of
syntax (e.g., word order) on their
own, while others require explicit
instruction.
B. Children generally pass through
the same stages in their oral
language development (e.g., a
stage of two-word utterances),
but they do so at different rates.
C. Some children learn word
meanings on their own, while
others must have common words
explicitly defined.
D. Children generally go through
a period of oral language development
during which their
expressive capacity exceeds
their receptive capacit
2. A preschool teacher informally assesses
students' oral language development by
engaging each child in conversation and
observing each child's interactions with
classmates. Which of the following
observations warrants further assessment
to identify a possible difficulty
or delay in the student's oral language
development?
A. A student frequently interrupts
during conversations with other
children.
B. A student typically responds to
questions with one- or two-word
answers and rarely asks questions.
C. A student who orally retells a
story includes few specific details
in the retelling.
D. A student is unable to distinguish
the individual phonemes within a
familiar spoken word with one
syllable.
4. Which of the following is an example of
a diachronic variation in English?
A. Several words have changed
semantically and/or grammatically
in recent years in response to social
or technological changes.
B. Legal and religious events are
conducted in a more formal and
stylized version of English than
are everyday conversations.
C. The jargon used by scientists
differs according to their field of
study and the background(s) of
their conversational partner(s).
D. Different forms of address are used
in conversations depending on the
age, gender, or social class of the
participants.
1. Which of the following is characteristic of
communicative approaches to promoting
second-language acquisition?
A. teaching students strategies for
negotiating for meaning
B. maximizing students' participation
in mainstream academic settings at
early stages of language proficiency
C. providing students with primarylanguage
support
D. carefully sequencing the
presentation of new vocabulary
and grammatical structures
9. Some students in a secondary ENL class
admit to their ENL teacher that they rarely
initiate contact with English speakers
because they fear they will do or say
something that makes them look foolish.
Which of the following actions by the
ENL teacher would best address the
concerns of these students?
A. Assign readings about various
aspects of U.S. culture and discuss
the materials in class.
B. Watch popular feature films and
discuss various aspects of U.S.
culture that they reveal.
C. Present examples of common
misunderstandings that occur
10. Which of the following describes the
most significant advantage of using
linguistically diverse student groupings
in an ENL class, rather than using
primary-language groupings?
A. The need for a common language
of communication provides stronger
motivation for students to learn
English and use it consistently
in class.
B. The students will need to use
translation skills more often, so
they will become more proficient
in translating quickly between their
primary language and English.
C. The linguistic strengths of the
31
between ENL speakers and English
speakers.
D. Discuss and role-play common
situations in which students might
come into contact with English
speakers.
students in each group are likely
to be more homogeneous, so the
students will be able to study more
difficult content.
D. The students will no longer need to
learn about other cultures and how
to work in a multicultural setting as
they will develop knowledge and
skills in these areas intuitively.
11. An ENL teacher often uses expressions
of greeting, congratulations, and
encouragement in the students' home
languages. This practice is likely to
benefit students most by:
A. helping them feel welcome and
respected in the ENL classroom.
B. ensuring that the input they
receive is comprehensible and
unambiguous.
C. providing them with an opportunity
to practice their home language.
D. providing them with relief from the
stress of having to communicate in a
new language.
3. The concept of lateralization, in terms
of its effects on language acquisition,
refers to the:
A. allotment of certain functions to
the left or right hemisphere of the
brain, which appears to affect
language acquisition processes.
B. development of certain areas
of the brain as a child leaves
infancy, without which language
acquisition cannot take place.
C. atrophy of certain areas of the
brain that are no longer needed as
a child leaves infancy and begins
to acquire language.
D. strengthening of connections
among all areas of the brain,
which improves coordination of
language skills.
5. Which of the following identifies an
underlying principle of the communicative
approaches to the instruction of English
language learners?
A. Students develop skills in English
by mastering the written grammar
of the language.
B. Students should follow a stepbystep progression of English
instruction from simpler to more
difficult tasks.
C. Students should have repeated
exposure to accurate models of oral
English.
D. Students develop English language
skills by negotiating meaning in
interactions with other people.
Correct Response: D. Communicative approaches to ESOL instruction emphasize learning
to communicate through conversations and other interactions in the target language. Greater
focus is placed on fluency and meaning than on structure and form.
6. To promote a positive learning environment
in the ESOL classroom, which of the
following attitudes would be best for an
ESOL teacher to communicate to
students?
A. Learning a new language does not
mean giving up the languages they
already know.
32
B. Developing English language skills
will be essential for success in their
adult lives.
C. They must learn science and other
subjects even if English is not their
first language.
D. A new language can be learned very
quickly if they work hard in class.
Correct Response: A. It is critical that teachers of English language learners communicate
clearly that students' knowledge and use of their first language is valuable and important. This
perspective helps students understand that they do not need to choose between English and
the languages they already know. By fostering the idea that learning a new language does
not mean giving up the languages students already use, the teacher is also providing the
students with positive academic, social, and cultural support to their classes by acknowledging
the linguistic skills they have already developed in other languages.
7. A new student, Hang, enters an eighthgrade
ESOL class. She would like to
make the transition into a mainstream
class, but the report from her previous
school indicates that her ability to write in
English is weak. Which of the following
activities would best help the ESOL
teacher determine if Hang's English
writing skills are adequately developed
for the varied demands of mainstream
classes?
A. Have Hang assemble a collection of
in-class and outside-class writing
samples over several days.
B. Ask Hang to write informally in a
journal every day for a week about
her daily life.
C. Have Hang write a comparison/
contrast essay on an assigned topic
in 30 minutes.
D. Give Hang a dictation of at least
200 words from a mainstream
textbook.
Correct Response: A. Of the answer choices, only A would provide the teacher with a range
of samples of authentic writing that reflect "the varied demands of mainstream classes" and that
are produced by the student in response to real school situations.
8. In which of the following listening
situations would English language learners
typically have to contend with the greatest
degree of context-reduced language?
A. a music lesson for learning to play
the clarinet
B. a classroom lecture about the history
of the Erie Canal
C. a televised weather report from a
local news program
D. a demonstration of how to follow a
recipe to bake a pie
Correct Response: B. In a typical classroom lecture format, students are given few concrete
associations with which to construct knowledge. In addition, the topic of the Erie Canal may
not be familiar to many English language learners. Therefore, they may have little or no prior
knowledge that they could use to establish a context for the new information.
33
•
apply knowledge of the development of second language acquisition (interlanguage effects)
1H
Use the dialogue below between a teacher and an ESOL student to answer the two questions
that follow.
Teacher: What did you do last night?
Student: I goed play bowling.
Teacher (enthusiastically): Oh, you went bowling? (gestures rolling a bowling ball)
Student: Yes, I goed bowling.
Teacher: Was it fun? Tell me about it!
3. The student's past tense error in this
conversation is an example of which of
the following natural phenomena that
occurs during the early phases of both
first- and second-language acquisition?
A. performance errors
B. overgeneralization
C. inflected forms
D. transformation
Correct Response: B. The student's use of goed illustrates the error known as overgeneralization,
or treating irregular verbs and nouns as though they were regular—in this case,
applying the standard rule of forming the past tense by adding –d or –ed to the present tense
of the verb.
4. In this interaction, the teacher is most
likely trying to:
A. convey the patterns of verb
conjugation in English.
B. provide correct verb forms by
directly pointing out the student's
mistake.
C. check the student's level of
listening comprehension.
D. encourage the student to develop
fluency without overt attention to
form.
Correct Response: D. The teacher is modeling the correct verb form, "went," without directly
pointing out the student's error. This technique is meant to help the student develop fluency
naturally, without analyzing the grammatical forms he or she needs in order to communicate
a message. The student's listening comprehension does not seem to be an issue in this
exchange.
8. A new intermediate-level English
Language Learner joins an elementary
sheltered/structured English immersion
(SEI) class. The ELL teacher administers
an assessment of oral language skills,
which indicates that the student has a
large oral English vocabulary and a good
command of English syntactic structures.
In an informal reading assessment,
however, the student could not read most
words that were in her oral vocabulary.
The teacher noticed that the student relied
heavily on pictures and other context cues
to construct meaning from the texts. The
results of these assessments strongly
9. An ELL teacher encourages her
advanced-level English Language
Learners to use a dictionary that includes
sentences with common vocabulary
words. This can be especially beneficial
in developing the writing proficiency of
English Language Learners because it
helps them to:
A. ensure that their sentences use proper
syntactic structures.
B. understand the figurative
connotations of their word
choices.
C. make word choices that are idiomatic
and flow naturally.
34
suggest that the student would benefit
most from reading instruction that:
A. promotes her knowledge of and skills
in applying a wide range of
comprehension strategies.
B. helps her learn how to identify
different types of texts and how to
adjust her reading strategies and rate
to match the text she is reading.
C. teaches her how to set a purpose
for her reading before she begins
to read a new text.
D. develops her understanding of the
alphabetic principle and her
knowledge of and skills in applying
basic English phonics rules.
D. be more precise in their use
of descriptive and persuasive
phrasing.
8. Which of the following statements about
the development of English writing
skills is true for nonnative English
speakers?
A. Writing should initially focus on
correct letter formation.
B. The expression of personal ideas
and feelings in writing should be
postponed until basic mechanics
have been mastered.
C. All writing should be corrected and
revised.
D. Beginning writing activities should
involve informal language based
on meaningful activities and
familiar concepts.
10. A major advantage of having a learning
center in a bilingual classroom is the
ability to:
A. individualize language instruction.
B. solve classroom management
problems.
C. give students time for unstructured
play.
D. keep the class on the same
objective.
7. Students in a middle school ENL class
are studying the meanings of various
idioms that they have encountered or are
likely to encounter in their mainstream
classes. While the students perform
well on structured exercises using the
idioms, they still have difficulty
understanding them in authentic situations
(e.g., conversations, lectures, discussions).
Which of the following strategies would
be most effective for the ENL teacher to
use to address the students' needs?
A. Use the idioms on a regular basis
in the ENL classroom, and check
frequently for comprehension.
B. Meet with mainstream teachers and
recommend that they avoid using
idioms until the ENL students have
mastered them.
C. Help the students write and perform
dialogues that include and highlight
each of the idioms.
D. Encourage the ENL students to
listen in on native English speakers'
actual conversations to see how
often they can identify these idioms
1. In contrast to an adult learner, a child
learning the structure of a second
language is more likely to:
A. depend on written representation of
the second language.
B. apply the deep structure of the
second language spontaneously.
C. memorize grammar rules of the
second language.
D. compare the structures of the native
and second languages consciously
35
in authentic contexts.
7. A high school ESL teacher is working
with a class of beginning-level English
language learners. The teacher asks one
student to stand up. She asks another to
pick up a pencil. The teacher involves
each of the students at different points
during the activity. According to
proponents of the Total Physical
Response approach, this activity helps
students develop English language skills
primarily because it:
A. encourages them to use English
within authentic contexts.
B. allows them to discover a wide
range of concepts and rules related
to English grammar.
C. prompts them to use English to
accomplish different goals.
D. helps them to develop kinesthetic
connections to various English
words and phrases.
8. Which of the following would likely be
the most appropriate literacy development
activity for an elementary English
language learner who is preliterate?
A. memorizing phrases in English
that are overheard in everyday
conversations
B. viewing television news programs
presented in English
C. answering orally "yes or no"
questions asked in English about
personal life experiences
D. following along as the teacher
reads aloud from a story written
in English
3. Which of the following best explains
why English language learners need to
receive direct instruction in the use of
nonverbal elements of English?
A. The meanings of gestures and
body language vary from culture
to culture.
B. People need explicit instruction in
nonverbal communication because
they lack instinctive communication
skills.
C. Cultures associated with English
tend to have more taboos related
to the body than other cultures.
D. Nonverbal gestures only have
meaning when they are connected
to specific phrases in the oral
language.
5. English language learners who come
from a culture in which children learn
various skills by observing adults will
likely learn English best through
instruction that emphasizes:
A. teacher-guided class discussions.
B. computer-assisted instruction
and drills.
C. small-group, hands-on activities.
D. teacher modeling and
demonstrations.
21. Students who are just beginning to acquire
English as their second language most
frequently display which of the following
behaviors?
A. resistance to participating in class
activities
B. overdependence on teacher
assistance
C. reliance on nonverbal communication
D. misconduct during difficult content
subjects
4. When assessing the English Language
Learners in his classes, the teacher can
best ensure accurate assessment of the
students' learning by:
A. using various assessments,
including written, oral, and
performance measures, to allow
students multiple opportunities to
show what they have learned.
B. permitting the students to determine
on their own when they are ready to
be assessed in particular areas of
instructional content.
C. assessing the students frequently
(e.g., on a weekly basis) so that
intervals between tests are short and
36
the amount of material assessed at
any one time is minimized.
D. placing equal emphasis on the
teacher's assessment of student
learning and students' assessment
of their own learning.
2. A reading specialist is planning instruction
for a first-grade student who is
learning English as a second language
(ESL). The student is a beginning reader
in her primary language. The reading
specialist, who has some familiarity with
the student's primary language, begins by
considering similarities between the
sound system of the student's primary
language and the sound system of
English. The primary benefit of this
approach is that it will help the reading
specialist plan ways to:
A. promote positive transfer between
the student's primary language and
English.
B. improve the student's letterrecognition
and letter-naming
skills.
C. reinforce the student's automatic
recognition of irregular sight words
in English.
D. develop the student's recognition of
voice-print matching.
Item 2, Objective 3, Correct Response A
For students who are learning English as a second
language (ESL), positive transfer
can occur when a similarity exists between the
student's primary language and
English. For example, if a student's primary
language is phonetically based, and if
some letters that are shared by the primary
language and English correspond to the
same sounds in both languages, these similarities
can facilitate the student's learning of
English.
1. In contrast to an adult, a child learning
the structure of a second language is
more likely to:
A. depend on written representation of
the second language.
B. apply the deep structure of the
second language spontaneously.
C. memorize grammar rules of the
second language.
D. compare the structures of the native
and second languages consciously.
2. Which of the following bilingual
education models incorporates the most
extensive instruction in the bilingual
student's native language?
A. submersion
B. transitional
C. immersion
D. maintenance
3. The process of adapting to a new or
different culture is referred to as:
A. cultural variation.
B. acculturation.
C. biculturalism.
D. cultural diffusion.
8. The following exchange occurred in
an elementary school class during an
English language development lesson.
Teacher: What's this?
Students: Fish.
Teacher: It's a fish. Whose fish is
that? Is it yours?
In this exchange, the teacher is:
9. Which of the following statements about
the development of English writing
skills is true for nonnative English
speakers?
A. Writing should initially focus on
correct letter formation.
B. The expression of personal ideas
and feelings in writing should be
37
A. correcting the students' mistake.
B. modeling cognitively demanding
language.
C. scaffolding the conversation for the
students.
D. providing context-reduced input for
the students.
postponed until basic mechanics
have been mastered.
C. All writing should be corrected and
revised.
D. Beginning writing activities should
involve informal language based
on meaningful activities and
familiar concepts.
11. Which of the following is the most
appropriate way to make a social
studies lesson delivered in English
understandable to students whose
primary language is other than English?
A. Include a filmstrip as part of the
lesson.
B. Use a larger number of worksheets
than used with fluent English
speakers.
C. Teach a comparable lesson from a
lower grade level.
D. Simplify the lesson by focusing on
only a few of the key concepts
5. Several students in an ESL class are
members of cultures in which young
people demonstrate their respect for
adults by maintaining a quiet and
modest demeanor. The teacher of this
class should be aware that this aspect
of the cultural backgrounds of these
students might influence their preferred
learning styles in which of the
following ways?
A. The students may find it difficult
to work in small groups that lack
a formal structure.
B. The students may respond
to constructive criticism by
reducing their effort in the class.
C. The students may be reluctant
to ask questions or volunteer
answers in open class
discussions.
D. The students may be motivated
more by fear of failure than by
anticipation of success.
12. A major advantage of having a learning
center in a bilingual classroom is the
ability to:
A. individualize language instruction.
B. solve classroom management
problems.
C. give students time for unstructured
play.
D. keep the class on the same
objective.
6. A middle school ESL student studied
English in his home country before
emigrating to the United States.
Although he is fairly fluent in English,
he is unfamiliar with most aspects of
the majority culture. When talking to
native English-speaking students
whom he does not know very well, he
is likely to be most comfortable in
conversations that include:
A. a discussion of the values and
beliefs of his home culture.
B. the exchange of gossip about the
social activities of classmates.
C. a discussion of his emotional
reaction to his experiences in a
new culture.
D. the exchange of pleasantries
according to established social
formulas.
10. Students in a middle school class are
learning about the westward movement
of pioneers in the United States during
the nineteenth century. The teacher plans
to have students read several selections
on this topic and then prepare reports.
The teacher is concerned about how
meaningful the assignment will be for
Alicia, a student whose family moved to
the United States from Venezuela a year
ago. Alicia's speaking and oral reading
skills in English are strong, but she
38
sometimes has comprehension difficulties.
The teacher believes that these difficulties
often reflect lack of familiarity with the
topic of the selection. Which of the
following strategies most likely would be
effective in helping Alicia complete the
assignment successfully and make it a
meaningful learning experience for her?
A. urging Alicia to take detailed notes
as she reads to reinforce her
understanding of the historical
context depicted in the text
B. providing Alicia with opportunities
to talk about how her own
experience of moving to the United
States compares with the pioneers'
experiences described in the
assigned readings
C. drawing Alicia's attention to
facts and concepts that feature
prominently in more than one of
the assigned selections to help her
recognize which ideas are most
important
D. encouraging Alicia to write her first
draft of the assigned report in
Spanish and then translate it into
English
39
12. A teacher's use of which of the following
procedures can best help ensure fair and
accurate assessment of content-area
learning for students for whom English
is a second language?
A. Give the students varied
opportunities (e.g., through
speaking, writing, performing)
to demonstrate what they have
learned.
B. Emphasize the students' use of
self-assessment procedures in
evaluating their acquisition of
knowledge and skills.
C. Administer classroom tests on a
flexible schedule that allows the
students themselves to determine
when they are ready to be evaluated.
D. Use standardized, grade-level
assessments whose norm group
includes nonnative-English speakers
to monitor the students' learning on
an ongoing basis.
Correct Response: A. In conducting classroom assessments in English to measure the
content-area learning of students for whom English is a second language (ESL students),
teachers should strive to use assessment strategies that allow the students to demonstrate
what they know while minimizing the potential effects of limited English proficiency on
assessment results. Giving ESL students varied assessment opportunities (e.g., through
speaking, writing, performing) ensures that the students have a chance to show what they have
learned in a way that best reflects their true knowledge and skills.
Other Responses:
• Response B. Although having ESL students engage in self-assessment would be useful in
some situations and for some purposes, this method may not yield results that are highly
accurate in terms of evaluating students' actual knowledge and skills.
• Response C. Allowing ESL students to determine on their own when they are ready to be
evaluated would not remove possible language-related obstacles to fair and accurate
content-area assessment and thus would not greatly improve a teacher's ability to
accurately evaluate student learning.
• Response D. Ongoing assessment of students' content-area learning generally requires the
use of assessments that reflect specific content that has been the focus of recent classroom
instruction. Since standardized, grade-level assessments tend to cover a relatively broad
range of knowledge that is not tied to particular lessons, they are not likely to be useful for
helping teachers accurately monitor ESL students' understanding of ongoing content-area
instruction.
3. A first-grade teacher plans to use guided
reading to help a group of students read
a new book. The group includes two
students who are English Language
Learners. During the guided reading
lesson, which of the following approaches
would best support the reading development
of English Language Learners in the
group?
A. Provide corrective feedback about
pronunciation to the English
language learners as they read
aloud.
B. Preview the book thoroughly to
40
activate background knowledge and
help the English language learners
understand unfamiliar vocabulary.
C. Prepare a modified version of the
text that simplifies the grammatical
structures that are most difficult for
English language learners.
D. Have students whose primary
language is English read the text
aloud in unison, while the English
language learners silently read
along
Correct Response: B. In the context of a guided reading lesson, previewing helps promote
students' comprehension by activating/developing their background knowledge and clarifying
their understanding of key vocabulary. Previewing can be especially helpful in promoting the
comprehension of English Language Learners, who may have limited knowledge of culturallyspecific
subject matter (e.g., sports that are popular in the United States) and vocabulary
(e.g., American English idioms).
12. During class discussions about stories,
Rosalinda, an English language learner,
often mispronounces key words from
the stories. The teacher's best response
would be to:
A. ask Rosalinda to pause and correct
her pronunciation before she
continues with her remarks.
B. analyze Rosalinda's pronunciation
patterns and plan an intervention to
address her needs.
C. encourage other students in the class
to help Rosalinda work on
pronouncing words correctly.
D. write down the words and include
them on a list of words for
Rosalinda to practice pronouncing.
41
3. Ms. Morales's class includes Milos, a
student whose family immigrated to
the United States a year ago. Milos's
English language skills have been
improving, but he is not yet proficient
in English. Which of the following
strategies would be most appropriate
for Ms. Morales to use to respond to
Milos's needs during the cooperative
learning activity?
A. Assign Milos to one of the
cooperative learning groups, and
have him determine independently
whether and how to participate in
the group's work.
B. Give Milos an alternative assignment,
such as a reading task at his
current English language reading
level, that focuses on the same
content as that being addressed
by classmates.
C. Have Milos observe the various
cooperative learning groups as they
work on their projects, so that he
will have maximum access to
spoken and written English in
varied group learning contexts.
D. Have Milos participate as a member
of one of the cooperative learning
groups, while ensuring that he is
supported in his assigned roles as
needed.
Correct Response: D. In planning instruction for Milos, an ESL student, the teacher should
make every effort to include him as fully as possible in all classroom activities. This practice
should help promote his acquisition of new content and skills while giving him many
opportunities to improve his English language skills and form positive, productive relationships
with peers in the classroom. In the situation described, the teacher can best achieve the goal
of including Milos fully in classroom activities by having him participate as a regular member of
one of the cooperative learning groups. At the same time, the teacher needs to monitor his
performance in the group on an ongoing basis to ensure that he receives any support that he
may need in carrying out his assigned roles within the group.
Other Responses:
• Response A. Allowing Milos to determine on his own whether and how to participate
in his group's work may hinder achievement of the goal of fully integrating him into
the classroom. Milos should be encouraged to participate as fully as he possibly can
in all learning activities.
• Response B. Giving Milos an alternative assignment, such as a reading task, would
isolate him while reducing his access to the dynamic elements of group participation
that could enhance his learning of new content while improving his English language
skills.
• Response C. Limiting Milos's role to being an observer of various groups would
substantially diminish the active engagement with project content and with his peers
that he would experience as a member of a single group. This approach would
also reduce Milos's opportunities to improve his English language skills through
meaningful, authentic interaction and communication with others in the achievement
of a common goal.
10. Students in a middle school class are
learning about the westward movement
of pioneers in the United States during
42
the nineteenth century. The teacher plans
to have students read several selections
on this topic and then prepare reports.
The teacher is concerned about how
meaningful the assignment will be for
Alicia, a student whose family moved to
the United States from Venezuela a year
ago. Alicia’s speaking and oral reading
skills in English are strong, but she
sometimes has comprehension difficulties.
The teacher believes that these difficulties
often reflect lack of familiarity with the
topic of the selection. Which of the
following strategies most likely would be
effective in helping Alicia complete the
assignment successfully and make it a
meaningful learning experience for her?
A. urging Alicia to take detailed notes
as she reads to reinforce her
understanding of the historical
context depicted in the text
B. providing Alicia with opportunities
to talk about how her own
experience of moving to the United
States compares with the pioneers’
experiences described in the
assigned readings
C. drawing Alicia’s attention to
facts and concepts that feature
prominently in more than one of
the assigned selections to help her
recognize which ideas are most
important
D. encouraging Alicia to write her first
draft of the assigned report in
Spanish and then translate it into
Engl
2. During class discussions about stories,
a student who is learning English as a
second language often mispronounces key
words from the stories. The teacher's best
response would be to:
A. ask the student to pause and correct
the pronunciation error before
continuing the discussion.
B. analyze the student's pronunciation
patterns and plan an intervention to
address the student's needs.
C. encourage the student to ask classmates
for help in pronouncing
words correctly.
D. write down the words and include
them on a list of words for the
student to practice pronouncing.
8. Which of the following activities would
best help upper-elementary students who
are learning English as a second language
use the intonations and rhythms of the
English language when reading?
A. The teacher leads a class discussion
on an age-appropriate topic, then
each student reads a section of text
aloud on the same topic.
B. The students record their own oral
reading of a passage and then listen
to the tape while silently reading the
passage.
C. The teacher gives an expressive
oral reading of a passage, then the
students practice reading it in
unison.
D. The students read aloud and then
silently from a text in which
stressed words and punctuation
marks are highlighted.
43
1. Julia has lived in Kansas, Texas, and
Colorado. The development of Julia's
idiolect has likely been influenced
most significantly by the linguistic
characteristics found in the places
where she has lived and by her:
A. personality.
B. teachers' speech.
C. gender.
D. family's speech.
2. An English language learner exhibits
a cognitive style indicative of "rightbrain
dominance." This means that
this student is likely to learn a second
language best through instruction
based on:
A. detailed verbal instructions and
explanations about English.
B. spontaneous, multisensory
language activities.
C. explicit presentations of the
grammatical rules of English.
D. objective, short-answer language
activities.
1.3 Literacy (ALL LITERACY STUFF)
•
understand and use the major theories of learning to read and reading to learn.
1I
1. Which of the following theories of learning
emphasizes the roles of background
knowledge and context in the reading
process?
A. behaviorism
B. constructivism
C. nativism
D. cognitivism
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
Students in a fourth-grade class participate regularly in Readers Theatre performances. The teacher
begins by selecting a story at an appropriate level of difficulty and converting it to a script. The teacher
models an expressive reading of the story on which the script is based. After discussing the story with
students, the teacher offers a minilesson on how to make a story "come alive" through expressive reading
of a Readers Theatre script.
The teacher then distributes a copy of the script to each student in the group. The students practice
reading aloud the script independently or with a partner. Then they rehearse the script as a group,
reading
their assigned roles and responding to coaching from the teacher. In subsequent rehearsals, the students
switch roles, until every student has had a chance to perform each role at least once. Over the course of
the week, the students rehearse the performance by reading the script aloud at least 12 times. The day
before the performance, students rehearse their final roles. The performance, which requires no
costumes
or props, is presented to an audience of classmates, family members, school staff, or other groups of
students.
10. Which of the following statements best
describes the most important benefit of
this approach to Readers Theatre?
A. Readers Theatre enhances students'
reading comprehension and fluency
by motivating students to identify
and analyze varied text structures.
B. Readers Theatre motivates students
to read independently by exposing
them to varied genres and encouraging
Item 10, Objective 8, Correct Response C
During the course of the Readers Theatre activity,
students read the script aloud in an
expressive manner at least a dozen times. These
repeated readings are likely to
improve the reading fluency of participating
students by increasing their reading rate,
promoting automatic word recognition, and
developing appropriate phrasing. Unlike
other types of repeated reading, which can become
44
them to broaden their selection
criteria.
C. Readers Theatre improves students'
reading fluency by providing an
authentic, motivating context for
repeated oral readings.
D. Readers Theatre provides a
motivating context for students to
practice applying a variety of wordanalysis
strategies while reading.
tedious, Readers Theatre motivates
students by setting a fun and authentic purpose for
the oral reading (i.e., to prepare a
performance for friends/family).
11. The teacher wants to promote students'
skill in writing for entertainment and
creative expression. Which of the
following writing activities related
to Readers Theatre would be most
appropriate for this purpose?
A. providing students with opportunities
to write in their journals
about what they learned by participating
in the Readers Theatre
performances
B. helping students work in small
groups to write their own story or
rewrite a favorite story as a script to
perform for Readers Theatre
C. giving students samples of reviews
by theatre critics to use as models
for writing their own critical
reviews of the Readers Theatre
performances
D. having students work in small
groups to prepare written programs
for audience members who attend
Readers Theatre performances
Item 11, Objective 11, Correct Response B
Student writing plays an important role in promoting
literacy development. Having
students work in small groups to compose or adapt
a story for Readers Theatre
actively engages the students in writing for
entertainment and creative expression.
The activity sensitizes students to connections
between reading and writing, and
working with peers helps develop students' writing
and reading skills.
8. A reading specialist wants to help a sixthgrade
student vary her reading strategies
for different purposes and types of texts.
Which of the following strategies would
best help the student acquire information
on particular topics when reading nonfiction
texts?
A. Read the entire text once without
pausing and then use a dictionary to
look up any unfamiliar words.
B. Read slowly and carefully to
promote comprehension and recall
of relevant information.
C. Read the text silently, then reread it
aloud to clarify understanding of the
main ideas and significant details.
D. Read selectively and adjust the pace
of reading based on the content and
difficulty of the tex
Item 8, Objective 10, Correct Response D
Students must learn to adjust their reading
strategies for varied purposes and for
different types of texts. When searching for specific
information in a nonfiction text, a
student can read selectively by using skimming and
scanning strategies. A student
may need to read more slowly to understand a
passage that contains technical
vocabulary or presents unfamiliar concepts.
11. According to current reading research,
which of the following skills of beginning
kindergarten students are the two best
Item 11, Objective 14, Correct Response C
Current research suggests that phonemic
awareness and letter identification play a
45
predictors of reading achievement at the
end of kindergarten and first grade?
A. sight word recognition and oral
comprehension
B. listening skills and speaking skills
C. phonemic awareness and letter
identification
D. oral and written vocabulary
critical role in early reading development. At the
beginning of kindergarten, those
children who demonstrate phonemic awareness
and letter-recognition skills are most
likely to be progressing well in their reading
development by the end of kindergarten
and first grade
5. Which of the following activities best
reinforces the relationships among
reading, writing, listening, and speaking
in the native language?
A. before reading a text in the native
language, writing questions with a
partner about the topic of the text
B. listening to audiotapes of
conversations between speakers
using the native language
C. completing a vocabulary worksheet
on the key words presented in a
lecture given in the native language
D. reading a story in the native
language and writing a different
ending for the story
9. A high school ESL teacher is selecting
texts to use for ESL instruction with a
group of intermediate-level English
language learners. In addition to
considering the readability level of the
texts, the teacher can best ensure that
the texts will be comprehensible and
appealing to students by primarily
selecting:
A. books based on decodable words
and basic sight words.
B. collections of poetry, particularly
poems containing rhyming verse.
C. books based on content related to
students' cultures and experiences.
D. collections of short nonfiction
articles on a variety of subjects.
10. Inquiry-discovery techniques in teaching
the content areas in the native language
would be most effective in helping
students learn to:
A. produce language patterns.
B. recite from memory.
C. solve problems.
D. use writing skills.
9. Inquiry-discovery techniques in
teaching the content areas in the native
language would be most effective in
helping students learn to:
A. produce language patterns.
B. recite from memory.
C. solve problems.
D. use writing skills.
20. Read the math problem below; then
answer the question that follows.
There are 320 children entering
the first grade at Briarwood
Elementary. 85 percent of these
students have been vaccinated.
How many students still need to
receive their shots?
A high school math teacher requires
students to write a step by step
description of the way they solve word
problems such as the one shown above.
Which of the following is the primary
benefit of having students write about
their solutions to math problems?
A. Students have multiple
opportunities to practice and
memorize a variety of math facts.
B. The students and the teacher gain
insight into the thought processes
and problem-solving strategies that
individual students use.
C. The teacher can provide students
5. Reading aloud to children tends to
support their reading acquisition
primarily by:
A. pointing out the link between a
conversation and written dialogue.
B. exposing them to book language
and a richer oral vocabulary.
C. showing them that words have a
meaning and correct spelling.
D. demonstrating the symbolic nature
and flexibility of language
46
with more difficult and complex
math problems.
D. The teacher and the students can
make meaningful connections
between school math problems and
the uses of math in everyday life.
15. Which of the following software
products would be most appropriate to
use in implementing an inquiry-based
instructional strategy?
A. a simulation that requires users
to manipulate variables in order to
keep a virtual mouse alive and train
it to do specified tasks
B. an instructional game that rewards
users by allowing them to interact
with engaging animations when
they master a new arithmetic skill
C. a virtual tour that uses multimedia
components to simulate the
experience of walking through a
tropical rain forest
D. a tutorial that explains how
recent scientific knowledge and
technological developments may
impact society in the future
15. Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 3.2) An
inquiry-based instructional strategy presents
students with
situations in which they need to investigate and
design solutions to problems. A simulation requiring
students to manipulate variables to keep a mouse
alive would provide students with a problem that
could
be adapted to an inquiry-based instructional
strategy. Students could propose solutions and use
the
simulation to test and evaluate these solutions.
2. An important criterion in the evaluation
of an educational software package for
use in the classroom is that the program:
A. takes full advantage of the latest
multimedia technologies.
B. is designed so it can be used by
either individuals or groups of
students.
C. loads quickly when it is started up.
D. matches clearly identified
educational needs.
9. Which of the following statements best
exemplifies the relationship among
word identification, fluency, and reading
comprehension?
A. When students have a clear
13. A student with a language-based
learning disability who has trouble
understanding words, sentences, or
paragraphs is likely to benefit most
significantly from reading instruction
47
purpose for their reading, they
can more readily identify the
information that they need to find
in a text.
B. When students can use syllabication
to determine the pronunciation
of unfamiliar words, they
are more likely to grasp the broader
concepts of paragraphs they read.
C. When students read from one word
to the next at a slow pace, it is
more difficult for them to make use
of multiple cues to determine the
meaning of a text.
D. When students are not familiar
with the organization of a text, they
must construct meaning based on
their knowledge of individual
words.
that emphasizes:
A. broad exposure to a wide range of
reading materials.
B. repetitive activities based on highfrequency,
irregular words.
C. daily practice of skills with the use
of a computer program.
D. direct, explicit instruction during
teacher-student interactions.
10. Which of the following actions would
best help a reading professional stay
informed about current research on
effective methods of reading
instruction?
A. Become actively involved in a
professional organization such as
the International Reading
Association.
B. Observe experienced reading
teachers as they provide individual,
small-group, and whole class
instruction.
C. Participate in a mentoring program
in which a less experienced reading
professional is paired with a more
experienced partner.
D. Regularly visit the Internet
websites of state education
agencies and the United States
Department of Education
8. When planning and setting up activity
centers in a classroom to accompany an
instructional unit, it is most important for
a teacher to adhere to which of the
following guidelines?
A. Each activity should be designed to
support a specific objective or set of
objectives related to the unit.
B. The centers should be designed to
be visited in a predetermined
sequence rather than randomly.
C. Each activity should be simple
enough that students can complete it
in a short amount of time.
D. The centers should be introduced
only after the class is about halfway
through the unit.
1. Which of the following reading
strategies is an effective and
appropriate strategy to use in virtually
all reading contexts?
A. reading carefully word for word
B. looking up the meaning of
each unfamiliar word as it is
encountered
C. making predictions about the text
D. outlining the entire text before
reading it carefully
3. For a given lesson, a teacher could most
effectively promote the development of
students' metacognitive skills by:
A. suggesting possible thinking
approaches for students to use
before they begin working on the
lesson.
B. praising students for their successful
solution to the lesson's problem and
encouraging them
to reflect on why they were
successful.
C. asking students to attempt to
articulate the reasoning they used as
they worked through the lesson.
D. pointing out at the end of the lesson
the thinking approaches the students
used to complete the lesson.
48
Rather than simply presenting concepts to her students, a middle school teacher often attempts to guide
students to arrive at the concepts themselves. For instance, instead of telling students what an adverb is,
she might present them with pairs of sentences containing examples and nonexamples, as in:
Example: The sun shone brightly.
Nonexample: The bright glare made it hard to see.
After students have had the opportunity to observe and think about several such pairs, they talk
about what they have noticed about the targeted words, discuss their generalizations about them,
and ultimately create their own definition of the concept
3. Major advantages of the instructional
approach described include which of
the following?
I. promoting students' recall of
previously learned information
and ideas
II. helping students see themselves
as constructors of knowledge
III. motivating students by relating
instruction to their everyday lives
and needs
IV. actively engaging students'
higher-level cognitive processes
A. I and II only
B. I and III only
C. II and IV only
D. III and IV only
2. Which of the following instructional
activities best exemplifies the
constructivist view of learning?
A. Students work as partners to review
ideas and concepts that will be
tested on an upcoming exam.
B. A teacher shares information
through a lecture with visual aids.
C. Students work in collaborative
groups to research and solve a reallife
problem posed by a teacher.
D. A teacher guides a class discussion
of an editorial in a newspaper.
7. A middle school teacher provides students
with explicit instruction and practice in the
use of a variety of reading techniques
(e.g., scanning, skimming, reading for
main ideas, reading for details, reading
for appreciation). This practice is most
appropriate for helping students learn to:
A. use self-assessment strategies
to improve their reading
comprehension.
B. evaluate the effectiveness of literary
techniques and devices in works of
fiction.
C. adjust their reading approach to suit
different texts, content areas, and
purposes.
D. analyze the validity of arguments
and the accuracy of supporting
statements in persuasive writing.
Correct Response: C. The activity described in the question involves instructing students in the
use of a variety of reading techniques. This instruction is most appropriate for helping students
learn to adjust their approach to different reading tasks in the many content areas in which they
may receive reading assignments. Response C is the best response offered because it
addresses this purpose, recognizing that different assignments will call for different reading
techniques.
Other Responses:
• Response A. The instructional activity described in the question does not focus on
the use of self-assessment as a way to improve reading comprehension. The use of
a variety of reading techniques and methods is not a self-assessment process.
• Response B. Although this instructional activity may in part help students approach
the reading of literary works with greater understanding and appreciation, it does not
relate to the evaluation of literary techniques and devices.
• Response D. Although this instructional activity may help students approach the
49
reading of persuasive writing with greater understanding, it does not relate directly to
the analysis of an argument's validity or the accuracy of supporting statements used
to justify a position.
11. Inquiry-based learning (discovery
learning) is a particularly appropriate
instructional approach for teachers to
select when they wish to ensure that
students have opportunities to:
A. engage actively in the process
of constructing knowledge.
B. learn new content in a standard
progression from simpler to more
complex.
C. set clear learning goals and monitor
progress in achieving their goals.
D. gain an overview of a broad area
of content to facilitate subsequent
learning.
Correct Response: A. Inquiry-based learning (discovery learning) is grounded in the notion that
the most meaningful learning occurs when students actively participate in the process of
constructing knowledge. In inquiry-based learning, the teacher's role is to provide rich problemsolving
situations that invite students to question, explore, and find connections among ideas.
Emphasis is placed on the process of learning as students use creative means to grapple
with complex problems. The inquiry-based approach differs from more directed methods of
instruction in which the teacher presents specific instructional content for students to master.
Other Responses:
• Response B. The standard progression from simpler to more complex concepts is
generally associated with more teacher-centered instructional approaches. Because
inquiry-based learning involves having students construct their own knowledge in
varied problem-solving contexts, learning tends to proceed in a less systematic and
orderly manner.
• Response C. Although inquiry-based learning experiences may give students
opportunities to set learning goals and monitor their progress in achieving those
goals, these instructional elements are at least as evident in many other instructional
approaches.
• Response D. Inquiry-based learning typically focuses on having students explore
and solve specific problems rather than gain an overview of a broad area of content.
18. Which of the following best describes
the reason why using one-on-one
teaching or tutoring for remediating
a student's reading difficulties is
especially effective?
A. Most students' reading difficulties
can be identified and addressed
more quickly in a one-on-one
situation.
B. Most students with reading
difficulties need the teacher's
personal attention to feel confident
about their learning.
C. Most teachers have a wider range
of instructional methods for
individual sessions than they have
for teaching reading to groups.
D. Most of the methods and materials
for remedial reading instruction
have been created for one-on-one
teaching.
3. A second-grade teacher gives students
opportunities to use materials such as
markers, paper, and crayons to create
artistic responses to the stories and
books they read. Encouraging students
to use visual representations as a
response to literature benefits students
primarily by helping them:
A. develop their talents while they are
learning academic content.
B. clarify and express the meaning of
the texts they read.
C. find and explore the connections
between art and literature.
D. further their understanding of the
creative process.
50
51
Use the excerpt below from a first-grade science lesson to answer the three questions
that follow.
Ms. Lamont's first-grade class is just beginning a life science unit. In an introductory lesson
on the functions of skin, Ms. Lamont talks to her students about the skin of an apple. A
portion of the class's discussion appears below.
Ms. Lamont: Why does an apple have skin, do you think?
Andrew: To cover it up.
Thai: To make it red.
James: No, sometimes apples are green.
Ms. Lamont: Yes, that's very good. An apple's skin can be different colors, can't it? The
skin covers the apple up and gives it color. Another thing the skin does is
protect it from germs and insects. Today we're going to do an experiment
to see how an apple's skin protects it. What do you think will happen to this
apple if we cut off some of its skin?
Kevin: It will turn brown.
Melissa: It will get mushy.
Ms. Lamont: Kevin predicts the apple will turn brown, and Melissa predicts it will get
mushy. A prediction is what somebody thinks will happen. What do the
rest of you think will happen? [The other children agree with Kevin's and
Melissa's predictions.] Any other predictions? No? Okay, I'll cut some of
the skin off of this apple, like this, and we'll put it on the shelf. We'll also set
out an apple that hasn't been cut. Now, how will we know if our predictions
were right or not?
3. Which of the following strategies for
promoting learning is most evident in
Ms. Lamont's lesson?
A. encouraging students to reflect
on inconsistencies between their
current beliefs and new information
B. using students' prior knowledge
as a basis for understanding new
content
C. helping students relate knowledge in
one content area to other domains of
knowledge
D. prompting students to generate
the questions that the teacher plans
to address
Correct Response: B. In using an apple as the focus of an introductory discussion on the
functions of skin, the teacher prompts students to use their shared experiences relating to a
common phenomenon as a basis for understanding new content. Basing lessons on such prior
knowledge helps make classroom learning more accessible and relevant to students and can
thereby encourage their active exploration of new concepts.
21. An elementary-school teacher is working individually with a student who is trying to decode the word
gem. Printed below is a portion of their conversation.
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
Student:
Can you try to read this word? Is it gem[/g1em/]?
Almost. The eand msounds are correct. I like the way you chose the short vowel
sound for e. Let's look again at that first letter.
The letter g?
Yes. What sounds can the letter gmake?
A /g/ sound?
Yes, that's one sound a gcan make—a "hard" gsound. It can also make another
sound—a "soft" gsound. Do you remember the story we read about the giant?
Yes.
52
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher::
Student:
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
Do you remember the first letter of the word giant?
Oh . . . g! That's right. And what sound does gmake in the word giant? Giant . . .
that's a /j/ sound. That's right—/j/ is a "soft" gsound. Now try using the /j/ sound for
the letter gin this word [points to gemon the page]
Is it gem[/jem/]?
That's right. Do you know what the word gemmeans?
Is it kind of like a jewel?
That's right. Gemmeans jewel.
This conversation most clearly demonstrates the teacher's understanding of which of the following
principles of effective reading instruction?
A. Systematic, explicit phonics instruction should be sequenced according to the increasing
complexity of linguistic units.
B. Knowledge of English language structures and conventions can help students identify unfamiliar
words by allowing students to take advantage of semantic and syntactic cues.
C. Students benefit from teaching strategies that encourage them to apply their knowledge of
morphology to decode unfamiliar words.
D. Corrective feedback should be given in a way that encourages students to keep trying and
helps
them recognize their progress in applying word identification strategies.
53
4. Ms. Lamont's instructional strategy is an
especially good one for young children
because of its:
A. emphasis on directly observable
phenomena.
B. responsiveness to individual
students' strengths and needs.
C. emphasis on the use of creative
problem solving.
D. responsiveness to a variety of
learning styles.
Correct Response: A. Research indicates that young children learn best from working with
concrete objects, materials, and phenomena. Using words and other types of symbols is less
effective than using concrete things to promote their understanding. Therefore, the teacher's
instructional strategy, which involves manipulating and observing an apple and making
predictions about what will happen to the apple, is an especially good one for young children
because of its emphasis on concrete, observable phenomena.
54
5. Ms. Lamont's questioning strategy in this
lesson serves primarily to:
A. motivate students' independent
exploration of ideas.
B. establish students' recognition
of conflicting ideas that need to
be resolved.
C. encourage students' active
involvement in learning.
D. promote students' comprehension
of information they have just
encountered for the first time.
Correct Response: C. The teacher's questioning strategy in this lesson serves mainly to
encourage students' active involvement in learning. By basing the lesson on her students'
familiarity with a common object (an apple) and asking a series of questions about that object,
the teacher prompts the students to examine their own prior experiences, share relevant
knowledge with one another, and collaboratively explore future possibilities.
Correct Response: A. The activity described in Response A is a self-monitoring technique that
the students can learn to use independently to monitor their comprehension of what they read.
The students are expected to apply the technique after they have read a passage, when they
have had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. Because the technique can be used by
the students without the involvement of others, it represents a practical habit for them to
develop.
Other Responses:
• Response B. This activity is to be applied before students read a passage, at a point when
they have not yet had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. The technique is used to
prepare for reading, not to monitor comprehension.
• Response C. This activity focuses on vocabulary and facts in the passage, rather than on
the comprehension of ideas and the relationships between them. Further, the activity
depends on the questions developed by the teacher and does not represent a habit that
students can develop and use independently.
• Response D. This activity is to be applied before students read a passage, at a point when
they have not yet had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. In addition, it focuses on
vocabulary rather than comprehension.
11. Students in a fourth-grade class work in
small groups to complete a prereading
"anticipation guide." The guide lists
statements that relate to the content of an
assigned science chapter. Students decide
whether each statement is most likely true
or false and write "T" or "F" next to each
statement. After reading the chapter,
students revisit the guide and revise their
T/F designations as necessary, based on
information in the chapter. This instructional
activity is most likely to support
students' reading development in which
of the following ways?
A. activating students' prior knowledge
and setting a purpose for reading
B. prompting students to identify and
interpret key vocabulary in the text
C. helping students distinguish fact
from opinion in informational texts
D. helping students understand how an
author's point of view affects the
presentation of information
11. Mr. Leonard's sixth-grade class includes
students with widely varying levels of
reading proficiency. To introduce a new
social studies unit on ancient Greece,
Mr. Leonard assembles various reading
materials on the subject and provides each
student with reading material at his/her
instructional reading level. Which of the
following strategies is likely to be most
effective in helping all students benefit
from the reading materials on ancient
Greece?
A. Have students write a brief
description of what they learned
from their reading to post on a unit
bulletin board.
B. Keep students who have received
the same instructional materials
together in small groups to read
and discuss the materials.
C. Encourage strong readers to
assist less proficient readers after
finishing their own assignments.
D. Organize cooperative learning
55
groups in which each student
contributes information based
on the material he/she has read.
56
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
A second-grade teacher wants to develop students' content-area reading skills by helping the
students understand information presented in tables. The teacher designs the following activity in
connection with a thematic unit on trees.
• The teacher reads aloud and discusses a story about trees and an age-appropriate informational
book about tree leaves.
• Each student selects one leaf from a science exhibit that includes samples of various types of
leaves.
• The teacher displays a large, blank, two-column table. The teacher makes headers for the columns
by drawing the pinnate (feather-like) leaf pattern at the top of the first column and drawing the
palmate (hand-like) leaf pattern at the top of the second column. The teacher discusses each leaf
pattern with the class.
• Each student shows his or her leaf to the class.
12. Which of the following extensions of the
activity described above would most
effectively promote students' ability to
interpret information presented in tables?
A. After each student shows his or her
leaf, the teacher has students work
with a partner to draw a picture of
the leaf.
B. The teacher attaches a written label
to each leaf in the table, identifying
the name of the tree from which the
leaf was taken.
C. After each student shows his or her
leaf, the teacher guides the class to
decide whether the leaf belongs in
the first or second column.
D. The teacher tapes each leaf in the
appropriate column in the table after
the student has shown it to the clas
13. The teacher wants to help students
understand that tables summarize ideas
and information. Which of the following
strategies would best address this goal?
A. The teacher helps students
brainstorm a title for each column,
and for the table as a whole, and
then writes the final titles on the
table.
B. The teacher shows students
examples of a variety of other
simple tables and asks students how
the tables are alike.
C. The teacher briefly reviews for
students the steps they took to make
the table and encourages students to
talk about what they have learned.
D. The teacher has students work in
small groups to create their own
simple tables.
6. A seventh grader who has just finished
previewing a chapter in a content-area
textbook could best use the information
gained in her preview by:
A. writing answers to the questions
10. A second-grade teacher is reading aloud
to the class from a story about a family
with an elephant. One student asks why
elephants have tusks, while another
student asks if elephants are the only
57
presented at the end of the chapter.
B. reading the chapter carefully and
making note of any topic that she
does not remember from the
preview.
C. generating questions to be
answered while reading the
chapter.
D. attempting to develop a definition
for each word in the chapter's list
of new vocabulary words.
animals with tusks. In response to the
students' questions, the teacher decides
to help the class conduct an inquiry into
which animals have tusks and why they
need them. The primary value of having
students learn through inquiry is that the
students are likely to be:
A. comfortable with the process
because they will have control over
the final product.
B. invested in new learning because
they have set the purpose for it.
C. eager to gather information
because the content is set at their
level of comprehension.
D. confident about learning because
they will be working together.
7. A history class has been assigned to read
a textbook chapter on the events and
causes that led to the Great Depression.
The most effective prereading strategy
for the teacher to use to help the
students understand the material would
be to:
A. lead a discussion on what it was
like to live during the depression.
B. create a list of events and ask the
students to identify which ones are
related to the depression.
C. give the students a summary of the
chapters that precede and follow
the assigned text.
D. prepare a flowchart showing the
major events covered in the
chapter.
2. Which of the following describes the
most likely source of phonics difficulties
for English Language Learners whose
primary language is alphabetic?
A. Other languages tend to use letter
combinations to represent individual
phonemes.
B. The letters of the English alphabet
may represent different phonemes in
other languages' writing systems.
C. Other languages rely more heavily on
the use of context cues in decoding
than English does.
D. English contains words that have
been adopted from many other
languages.
1. A third-grade student is a proficient reader.
Which of the following changes is most
likely to occur as the student enters the
upper-elementary grades and begins reading
more complex content-area texts?
A. The student's reading rate will
become more consistent and
uniform across all types of texts.
B. The student's reading vocabulary will
start to exceed the student's oral
vocabulary.
C. The student's independent reading
preferences will shift from fiction
texts to nonfiction texts.
D. The student's interests will shift from
oral language activities to written
language activities.
10. Which of the following is a central provision
of the 2001 Federal Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, known as the "No
Child Left Behind Act"?
A. State and local education agencies
will be encouraged by the federal
government to implement a variety of
experimental approaches to reading
instruction and assessment.
B. The federal government will support
those state and local reading
programs that provide primarylanguage
instruction to students who
are English Language Learners.
C. The U.S. Department of Education
will distribute approved reading
assessment instruments for students
in the primary and secondary grades.
D. Federal funding will support those
state and local reading programs that
are consistent with current scientific
research on reading development and
instruction.
58
6. Which of the following best explains why
most emergent readers require explicit
instruction in order to develop phonemic
awareness?
A. The phonemes used in English are
only a small subset of all possible
human speech sounds.
B. Speakers of different dialects
pronounce phonemes in a variety
of ways.
C. There are many more phonemes in
English than there are letters of the
alphabet.
D. Phonemes are not usually heard in
isolation but are blended together in
normal speech.
Correct Response: D. The phonemes (individual
sounds) within a spoken word are
coarticulated, or blended together, in normal
speech. For example, the spoken word
"cat" is composed of three phonemes: /c/, /a/, /t/.
Children must learn to distinguish the
separate phonemes in order to match them with
printed letters. Explicit instruction helps
children develop this skill
27. A first-grade teacher provides students
with explicit, systematic phonics
instruction to promote their reading
development. When designing activities
to teach letter-sound correspondences,
the teacher should:
A. provide reading opportunities for
students to practice sounds in
context after studying the sounds
in isolation.
B. make certain that students have
mastered vowel sounds before
focusing on consonants.
C. ensure that students master the
spelling of practice words using the
target sound before teaching a new
sound.
D. include instruction in related
consonant blends when introducing
individual consonants.
5. Which of the following activities best
reinforces the relationships among
reading, writing, listening, and speaking
in the native language?
A. before reading a text in the native
language, writing questions with a
partner about the topic of the text
B. listening to audio tapes of
conversations between speakers
using the native language
C. completing a vocabulary worksheet
on the key words presented in a
lecture given in the native language
D. reading a story in the native
language and writing a different
ending for the story
6. The acquisition of a new vocabulary
item can be reinforced most effectively
by doing which of the following?
A. studying the etymology of the new
word
B. locating several synonyms in a
thesaurus
C. identifying the part of speech of the
new word
D. using various forms of the new
word in sentences
•
demonstrate knowledge of phonemic awareness (e.g., the processes of rhyming, segmenting,
and blending).
1JA Phonology
4. A first-grade student demonstrates some
Item 4, Objective 4, Correct Response D
First-grade students who demonstrate some basic
phonological awareness but has difficulty
phonological awareness
segmenting words into phonemes. Which
may have difficulty with more advanced phonemic
of the following questions is likely to be
awareness tasks. In this case, the
most difficult for the student to answer?
student has difficulty segmenting spoken words into
A. Which two words begin with the
phonemes. In order to count the
same sound: man, sat, sick?
sounds in a spoken word such as sat, the student
B. Listen to the word parts, then say
must be able to distinguish each
the whole word: ta . . . ble—What's
phoneme by segmenting the word (/s/ /a/ /t/). For
the word?
this reason, the student is likely
C. Which word does not rhyme: cat,
59
sat, pig?
D. Listen to this word: sat. How many
sounds do you hear?
to have difficulty performing the task described in
response D.
6. A teacher is planning an activity in
which students will count the phonemes
contained within various words. The
teacher begins by selecting words with
varying numbers of phonemes. Which of
following words selected by the teacher
contains five phonemes?
A. stamp
B. trail
C. brush
D. grape
2. Which of the following statements best
explains why most young children require
explicit instruction to help them distinguish
the phonemes in spoken words?
A. The correspondence between sounds
and symbols in English is only
partially regular.
B. Many students have had limited
exposure to environmental print
before entering school.
C. In normal speech, the phonemes in a
word are coarticulated, or blended
together.
D. Written language makes use of some
phonemes that rarely occur in oral
language.
19. A kindergarten teacher could informally
assess a student's phonemic awareness by
asking the student to:
A. identify the sound he/she hears at
the beginning, middle, or end of a
spoken word (e.g., "What sound do
you hear at the end of step?").
B. listen to a tape-recorded story while
looking at the book, then answer
several simple questions about the
story.
C. identify the letters in the alphabet
that correspond to the initial
consonant sounds of several familiar
spoken words.
D. listen to the teacher read aloud
a set of words with the same
beginning sound (e.g., train, trap,
trouble), then repeat the words.
20. The use of repetitive, rhyming texts for
kindergarten read-alouds is likely to
promote the reading development of
kindergarten students primarily by:
A. fostering their phonemic awareness.
B. increasing their vocabulary
knowledge.
C. enhancing their understanding of
story elements.
D. improving their letter recognition
skill
25. Read the conversation below, in which
a kindergarten teacher is preparing a
student for a phonemic awareness
assessment, to answer the question
that follows.
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
Teacher:
Student:
Teacher:
What is this a picture of?
[The teacher displays a
picture of a boat.]
A boat?
A boat, that's right. Now,
let's say the word boat
together very slowly:
38. Ms. Habib is teaching a unit on fiction in
her fifth-grade class. To begin, students
read several simple fairy tales and discuss
the moral or meaning of each one. The
teacher then assigns a more complex story
and leads a discussion about the moral
of the story after students finish reading
it. This instructional strategy is most
likely to promote students' reading
proficiency by:
A. guiding students to analyze the
relationship between plot and
character in a literary text.
B. fostering students' ability to
distinguish an author's use of
fact versus opinion in a text.
C. helping students identify and
understand the theme of a literary
60
/b/.../Â/.../t/. [The student
pronounces the word with
the teacher.]
How many sounds do you
hear? /b/.../Â/.../t/ . . . [The
teacher slowly repeats the
word.]
Three?
That's right, three. Now,
I'd like you to do this for
some more words.
This assessment would be an appropriate
way to test the student's ability to perform
which of the following phonemic
awareness tasks?
A. counting and blending the
phonemes in a word
B. identifying onsets and rimes
C. recognizing how many phonemes
are contained in a word
D. relating phonemes to letters
text.
D. enhancing students' ability to use
self-monitoring strategies to clarify
the meaning of a text.
3. A kindergarten teacher plans instruction
to help children blend phonemes to form
spoken words. The teacher asks the
reading specialist what type of words
would be most appropriate for this
purpose. The reading specialist could
best respond by recommending that the
teacher use:
A. words that children select
themselves.
B. common single-syllable CVC
patterned words (e.g., man, Sam).
C. high-frequency sight words that
most children can recognize.
D. familiar single-syllable words that
begin with a stop sound (e.g., bat,
cat).
4. A reading specialist could informally
assess a student's phonemic awareness
by asking the student to:
A. identify the sound he/she hears at
the beginning, middle, or end of a
spoken word (e.g., "What sound
do you hear at the end of step?").
B. listen to a tape-recorded story
while looking at the book, then
answer several simple questions
about the story.
C. identify the letters in the alphabet
that correspond to the initial
consonant sounds of several
familiar spoken words.
D. listen to the teacher read aloud
a set of words with the same
beginning sound (e.g., train, trap,
trouble), then repeat the words.
3. According to current research, which of
the following approaches is most likely to
increase the effectiveness of phonemic
awareness instruction?
A. relying primarily on individualized
drills and worksheets to promote
phonemic awareness
B. introducing multiple phonemic
awareness skills in each lesson
C. providing explicit whole-class
phonemic awareness instruction for
two or more hours each day
D. using concrete cues to help teach
phonemic awareness
Item 3, Objective 4, Correct Response D
Current research suggests that use of concrete
cues can increase the effectiveness of
phonemic awareness instruction. For example, a
reading specialist may use plastic
cubes to represent the phonemes of a spoken word
(e.g., man), guiding the student to
place one cube on the table as each sound of the
word (e.g., /m/ /a/ /n/) is
articulated. Other manipulatives, including
magnetic or cardboard letters, also can
enhance the effectiveness of phonemic awareness
activities.
61
1JB CAP
8. A planned language arts unit for secondgrade
students involves having the
students make up stories that they record
in pictures they create using cut and torn
paper. Next, they will "read" their picture
stories to the teacher and then write down
the text for their stories. Which of the
following is a primary benefit of
integrating sensory and visual components
into this language arts activity?
A. It introduces students to the
traditional approach to process
writing.
B. It quickly leads students to create
stories by writing them first, then
illustrating them.
C. It promotes students' cooperation
and collaboration in language arts
and art activities.
D. It develops and reinforces students'
literacy skills through multiple
learning modes.
5. Renee, a preschooler, shows her teacher a
picture she has drawn of her puppy. She
tells the teacher, "It says, 'This is my
puppy, Oscar.'
Renee's writing demonstrates that she
has an understanding of which of the
following concepts about print?
A. Words are read from left to right.
B. Print carries meaning.
C. Letters correspond with sounds.
D. Sentences are composed of words
7. A teacher is working with a group of
students in the emergent literacy stage of
reading development who have had little
experience with books. Which of the
following instructional activities would
best promote the students’ understanding
of the relationship between written and
spoken words?
A. Each student pretends to read a
picture book by telling a story while
3. The ability to point to words during the
initial stages of reading indicates a child's
development of:
A. an understanding that words are
composed of small units of sound
and that these sounds can be
blended together.
B. an awareness of words that regularly
occur in the same contexts.
C. an understanding of how the words
in sentences relate to each other.
D. an awareness of words and of the
correspondence between written and
spoken language.
7. Use the writing sample below to answer
the question that follows.
Stephanie, a four year old, points to her
drawing and states, "That's Rosa." She
then points to the markings below the
drawing and says, "And that says I like to
be with my friend." Based on this writing
sample, which of the following could
most reasonably be determined about
Stephanie's literacy development?
A. She recognizes that there are many
different letters in the alphabet.
B. She knows that the English
language is read from left to right.
C. She understands that words are
made up of letters.
D. She realizes that there is a difference
between drawing and print.
2. A teacher notices that a kindergarten
student is beginning to recognize the
difference between a letter and a word.
This awareness most typically indicates
that the student is developing an
understanding of:
A. the print-sound code.
B. word identification.
C. print concepts.
D. syllabication.
62
turning the pages.
B. The teacher displays a big book and
points to each word as she reads the
book aloud.
C. Each student points to each word in
a written sentence, and then the
teacher reads aloud the sentence.
D. The teacher models for students
how to move manipulatives to count
the words in a spoken sentence
3. Which of the following strategies would
best help a first-grade student with visual
discrimination difficulties distinguish
between frequently confused letters?
A. encouraging the student to observe
closely as the teacher writes the
letters
B. helping the student locate the letters
within the text of a favorite book
C. repeating the name of each letter
several times as the student points to
the letter
D. creating sandpaper letters that the
student can trace with his/her finger
while saying the letter name
26. Tyler, a first grader, can identify the
letters of the alphabet and decode a
number of simple words. He becomes
confused, however, when tracking print
in consecutive lines of print. Which of the
following strategies is likely to be most
effective in helping Tyler read a short
paragraph of simple text?
A. Help Tyler sound out unfamiliar
words included in the text before
he attempts to read the entire
paragraph.
B. Have Tyler use his finger or a
marker as he reads the text.
C. Help Tyler increase his reading rate
to improve his understanding of the
continuity between words and
sentences in the paragraph.
D. Modify the paragraph by using
a yellow highlighter to identify
natural groupings of words and
phrases within the paragraph
7. A preschool student tells a story and
watches the teacher write it down. Then
the student listens to the teacher read
aloud the dictated story. This activity is
most likely to promote the student's
literacy development by:
A. helping the student learn to
recognize the shapes of many
common printed words.
B. reinforcing the student's
understanding of story elements.
C. increasing the student's awareness of
the relationship between written and
oral language.
D. expanding the student's sight-word
vocabulary.
Correct Response: C. Children in the emergent literacy stage of reading development must
gain an understanding of concepts of print. For example, young children must learn that spoken
language can be represented by printed words. The activity described in the question helps
children realize that anything that is spoken, even a story that the child makes up and tells to
the teacher, can be written down and read aloud.
5. Which of the following most clearly
suggests that a kindergarten student
already has developed some understanding
of print concepts?
14. Which of the following instructional
strategies would best help a kindergarten
student with visual discrimination
difficulties distinguish between
63
A. The student often recognizes
when two simple spoken words
begin with the same sound.
B. The student is able to make
predictions about a story after the
teacher reads a few pages of it.
C. The student responds appropriately
when asked to count
the words on a page from a
storybook.
D. The student is able to recite
the letters of the alphabet with
minimal assistance from the
teache
frequently confused letters?
A. creating sandpaper letters that
the student can trace with his/her
finger while saying the letter
name
B. helping the student locate the
letters within the text of a favorite
book
C. repeating the name of each letter
several times as the student points
to the letter
D. encouraging the student to
observe closely as the teacher
writes the letters
5. At the beginning of the school year, a
kindergarten teacher observes a child
"pretend reading" a book in the independent
reading area of the classroom.
The child turns the pages in sequence,
looking at the illustrations and quietly
telling a story but not referring to the
printed text. The teacher could best
interpret this behavior as an indication
that the child:
A. has developed an understanding of
some concepts of print.
B. lacks letter-recognition skills.
C. has well-developed oral comprehension.
D. lacks phonemic awareness.
Item 5, Objective 5, Correct Response A
The child's "pretend reading" behaviors suggest
that the child has developed an
understanding of some concepts of print. The child
demonstrates book handling skills
(e.g., holds a book correctly, turns pages from front
to back) and shows some
awareness of the relationship between spoken and
printed language (e.g., tells a story
while turning the pages of a book).
7. A teacher is working with a group of
students in the emergent literacy stage of
reading development who have had little
experience with books. Which of the
following instructional activities would
best promote the students' understanding
of the relationship between written and
spoken words?
A. Each student pretends to read a
picture book by telling a story while
turning the pages.
B. The teacher displays a big book and
points to each word as she reads the
book aloud.
C. Each student points to each word in
a written sentence, and then the
teacher reads aloud the sentence.
D. The teacher models for students
how to move manipulatives to count
the words in a spoken sentence.
•
know the differences between phoneme awareness and phonics.
1K
3. A kindergarten teacher engages children
17. A kindergarten teacher plays the following
in an activity in which different sounds
game with students. She says, "Guess
64
are substituted for the initial consonant
of a repeated word in a familiar song
(e.g., "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"
becomes "Mow, Mow, Mow Your Boat").
This activity is most likely to promote
literacy development by helping the
children:
A. distinguish onsets and rimes.
B. blend the sounds in words.
C. relate phonemes to letters.
D. recognize word boundaries.
whose name I'm going to say now?" She
then says the initial sound of a student's
name (e.g., /m/ for Mary), and the children
try to guess the name. This activity is
likely to promote the reading development
of students primarily by helping them:
A. blend separate sounds in words.
B. recognize that a spoken word is
made up of sounds.
C. understand the principles of
phonics.
D. learn how to spell their own names.
9. Based on current research, which of the
following is an accurate statement about
reading development?
A. By second grade, fluent readers
are relying more on recognition of
familiar spelling patterns and less on
the blending of phonemes to sound
out individual words.
B. In fourth grade, fluent readers have
sufficiently large sight vocabularies
and command of context that they
rarely need to decode individual
words in grade-level texts.
C. As they progress through the upperelementary
grades, students are able
to rely less on prior knowledge and
more on literal comprehension to
understand unfamiliar concepts.
D. Middle school students with reading
difficulties are more likely to require
help with comprehension strategies
than instruction in word identification
skills.
7. The development of which of the
following skills is prerequisite for
understanding the alphabetic principle?
A. syllabication and morphological
skills
B. decoding and sight word recognition
C. phonemic awareness and letter
recognition
D. letter naming and print tracking
•
identify the development of the alphabetic principle, decoding, sight word recognition, and
fluency, and spelling
1L
14. Which of the following strategies
would best help a kindergarten student
with visual discrimination difficulties
distinguish between frequently confused
letters?
A. creating sandpaper letters that
the student can trace with his/her
finger while saying the letter name
B. helping the student locate the letters
within the text of a favorite book
C. repeating the name of each letter
several times as the student points to
the letter
D. encouraging the student to observe
closely as the teacher writes the
letters
6. Which of the following activities would
best reinforce kindergarten students'
understanding of the correspondence
between the letter d and the /d/ sound?
A. As the teacher reads aloud from a
list of words that begin with the
letter d, she points to the first
letter and emphasizes the first
sound.
B. The teacher presents a printed
word beginning with the letter d,
and students try to spell new
words by changing the first letter.
C. As the teacher says a series of
words that begin with either the
/d/ or the /t/ sound, students try
65
to identify the ones that begin
with the /d/ sound.
D. The teacher demonstrates for
students how to spell a variety of
familiar words that begin with the
letter d.
16. Students in a kindergarten class have
been learning to recognize and name
letters. Some students are having
difficulty acquiring these skills. The
teacher could best respond by taking
which of the following steps first?
A. Provide a variety of multisensory
activities to promote and reinforce
the letter-recognition skills of all
students.
B. Contact the school's literacy
professional to arrange for
diagnostic testing of students
with letter-recognition difficulties.
C. Defer further instruction on letterrecognition
skills until all students
in the class demonstrate phonemic
awareness.
D. Plan an intervention for every
student in the class who is having
trouble developing letterrecognition
skills.
Correct Response: A. Reading instruction at all grade levels should be sufficiently flexible and
varied to address individual differences in students' reading strengths and needs as well as their
individual learning styles. For example, some kindergarten children acquire letter-recognition
skills more quickly than other children. Some children also learn more easily when information
is presented orally; for other children, visual presentations of information may be more effective.
The teacher's first response in addressing these needs should be to provide a wide range of
multisensory activities that are likely to develop and/or reinforce the letter-recognition skills of
children at varying stages of development and with varying learning styles.
10. Use the sentences with missing letters
below to answer the question that
follows.
1. W_ll y_ _ r_ _d th_s?
2. _i_ _ _ou _ea_ _ _i_?
Reading researchers have observed that
while sentence 1 is easily understood by
most readers, sentence 2 is not. This
observation best supports which of the
following conclusions about effective
phonics instruction?
A. Capitalization and punctuation
help determine the meaning of
a sentence but are not relevant
to decoding.
B. Students should be encouraged to
guess at a word's identity once they
have decoded part of the word.
C. Context cues are as important as
phonics knowledge in enabling a
reader to decode connected text.
D. Students' ability to decode connected
3. A first-grade teacher is helping a student
decode the word stop. Which of the
following teacher prompts illustrates the
synthetic approach to phonics instruction?
A. "Can you think of other words that
end with the letters op? What sound
do the letters make in those other
words?"
B. "Say the sounds made by the
individual letters s, t, o, and p. What
word do you get if you blend those
sounds together?"
C. "Look at this sentence: The stop
light is red. Can you decode the
second word by using clues from
the rest of the sentence?"
D. "Does the word look like any other
words that you know how to read?
Can you sound out this word by
comparing it to those other words?"
66
text will develop most quickly if
phonics instruction begins with
consonants.
1. A teacher wants students to understand the
phonics rule stating that when a single
vowel appears in a closed syllable, it
usually stands for the short sound of the
vowel. Which of the following words best
exemplifies that rule?
A. say
B. cow
C. hit
D. toy
5. Ashley, a second grader, is reading orally
to her teacher. The teacher notices that
Ashley is omitting words while reading.
Afterward, the teacher asks Ashley to
pronounce the omitted words, but she
does not know them. Given these circumstances,
it is most likely that Ashley is
having difficulty with which of the
following?
A. sight vocabulary
B. decoding skills
C. structural analysis
D. context cues
1. A second grader makes the responses
listed below on an oral reading test.
4. A kindergarten teacher begins instruction
in letter-sound correspondence by
teaching students the sounds associated
with m, n, s, t, and b. Which of the following
steps would be most appropriate
for the teacher to take next?
A. Teach students the short vowel
sounds of two or three separate
vowels to enable the students to
begin reading familiar CVC words.
B. Teach students the sounds most
commonly associated with all of
the remaining consonants in the
alphabet.
C. Teach all of the long and short
vowel sounds to help students
understand the idea that one letter
may be associated with two sounds.
D. Teach students how to sound out
CVCC words by using the
consonant sounds they already
have learned.
Stimulus
Response
steam
stem
what
that
cloud
cloud
swim
swim
bread
breed
dish
ditch
The errors suggest that the student would
likely benefit most from instruction on
which of the following sets of topics?
A. initial consonants and r-controlled
vowels
B. consonant digraphs and vowel
digraphs
C. final consonants and medial
consonants
D. consonant blends and vowel
diphthongs
1. Which of the following statements best
explains the difference between phonemic
awareness and phonics skills?
A. Phonemic awareness is the general
understanding that spoken language
can be represented by print, while
phonics requires knowledge of
particular letter-sound associations.
B. Phonemic awareness is the ability to
associate sounds with letters, while
phonics refers to knowledge of
common spelling patterns.
3. In which of the following nonsense words
is the vowel sound likely to be the same as
the vowel sound in the word on?
A. goan
B. goble
C. gobb
D. gowl
67
C. Phonemic awareness involves
a general understanding of the
alphabetic principle, while phonics
includes letter-blending skills.
D. Phonemic awareness is the ability
to distinguish individual speech
sounds, while phonics requires
knowledge of letter-sound
correspondence.
8. Which of the following describes the most
appropriate instructional use of decodable
texts?
A. to help young children acquire letterrecognition
skills
B. to help English Language Learners
develop phonemic awareness
C. to give beginning readers practice
applying phonics skills
D. to develop the sight-word vocabulary
for beginning readers
4. A first-grade teacher provides students
with phonics instruction to promote their
reading development. When designing
activities to teach letter-sound correspondences,
the teacher should:
A. provide reading opportunities for
students to practice sounds in context
after studying the sounds in
isolation.
B. make certain that students have
mastered vowel sounds before
focusing on consonants.
C. ensure that students master the
spelling of practice words using the
target sound before teaching a new
sound.
D. include instruction in related consonant
blends when introducing
individual consonants.
8. Knowledge of reliable phonics generalizations
would best help a reader
determine the correct pronunciation
of which of the following words?
A. rind
B. greed
C. book
D. tread
Correct Response: B. Phonics generalizations are guidelines that sometimes are useful in
helping a reader sound out unfamiliar words (e.g., "When two vowels are side by side in a word,
the first vowel is long, and the second vowel is silent."). Some generalizations apply more
consistently than others. For example, when the letter "e" in a word is immediately followed by
another "e," the long "e" sound usually results. The word "greed" clearly illustrates this reliable
phonics generalization.
16. In the word chimpanzee, which of the
following pairs of letters is a digraph?
A. ch
B. mp
C. an
D. ee
Use the information below to answer the question that follows.
A reading specialist uses a variety of word-sort activities to promote the phonics skills of second-grade
students with reading difficulties. For each word-sort activity, the reading specialist gives the students
their own decks of printed word cards. Students then sort the cards into two or more piles according to
a sound and/or spelling pattern identified by the reading specialist. For example, one word-sort activity
requires students to divide the word cards into two piles that correspond to words with long "e" sounds
(e.g., leaf, seed) and words with short "e" sounds (e.g., hen, bread). Another word-sort activity requires
68
students to divide the word cards into three piles based on spelling patterns as well as sound patterns
(e.g., words in which the long "e" sound is spelled "ea," words in which the long "e" sound is spelled
"ee," and words in which the long "e" sound is spelled "ie").
4. Which of the following guidelines
would be most important for the reading
specialist to follow when selecting words
to use for phonics-based word-sort
activities?
A. Encourage students to select their
own words for the word-sort
activities.
B. Choose words from texts that are
written at a level that is challenging
for most students.
C. Use words that the students already
recognize and can easily pronounce.
D. Select sets of words that are all
drawn from the same ageappropriate
children's book.
Item 4, Objective 6, Correct Response C
A primary purpose of these types of word-sort
activities is to reinforce students'
knowledge of common sound patterns and spelling
patterns in words. For this reason,
the activities should use familiar printed words that
students can easily recognize and
pronounce. Gaining familiarity with these patterns
will help students learn to decode
unfamiliar words through analogy with known
words.
69
1L Sight Words
8. Which of the following strategies would
best promote beginning readers’ automatic
recognition of high-frequency, irregular
sight words?
A. strengthening students’ phonemic
awareness skills
B. having the students engage in
repeated readings of familiar texts at
their independent reading levels
C. reinforcing students’ knowledge of
letter-sound correspondence
D. helping the students identify each
word by dividing it into separate
syllables or clusters of letters
9. Which of the following is most likely to
increase a reader's fluency and reading
rate?
A. stopping periodically while reading
a difficult text to predict what will
happen next
B. taking notes while reading a
difficult text, then reviewing the
notes after reading
C. using a graphic organizer after
reading a text to represent the main
ideas and themes
D. engaging in repeated reading of a
text at the reader's independent
reading level
28. In general, the best strategy for helping
beginning readers identify function words
such as to, the, and of would be to:
A. encourage students to apply phonic
analysis to such words.
B. provide instruction in the use of
context clues.
C. develop students' structural analysis
skills.
D. teach such words as sight
vocabulary.
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 2.2) Repeated
oral reading (i.e., a reader repeatedly reads aloud a
short text written at his or her independent reading
level) has been tied to clear improvements in
fluency
and reading rate. This practice reinforces automatic
word recognition, enabling the reader to read more
quickly and in a more natural, fluid manner.
9. A first-grade teacher wants to strengthen
students' automatic recognition of highfrequency
words with irregular spellings.
Which of the following instructional
strategies is likely to be effective for this
purpose?
A. posting and using the words on a
"word wall" in the classroom
B. modeling the use of syllabication as
a strategy for identifying unfamiliar
words
C. using word families to help students
recall the words
D. teaching students how to use
phonics generalizations to decode
the words
Correct Response: A. Words with irregular spellings that occur frequently in texts (e.g., come,
again, father) are often considered "sight words." Since these words do not follow typical
phonics patterns, beginning readers cannot easily sound out the words and must learn to
recognize them individually. Frequent exposure to such words promotes reading fluency by
reinforcing students' ability to recognize the words automatically. One strategy to increase
students' exposure to the words is to display the words on a "word wall" and use it as the focus
for varied reading and writing activities.
8. Which of the following strategies would
best promote beginning readers' automatic
recognition of high-frequency, irregular
sight words?
70
A. strengthening students' phonemic
awareness skills
B. having the students engage in
repeated readings of familiar texts at
their independent reading levels
C. reinforcing students' knowledge of
letter-sound correspondence
D. helping the students identify each
word by dividing it into separate
syllables or clusters of let
71
1L Fluency
8. A second-grade teacher observes that a
student uses his finger to point to each
word in a text as he reads it aloud. The
teacher responds by guiding the student to
discontinue this practice. Which of the
following statements best describes the
rationale for this response?
A. Pointing to individual words while
reading can distract students from
systematic decoding.
B. Students who get in the habit of
pointing to individual words while
reading aloud often have difficulty
learning to read silently.
C. Pointing to individual words while
reading can interfere with the
development of reading fluency.
D. Students who get in the habit of
pointing to individual words while
reading aloud often have difficulty
developing phonemic awareness.
9. To promote students’ reading fluency,
a fifth-grade teacher plans activities in
which students and their assigned partners
will engage in repeated oral readings.
When the teacher assembles reading
materials for this purpose, it would be
most important to assign each pair of
students passages from a text that:
A. both partners are capable of reading
aloud with no more than 5 word
recognition errors per 100 words
of text.
B. the students have previewed and
selected themselves.
C. both partners are capable of reading
aloud with no more than 25 word
recognition errors per 100 words
of text.
D. the students have been reading in
connection with content-area study.
6. After discussing the differences between
facts and opinions, a fifth-grade teacher
gives students copies of several newspaper
articles that have no headlines or
bylines. The teacher assigns students to
groups and asks them to distinguish the
articles that are news stories from those
that are editorials. To complete this
assignment successfully, it will be most
important for the students to recognize:
A. if the writer has expertise in the
field discussed in the article.
B. when a writer has stated a position
and offered support for it.
C. topics that can only be addressed in
a factual and objective manner.
D. writing that presents information
with sufficient clarity.
15. Which of the following instructional
strategies is likely to be most effective in
improving the reading fluency of Tolana,
a third-grade student?
A. Tolana practices reading a favorite
story aloud several times and then
reads it into a cassette recorder to
tape the reading.
B. The teacher helps Tolana increase
her reading rate by prompting her
when she hesitates over unfamiliar
words while reading aloud.
C. Tolana reads aloud an unfamiliar
passage from a content-area text and
then completes a semantic web to
clarify the ideas in the passage.
D. The teacher models for Tolana
how to take advantage of context
clues to identify unfamiliar words
while reading aloud.
30. Reading fluency refers to students'
ability to:
A. read smoothly and accurately.
B. pay particular attention to key
words as they read.
C. read with different levels of
comprehension.
D. pay particular attention to proper
pronunciation as they read.
39. Spring, a second grader, has demonstrated
the ability to decode individual words, but
her reading fluency is weak, which has led
to difficulties with comprehension. When
the teacher asks Spring to read aloud,
she says she feels "embarrassed" and
would rather read silently. Which of
the following responses by the teacher
would likely be the most appropriate and
effective way to help improve Spring's
reading fluency?
A. Encourage Spring to serve as an
"audience" for other students who
read aloud until she demonstrates
readiness to read aloud herself.
B. Arrange frequent opportunities for
72
Spring to participate in small-group
activities that involve rereading
familiar texts aloud.
C. Teach Spring how to use selfmonitoring
techniques to improve
her literal comprehension as she
reads.
D. Focus on explicit phonics
instruction to improve Spring's word
identification skills before requiring
her to read aloud.
8. To promote students' reading fluency,
a fifth-grade teacher plans activities in
which students and their assigned
partners will engage in repeated oral
readings. When the teacher assembles
reading materials for this purpose, it
would be most important to assign
each pair of students passages from
a text that:
A. both partners are capable of
reading aloud with no more than
5 word recognition errors per
100 words of text.
B. the students have previewed and
selected themselves.
C. both partners are capable of
reading aloud with no more than
25 word recognition errors per
100 words of text.
D. the students have been reading in
connection with content-area
study.
7. Which of the following strategies would
be most effective in helping intermediate
and advanced ESL students improve their
reading rates and reading fluency?
A. providing frequent opportunities
for students to read and reread texts
written at their independent reading
levels
B. expanding students' vocabulary
knowledge by assigning challenging
texts at and beyond their instructional
reading levels
C. encouraging students to use various
comprehension strategies, such as
self-monitoring, predicting, and
questioning
D. administering timed reading tests
to students each week to motivate
them to read more quickly and
accurately
4. An eighth grade student who is a
struggling reader will participate in a
program in which older students read
aloud predictable or rhyming books to
early-elementary students. This activity
is most likely to promote the eighth grade
student's reading development in which
of the following ways?
A. motivating the student to read ageappropriate
literature
B. developing the student's phonemic
awareness
C. encouraging the student to use
metacognitive strategies
D. improving the student's reading
fluency
5. Which of the following types of instructional
activities for middle school students
is likely to be most effective in promoting
the students' oral reading fluency?
A. preparing and delivering brief,
extemporaneous speeches based
on assigned reading
B. using interactive journal writing
to reflect on literary texts
C. creating graphic organizers to
summarize information in
nonfiction texts
D. rehearsing and performing readers'
theater productions
9. To promote students' reading fluency,
a fifth-grade teacher plans activities in
which students and their assigned partners
will engage in repeated oral readings.
When the teacher assembles reading
materials for this purpose, it would be
most important to assign each pair of
73
students passages from a text that:
A. both partners are capable of reading
aloud with no more than 5 word
recognition errors per 100 words
of text.
B. the students have previewed and
selected themselves.
C. both partners are capable of reading
aloud with no more than 25 word
recognition errors per 100 words
of text.
D. the students have been reading in
connection with content-area stud
•
understand the development of vocabulary (structural analysis, etymologies, connotative
denotation and connotation, and context (homophone and homograph)
1M
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
A middle school science class that contains many ESL learners is taught collaboratively by the science
teacher and the ESL teacher. The two teachers introduce the topic of earthquakes by leading a class
discussion and creating on the chalkboard the semantic map shown below.
Competency 006
8. As an introductory activity, this strategy
is helpful to ESL students primarily
because it:
A. takes advantage of their crosscultural
perspectives.
B. promotes their confidence in
producing authentic language.
C. allows them to develop or review
key concepts and vocabulary.
D. provides them with detailed
information in concise form.
9. Encouraging ESL students to create
their own semantic maps is most likely
to promote their content-area learning
by helping them develop skill in:
A. using descriptive language.
B. organizing and categorizing
information.
C. evaluating the reliability of
information.
D. predicting the results of a
sequence of events.
9. A high school reading specialist is
collaborating with a biology teacher to
address the reading needs of an English
Language Learner. The biology teacher
has observed that the student's knowledge
of scientific vocabulary is very
limited. The reading specialist advises
the biology teacher to provide explicit
instruction on key vocabulary words
4. The acquisition of a new vocabulary
word can be reinforced most effectively
by doing which of the following?
A. studying the etymology of the new
word
B. locating several synonyms in a
thesaurus
C. identifying the part of speech of the
new word
74
before and after the student reads
assigned texts. Which of the following
additional activities would be most
effective in improving the student's
knowledge of scientific vocabulary?
A. partner activities in which
students quiz each other about
the definitions of scientific
terminology in assigned texts
B. heterogeneous small-group
activities in which students
look up scientific terms in the
dictionary and then report their
findings to the class
C. writing activities in which
students consult the textbook
glossary to write answers to
questions about assigned readings
D. small-group activities that
involve discussion and hands-on
experience relating to scientific
concepts students are studying
D. using various forms of the new
word in sentences
1. Which of the following is an example
of using syntactic clues to identify the
meaning of an unfamiliar word in a text?
A. looking for synonyms or descriptions
of the word within the text
B. applying graphophonemic analysis to
the word
C. analyzing what the placement
of the word within a sentence suggests
about the word
D. determining the meaning of the word's
root and affixes
1. A reader would most likely need to use
semantic clues to determine the meaning
of which of the following words?
A. exertion
B. free
C. llama
D. neighborly
4. Which of the following best describes
how morphology is used in word
identification?
A. The reader decodes polysyllabic
words by using a set of syllabication
and accent rules.
B. The reader uses his or her knowledge
of semantics and syntax to
determine an unknown word.
C. The reader uses his or her knowledge
of the alphabetic principle to
decode unknown words.
D. The reader decodes a polysyllabic
word by looking for common
prefixes, root words, and suffixes.
5. A second grade teacher often reads
literature to the class that is beyond the
students' independent reading level. One
way that this activity helps students
develop comprehension skills is by:
A. exposing the students to new
vocabulary and concepts to expand
their knowledge of word meanings.
B. developing the students' ability to
monitor their own understanding of
the text.
C. motivating students to participate
in discussions as they attempt to
understand the meaning of the text.
D. challenging the students to
understand texts that contain
complex sentence structures.
1. Extensive and varied independent reading
experiences are likely to promote the
reading development of an elementary
student primarily by:
A. broadening the student's vocabulary
6. Students in a fourth-grade class are
learning how to apply structural analysis
to identify unfamiliar words. This
strategy would be most effective in
helping students determine the meaning
75
knowledge.
B. improving the student's phonological
awareness.
C. enhancing the student's knowledge
of English syntax.
D. increasing the student's awareness of
the origins of words.
Correct Response: A. Independent reading plays
an important role in promoting the reading
development of elementary students. Extensive
independent reading of varied texts exposes a
student to a large number of familiar and unfamiliar
words in diverse contexts, improving
comprehension by broadening the student's
vocabulary knowledge.
of which of the following words?
A. continue
B. measure
C. reappear
D. curious
1. A reader would most likely need to use
context clues to determine the meaning
of which of the following words?
A. exertion
B. free
C. llama
D. neighborly
31. A middle school teacher frequently has
students perform semantic mapping
activities before and after assigned
readings. Which of the following
statements best explains the primary
rationale for this instructional strategy?
A. Presenting textual information in
several visual formats makes the
information more accessible to
students by accommodating diverse
learning styles.
B. Diagramming textual information
improves students’ writing skills by
promoting their use of effective text
structures and accurate writing
conventions.
C. Organizing reading material in new
ways highlights connections among
ideas and enhances students’ shortterm
and long-term recall of the
material.
D. Arranging textual information in
graphic formats encourages students
to use context cues to clarify the
meaning of content-specific
vocabulary in the text.
5. Which of the following is an example
of using syntactic clues to identify the
meaning of an unfamiliar word in a text?
A. looking for synonyms or
descriptions of the word
within the text
B. applying graphophonemic analysis
to the word
C. determining the meaning of the
word's root and affixes
D. analyzing what the placement
of the word within a sentence
suggests about the word
4. Students in an upper-elementary class
examine and discuss paired words such
as compete and competition, inflame and
inflammation, and magic and magician.
Word pairings such as these are most
likely to promote students' reading
development by increasing their
awareness that:
A. most phonic generalizations have
at least a few exceptions.
B. syllabication can help a reader
identify the meaning of an unfamiliar
word.
C. the spelling of a word may give clues
to its meaning as well as to its sound.
D. some phonemes are represented by
more than one letter combination
76
11. A reader who encounters an unfamiliar
word in a text sounds the word out by
applying phonics and syllabication skills.
It is most likely that the reader will then
be able to identify the word's meaning if:
A. the word is in the reader's oral
vocabulary.
B. the reader recognizes the word's
part of speech.
C. the word is a homophone of a
familiar word.
D. the reader recognizes the word's
language of origin.
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 2.3) If a
person has encountered a word only in the context
of oral
language (i.e., speaking the word and hearing it
spoken), he or she may not initially recognize the
same
word in print. Once the reader has sounded out the
printed word, however, he or she is likely to match
the
printed word with its spoken equivalent and recall
its meaning
5. A fourth-grade teacher leads a class discussion about different types of animals. As students name
various animals, the teacher draws on the board the diagram shown below.
This type of activity is most likely to
promote students' reading proficiency in
which of the following ways?
A. helping them recognize that a word's
meaning may shift when the context
changes
B. enriching their vocabulary knowledge
by relating familiar words to
larger conceptual categories
C. helping them recognize that every
word has links to many other types of
words
D. enriching their vocabulary skills
by demonstrating that many single
words have both denotative and
connotative meanings
22. Students in a fourth-grade class work in
groups to develop a list of spelling words
that focuses on homophones. Which of
the following word pairs best represents
this concept?
A. answer and reply
B. playful and replay
C. table and stable
D. sight and site
10. Use the diagram below to answer the question that follows.
Constructing a word map such as the one
77
shown above is most likely to help a
reader:
A. recognize the multiple denotative
and connotative meanings of words.
B. create graphic organizers to improve
inferential comprehension skills.
C. use outlining to help organize and
recall information from a text.
D. apply structural analysis as a word
identification strategy.
Correct Response: A. Many words in English have more than one denotative (literal) meaning
as well as varied connotations (associations). For example, when used as a noun, the word
light can denote electromagnetic radiation or a mechanical device for illumination; as an
adjective, it can denote "not heavy" or "not serious;" as a verb, it can denote the process of
igniting a fire. The word light also has multiple connotations, including warmth, brightness, ease
of movement, and amusement. Creating a word map for such a word promotes vocabulary
knowledge by helping readers visualize, understand, and recall the word's denotative and
connotative meanings
3. An English teacher designs an activity in
which students work together to identify
as many words as possible that share a
common root (e.g., transport, portable,
export). This activity is most likely to
promote students' vocabulary development
by helping the students learn to:
A. use a word's grammatical category
to infer its meaning.
B. distinguish between a word's
denotative meaning and its
connotative meaning.
C. infer the meaning of an unfamiliar
word by analyzing its structure.
D. determine which of several meanings
of a word is most likely in a
given context
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
A reading specialist is working with a group of middle school students to improve their vocabulary
knowledge and skills. Students begin keeping word-study notebooks and follow the guidelines
summarized below.
• During independent reading, identify an unfamiliar word.
• Write the word, and the sentence in which it appears, in your word-study notebook.
• Make and record some predictions about the word's meaning based on context and familiar
word parts.
• Look up the word in the dictionary, and record information about the meaning(s) of the word.
58. The cloze technique is an especially useful
method for assessing students' understanding
of English language structures
because it requires students to:
A. define the various parts of speech in
their own words.
B. select appropriate words based on
their grammatical function as well
as on their meaning.
C. group words into phrases to clarify
their meaning.
D. draw on grammatical knowledge to
identify the subjects and predicates
of complex sentences.
5. Which of the following additions to this
activity is likely to be most effective in
strengthening students' conceptual
understanding of the words in their wordstudy
notebooks?
A. Students apply phonics knowledge
to analyze the spelling patterns of
selected words in their word-study
notebooks.
B. Students review the entries in their
notebooks on a regular basis to
reinforce their recall of the words'
meanings.
Item 5, Objective 7, Correct Response D
Identifying synonyms (words with similar meanings)
and antonyms (words with
opposite meanings) for a designated word helps
strengthen students' understanding of
the word's denotative and connotative meanings.
Linking the designated word to
related words provides a conceptual context that
anchors students' understanding and
reinforces recall of the word's meaning.
78
C. Students choose an appropriate
dictionary definition for the selected
word and copy the definition into
their notebook entry.
D. Students write down synonyms,
antonyms, and other words that are
related in meaning to the selected
word.
79
11. Use the instructional activity below to answer the question that follows.
Teacher: Now that we have finished this story, I have a game for you to play. I want you
to help me read the story again. You fill in the words that I leave out. Okay?
Let's try this sentence. "The king took the crown off his ________." (head)
The instructional process used in the
activity shown above would be most
appropriate for helping kindergarten
students develop which of the following
skills?
A. recognizing the separations between
words
B. categorizing words by initial sounds
C. identifying the beginning and end of
a sentence
D. using context to determine meaning
A fourth-grade class is beginning a unit on deserts. The teacher starts the unit by having the students
form small
groups and list everything they know about deserts. Then the whole class meets to share their lists, and
the
teacher asks the students to help arrange their ideas into a web. The class's partially completed web is
shown
below.
5. As a prereading activity, creating the web
shown is most likely to promote students'
reading comprehension by:
A. encouraging students to pay attention
to new information on the topic
rather than to familiar information.
B. providing students with the vocabulary
skills they need to make sense
of information presented in the text.
C. prompting students to assess the
accuracy of their understanding of
the topic.
D. helping students learn to use
categories to organize their prior
knowledge about information
presented in the text.
5. As a prereading activity, creating the web
shown is most likely to promote students'
reading comprehension by:
A. encouraging students to pay attention
to new information on the topic
rather than to familiar information.
B. providing students with the vocabulary
skills they need to make sense
of information presented in the text.
C. prompting students to assess the
accuracy of their understanding of
the topic.
D. helping students learn to use
categories to organize their prior
knowledge about information
presented in the text.
9. After writing pasteurize and Louis Pasteur
on the blackboard, a middle school teacher
explains how Pasteur invented the process
of pasteurization. Students then discuss
how the word Pasteur relates to the word
pasteurize. This instructional activity is
likely to foster students' reading development
24. Ms. Carlyle, a sixth-grade teacher,
observes that several students have
misspelled the word pasteurize. After
writing pasteurize and Louis Pasteur
on the blackboard, the teacher explains
how Pasteur invented the process of
pasteurization. Students then discuss
80
primarily by:
A. helping students use syllabication as
a strategy to identify morphemes in
an unfamiliar word.
B. motivating students to improve
their spelling by comparing and
contrasting similar words.
C. helping students use etymology to
improve their word analysis and
vocabulary skills.
D. motivating students to use
graphophonic cues as a word
identification strategy.
how the word Pasteur relates to the word
pasteurize. This instructional activity
is likely to foster students' reading
development primarily by:
A. helping students learn to use
etymology to improve spelling
and promote word recognition.
B. helping students improve their
spelling by comparing and
contrasting similar words.
C. motivating students to use
orthographic patterns to expand
their vocabulary knowledge.
D. motivating students to improve
their spelling through the use of
systematic study skills.
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
Students in a sixth-grade class are working in small groups to create word maps. The teacher assigns
each group a word, and students begin drafting a word map by brainstorming different meanings of the
word. Members of the group then use a dictionary to verify their ideas and add more meanings to the
map. Each group presents its map to the class for further discussion. The groups then reconvene to
compose
a sentence to illustrate each meaning in the word map. The groups take turns reading aloud their
sentences and discussing them with the class. Shown below is one group's completed word map.
8. This approach to creating word maps is
most likely to promote students' reading
development in which of the following
ways?
A. prompting students to make
effective use of varied reference
materials to improve their understanding
of texts
B. enhancing students' skill in identifying
key words as a strategy to
improve reading comprehension
C. helping students identify and interpret
words with multiple meanings
that the students encounter in their
reading
D. improving students' reading fluency
by reinforcing their automatic word
recognition
Item 8, Objective 7, Correct Response C
In English, a single word may have multiple
meanings; the context in which the word
is used provides clues to its intended meaning.
Readers who encounter such a word
while reading must recall that it has more than one
meaning and discern the
appropriate meaning in context. In addition to
enriching vocabulary knowledge, the
word map activity helps familiarize students with
common words, such as root, that
have multiple meanings and develops students'
skill in using context to verify the
intended meaning.
•
identify the development of comprehension (literal, inferential, and evaluative)
1N
15. Read the passage below; then answer
the question that follows.
Speed limits have become unnecessary
on many sections of the nation's superhighways.
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Safety features are much
improved in new vehicles, and highway
construction techniques are continually
advancing. As a result, highway travel
is the safest it has ever been, whether
vehicles are traveling at fifty-five miles
per hour or at eighty-five miles per hour.
These days, the only effects of limiting the
speed of vehicles are to waste motorists'
time and to increase the cost of doing
business.
Which of the following skills would a
reader most need in order to comprehend
this passage at the evaluative level?
A. distinguishing statements of opinion
from statements of fact
B. recognizing and interpreting
rhetorical devices
C. recognizing problem-and-solution
text structure
D. connecting elements in the text to
personal experience
Correct Response: A. In order to evaluate the passage, a reader needs to distinguish between
the writer's opinion and publicly verifiable facts. The writer asserts that speed limits do not
improve safety and are a waste of time and money. However, the facts cited by the writer
(e.g., improved safety features in new vehicles and advances in highway construction) provide
no direct evidence to support the opinion that speed limits are unnecessary.
Which of the following activities best
promotes students' analytical skills in their
primary language?
A. asking students to select a favorite
short poem to read aloud to the class
B. asking students to identify a variety
of everyday noises and sounds
played on an audiotape
C. reading a scientific article aloud and
asking students to recall important
details
D. reading a story aloud and asking
students to tell which parts were
funny, sad, or scary
This item is from knowledge and skill area 5. Answer choice D is correct. Of the student activities
described, only the one in answer choice D, which requires students to characterize various parts of a
story in the light of their own emotional responses, involves the use of analytical skills. The activity in
answer choice A involves aesthetic judgment, the activity in answer choice B draws on auditory
discrimination skills, and the activity in answer choice C is an exercise in memory.
11. An ESOL teacher has students with
intermediate-level English proficiency
read several chapter books from a
particular series. Each book features the
escapades of a group of characters who are
neighbors along a country road. Engaging
students with this sort of children's
literature will promote the students'
English language proficiency primarily
because it:
A. gives them a genre of fiction to read
that is well within the range of their
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skills.
B. provides them with a clearer
understanding of sequence in
narrative form.
C. encourages them to feel that they are
successful readers each time they
finish a book.
D. helps them build context from book
to book to support their reading
comprehension.
Correct Response: D. Once children have become familiar with the details of character,
setting, and plot in a particular series, they are increasingly able to infer the meaning of
unfamiliar terms and situations that they encounter as they progress through the series.
In this way, they increase both their reading fluency and comprehension while gradually
acquiring new language and knowledge.
Use the information below to answer
the two questions that follow.
Students in a fourth-grade class read the
following passage from their science
textbook.
You can sometimes feel static
electricity in action. As you take off a
sweater over your head, some of the
negatively charged particles from the
sweater rub onto your hair. This gives
your hair extra negative charges,
while your sweater is left with extra
positive charges. Notice how your
hair sticks to the sweater as you pull it
over your head.
8. This passage illustrates which of
following types of text structure?
A. comparison and contrast
B. cause and effect
C. thesis and evidence
D. problem and solution
9. Which of the following student responses
to the passage most clearly suggests that
the student is applying inferential
comprehension skills?
A. "I guess positive charges stick to
negative charges."
B. "My hair always sticks straight up
when I take off my sweater."
C. "I think all my sweaters must have
lots of negative charges."
D. "I think there are other kinds of
electricity besides the static kind."
12. A reader will use predicting most effectively
as a comprehension strategy if the
reader:
A. is able to recognize faulty
reasoning.
B. is familiar with the conventions
of different genres.
C. is able to use a text's index and
glossary.
D. has extensive knowledge of
content-area vocabulary.
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 2.3) Predicting
what will happen in a text improves comprehension
by actively employing the reader's metacognitive
skills. For example, readers familiar with tragedy
will
know that the hero or heroine is likely to die, and
will thus be more likely to predict an outcome of a
scene
or subplot in this context.
11. Ms. Lennox, a social studies teacher, and
Mr. Vale, a reading teacher, work with a
12. A middle school teacher wants to improve
students’ comprehension of informational
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group of middle school students. Early in
the school year, Ms. Lennox mentions that
the students are having difficulty retaining
information from their geography textbook.
Which of the following would be
the most appropriate suggestion for
Mr. Vale to offer Ms. Lennox?
A. Have the students concentrate on
transitional words to keep track of
the relationship among ideas.
B. Encourage the students to focus on
the last sentence of each paragraph
to extract summary information.
C. Have the students read each
assignment slowly, looking up
definitions of unfamiliar terms.
D. Encourage the students to preview
the text to anticipate its content and
recall related knowledge.
texts by helping the students analyze
comparison/contrast text structures.
Which of the following instructional
strategies would best address this goal?
A. Students read two different texts
that address the same topic and then
meet in small discussion groups to
compare/contrast the two texts.
B. The teacher models for students
how to write a complex sentence
that compares/contrasts two
different items or ideas.
C. Each student outlines the main
ideas and significant details in two
comparison/contrast texts on a given
subject.
D. The teacher helps students create a
Venn diagram to summarize a
comparison/contrast text.
2. A fifth-grade teacher asks students to
write down questions for discussion when
reading content-area texts. This strategy
is most likely to promote the students'
reading development by helping them to:
A. make generalizations based on
evidence in a text.
B. visualize events and places
described in a text.
C. monitor their own comprehension
of a text.
D. connect ideas in a text to personal
experience.
Correct Response: C. Content-area texts often
contain facts and concepts that are unfamiliar
to students, so it is important that the students
apply metacognitive skills to check their own
understanding as they read. Having students pause
periodically to write down discussion
questions while they read engages them actively
with the text, making them aware of their own
thought processes and prompting them to selfmonitor their comprehension.
5. A teacher reads aloud a story to emergent
readers. The teacher guides students to
discuss the story, focusing particular
attention on students’ understanding of
the story’s ending. Then the teacher
asks students to imagine and describe
another adventure that the main characters
in the story might have. This final step
of the activity is most likely to benefit
students by:
A. helping them identify text
structures.
B. promoting development of their
evaluative comprehension skills.
C. helping them identify story
elements.
D. promoting development of their
inferential comprehension skills.
2. A group of fourth graders reads a short
story. Their teacher asks students to select
a character from the story and write a one minute
speech from that character's
perspective, explaining his or her behavior
in the story. The students present their
speeches to the group while the teacher
listens. This type of activity would be
most effective for facilitating the students'
ability to:
A. determine the main idea of a text.
B. identify a sequence of events.
C. make inferences based on a text.
D. separate facts from opinions.
3. Which of the following reading strategies
would best help middle school readers selfmonitor
comprehension of an informational
text?
A. reading the entire text slowly, then
quickly rereading the introduction
and conclusion
B. converting each header in the text to
a question, then reading to answer
the questions
C. making a detailed outline of the text
after reading, then discussing the
outline
D. reading aloud the introductory
section of the text, then silently
reading the remainder of the text
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4. Use the introduction below given by a teacher to answer the question that follows.
Teacher: The story I will be reading is about a young boy who finds a mirror. While I am reading, I
want you to think about mirrors. Don't say anything yet, but listen for the things that are
said about the mirror the boy finds. Think about whether it is like the mirrors you have
seen. Later, we will talk about the story.
A teacher offers the introduction above in
preparation for reading a story aloud to a
group of first graders. This introduction
will promote the students' listening
comprehension primarily by:
A. putting complex ideas in simple
terms and fostering their confidence
as listeners.
B. reinforcing the importance of paying
attention and reminding them to sit
quietly.
C. spelling out the plot of the story and
providing them with a model of a
good listener.
D. activating prior knowledge and
focusing their attention on
significant content.
8. A seventh-grade reading teacher is
introducing a unit on identifying
opinions in written texts. The teacher
could engage students in the content of
the unit most effectively by having
them:
A. find sites on the Internet that
express differing opinions about
issues.
B. conduct a survey of other students
about a controversial topic and
write about their findings.
C. read several newspaper articles
about controversial topics.
D. watch a television program
showing two sides of an issue and
discuss their opinions about the
issue.
Rather than simply presenting concepts to her students, a middle school teacher often attempts to guide
students to arrive at the concepts themselves. For instance, instead of telling students what an adverb is,
she might present them with pairs of sentences containing examples and nonexamples, as in:
Example: The sun shone brightly.
Nonexample: The bright glare made it hard to see.
After students have had the opportunity to observe and think about several such pairs, they talk
about what they have noticed about the targeted words, discuss their generalizations about them,
and ultimately create their own definition of the concept
4. In the context of this lesson, the teacher
could most effectively promote the
development of students' metacognitive
skills by:
A. suggesting possible thinking
approaches for students to use
before they begin working on the
lesson.
B. pointing out at the end of the lesson
that their arrival at an accurate
definition demonstrates the effective
use of deductive logic.
C. asking students to attempt to
articulate the reasoning they used
as they worked through the lesson.
D. praising students for their successful
solution to the lesson's problem and
encouraging them to reflect on why
they were successful.
9. Which of the following skills do most
students typically develop only after
they have become fluent readers?
A. giving most of their attention
to the meaning of the text they
are reading
B. recalling the sequence of events in
a story they have read
C. recognizing how a multiple
meaning word is used in a
particular context
D. using illustrations to enhance their
comprehension of a text
7. A fourth-grade teacher wants to help her
students develop the habit of using selfmonitoring
to improve their comprehension
of content-area readings. Which of
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the following strategies is likely to be
most effective in accomplishing this goal?
A. After students read a passage, they
spend a few minutes writing in a
learning log what they learned about
the topic and what they did not
understand.
B. Before students read a passage, they
quickly write down what they
already know about the topic and
then briefly discuss what they wrote
with a partner.
C. After students read a passage, they
answer a set of questions the teacher
has developed about the vocabulary
and facts introduced in the passage.
D. Before students read a passage, they
scan the text to identify unfamiliar
vocabulary words and then use
reference resources to find their
meanings.
Correct Response: A. The activity described in Response A is a self-monitoring technique that
the students can learn to use independently to monitor their comprehension of what they read.
The students are expected to apply the technique after they have read a passage, when they
have had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. Because the technique can be used by
the students without the involvement of others, it represents a practical habit for them to
develop.
Other Responses:
• Response B. This activity is to be applied before students read a passage, at a point when
they have not yet had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. The technique is used to
prepare for reading, not to monitor comprehension.
• Response C. This activity focuses on vocabulary and facts in the passage, rather than on
the comprehension of ideas and the relationships between them. Further, the activity
depends on the questions developed by the teacher and does not represent a habit that
students can develop and use independently.
• Response D. This activity is to be applied before students read a passage, at a point when
they have not yet had an opportunity to comprehend the passage. In addition, it focuses on
vocabulary rather than comprehension.
12. Teachers in fourth-grade classrooms
will be introducing a new science textbook.
Though students are proficient
in reading narrative selections and
informational books, the textbook is a
new element of their classroom learning.
To prepare students to use this new
resource effectively, which of the
following activities should the teacher
assign first?
A. Have the students meet in small
groups to discuss the format of
the text.
B. Provide each student with a guide
to the new book that describes its
layout.
C. Have students take turns reading
the book aloud to get accustomed
to its organization.
D. Identify some of the topics
included in different chapters to
4. Use the word list below written by a
high school teacher to answer the
question that follows.
fascist
brute
wholesome
cadaverous
tidiness
botched
dogmatic
upstanding
altruistic
A high school teacher gives each student
in her class a copy of a short story to
read. The teacher writes the words
shown above on an overhead projector
and asks students to note how these
words are used in the story. This
instructional activity would be most
effective as a method for helping the
students:
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enhance their interest in the
material.
A. determine whether the writer
has followed the structure of a
particular genre.
B. recognize that a reader's
perceptions can be influenced by
the writer's use of emotionally
charged language.
C. understand that writers will
typically use a specific style of
language to create a well-crafted
narrative.
D. decide whether a reader will feel
empathy for the primary character
in the story.
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
A fifth-grade student has been reading a novel set in the early nineteenth century. Shown below is an
excerpt from a chapter of the novel. In this excerpt, Thomas and his family are travelling across the
United States in a covered wagon to settle in California.
As the peaks of the Sierra Nevadas came into view, Thomas began to understand why his parents
wanted to make it here earlier in the fall. The mountains were covered in a thick blanket of white.
Each time they stopped, Flip jumped out and ran around the wagon, letting out frightened little yelps,
as if he knew what lay ahead, and was just as worried as anyone.
Thomas and his parents, and even little Adele, understood that there was no choice but to go on.
Here they were in the middle of nowhere—dry desert and more mountains behind them, and nothing,
no signs of human life, as far as the eye could see. Everyone in the family stopped talking. There
was nothing to talk about, just a heavy fear in the pit of everyone's stomach. Every so often,
Thomas's mother or father would disappear into the back of the wagon, checking on the provisions
and busying themselves with final preparations for the trip through the pass. Nothing they could
do would change the fact that there were five, ten, fifteen feet of snow in some places up there, and
more coming.
When the student finishes reading the chapter, the teacher asks questions about this passage. Printed
below is an excerpt from their conversation.
Teacher: So what's this chapter about?
Student: Thomas and his family are still trying to get to California. But now they're worried.
Teacher: Why are they worried?
Student: I'm not sure. They're all alone, and it's cold. And there are mountains too, I guess. And
they're all feeling sad and scared.
Teacher: What makes them feel that way?
Student: I think maybe they wish they could go back home. Maybe they don't have enough
supplies.
Teacher: Do you remember anything else about this part of the story?
Student: Not really . . . nobody's talking about anything.
7. This conversation suggests that the student
4. A middle school teacher develops a set
would benefit from instruction to help the
of postreading questions for students
student:
to answer in writing after they read a
difficult content-area text. To facilitate the
A. understand cause-and-effect
relationships in a literary text.
students' analysis and recall of the text, the
B. analyze the development of the main
questions should require students to:
character in a literary text.
A. focus repeatedly on one or two ideas
C. identify the sequence of events in a
of the text.
literary text.
B. integrate important information from
D. recognize the emotional responses of
different parts of the text.
characters in a literary text.
C. quote directly from sections of the
text that are especially difficult.
D. answer each question in several
different ways
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
87
A middle school teacher wants students to understand that there are different types of questions and
answers. Students learn to recognize four types of questions described below.
• "Right there" questions that students can answer by finding information that is explicitly stated in
the text
• "Think and search" questions that students can answer by searching for relevant information
throughout the text
• "Figuring out" questions, for which students must read the text to understand the answer, but the
answer is not stated in the text
• "I know" questions that students could have answered without having read the text
The teacher models the process of asking and answering such questions. After guided practice, students
begin applying the technique themselves.
11. Learning to identify and use these four
types of questions is likely to promote
students' literacy skills primarily by:
A. helping them apply knowledge
of paragraph structure to improve
their understanding of what
they read.
B. improving their understanding of
key vocabulary that is necessary to
comprehend the text.
C. helping them apply metacognitive
strategies to monitor and enhance
their understanding of what
they read.
D. improving their ability to formulate
a coherent summary of information
contained in a text.
Correct Response: C. Learning to ask and answer these four types of questions promotes
comprehension by engaging students actively with the text and prompting them to apply
metacognitive skills that make them more aware of their own thought processes as they read.
Posing and answering such questions requires students to monitor their own understanding
during and after reading, which helps reinforce and extend their comprehension of the text.
12. Sometimes the teacher gives students an
informational passage to read, then asks
them to write answers to questions that the
teacher has prepared in advance. Which
of the following types of questions would
best help the teacher assess students'
inferential comprehension of the passage?
A. "Right there" questions
B. "Think and search" questions
C. "Figuring out" questions
D. "I know" questions
Correct Response: C. Questions about a text often cannot be answered by locating information
that is explicitly stated in the text. A "Figuring out" question can help measure inferential
comprehension by requiring the student to draw on background knowledge, connect this
knowledge with information in the text, and make inferences to answer the question.
13. A teacher wants to help students understand
expository texts that use comparison/
contrast organization. Which of the
following instructional approaches is
likely to be most effective in addressing
this goal?
A. The teacher models for students
how to use a K-W-L chart to
analyze comparison/contrast texts.
B. Students read comparison/contrast
88
texts and then work in pairs to
create and discuss Venn diagrams.
C. The teacher provides students with
postreading outlines to review after
reading comparison/contrast texts.
D. Students take notes while reading
comparison/contrast texts and then
discuss their notes with a partner.
Correct Response: B. In the context of reading instruction, a Venn diagram is often used to
clarify students' understanding of texts that use comparison/contrast organization. The Venn
diagram is a graphic organizer that uses overlapping circles to illustrate similarities and
differences. Having students work in pairs to create and discuss Venn diagrams helps the
students recognize and interpret reading materials that use this type of text structure.
14. Students are taking notes on an expository
text. The teacher models for students
how to jot down their own questions and
comments as they take notes on the text.
This activity is likely to improve students'
study skills primarily by:
A. helping them identify and analyze
key vocabulary in a text.
B. focusing their attention on the
organizational patterns that structure
informational texts.
C. focusing their attention on written
language conventions.
D. helping them apply metacognitive
strategies to monitor their comprehension.
Correct Response: D. When taking notes on expository texts, students may simply record
information and quotations from the text without engaging actively with the material. Teachers
should model for students how to take notes that include the readers' own questions and
comments about information in the text. This approach promotes reading comprehension
through metacognitive techniques that help students understand how to monitor their own
understanding of what they read.
40. Adrian, an eighth grader with a learning
disability, demonstrates strong math
computational abilities but has difficulty
interpreting and solving word problems.
Which of the following comprehension
strategies is likely to be most effective
in facilitating Adrian's understanding of
word problems?
A. After reading a problem silently,
Adrian and a partner reread it aloud
and then discuss and write down
each step of the problem.
B. Adrian works with the teacher to
slow his reading rate to promote
greater concentration as he reads
the problem.
C. After reading a problem silently,
Adrian reads it aloud to the teacher
and then performs the necessary
calculations independently.
D. Adrian previews the problem by
locating and writing down all the
numbers provided in the problem;
then he reads the problem silently.
45. A teacher wants to facilitate students'
comprehension of an expository passage
by setting a purpose for reading. Which
of the following strategies is likely to be
most effective?
A. The teacher provides students with
a list of key vocabulary words from
the passage, and students write
sentences using the words.
B. Students participate in a prereading
activity in which they freewrite
about the general topic of the
passage.
C. The teacher describes the main
ideas and supporting details of the
passage for students before they
begin reading.
D. Students preview a set of questions
that they will be required to answer
in writing after they finish reading
the passage.
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43. A third-grade teacher prepares several poster-sized copies of the star diagram illustrated below.
After reading an assigned story, students divide into small groups, and the teacher distributes a copy
of the star diagram to each group. The members of each group discuss how the six questions (who,
what, when, where, why, and how) apply to the story and write answers in the six points of the star.
The teacher then displays the completed star diagrams and leads a whole-class discussion about them.
This instructional activity is most likely to promote students' reading proficiency in which of the
following ways?
A. improving students' comprehension by familiarizing them with common text structures
B. helping students learn a strategy to organize information to clarify meaning when reading
a text
C. improving students' comprehension by encouraging them to connect personal experience
to a text
D. helping students learn to use evaluative comprehension skills to determine an author's
point of view
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
Ms. Hollister's fourth-grade class is beginning a unit on deserts. She starts the unit by having the students
form small groups and list everything they know about deserts. Then the whole class meets to share their
lists, and Ms. Hollister asks the students to help her arrange their ideas into a web. The class's partially
completed web is shown below.
46. Creating such a web is likely to promote
students' ability to retain and use information
they read about a topic by:
A. encouraging students to attend to
new information on the topic rather
than to familiar information.
B. providing students with the
vocabulary they need to make
sense of their reading.
C. prompting students to assess the
accuracy of their prior knowledge
of the topic.
D. helping students learn to use
categories to organize their thinking
about the topic.
47. Ms. Hollister gives each student a copy
of the web developed by the class. She
could best help students make use of the
web to learn and retain facts from their
reading by asking them to:
A. add continuously to the web as
they encounter and organize new
information in their reading.
B. try to maintain a mental image of
the web while they are reading on
the topic.
C. review each category on the web to
ensure that it is an appropriate one
to have included.
D. memorize the information on the
web before they begin their reading.
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10. Graphic organizers provide an effective
method for adapting textbook content in
order to make it more accessible to
English Language Learners primarily
because graphic organizers:
A. reduce the amount of content
coverage so that students need to
master fewer essential elements.
B. provide students with pictures,
diagrams, and other illustrations
of content-area topics that can be
represented concretely.
C. give an advantage to students who
have more visual-spatial learning
preferences.
D. can clarify for students both concrete
and abstract concepts and their
relationships through the use of
visual clues and categorization.
6. A high school English teacher could
best model how to apply comprehension
strategies such as predicting and
questioning by:
A. asking students a series of openended
questions about a selection.
B. drawing a semantic map on the
board based on information in a
informational text.
C. retelling a short story after students
have silently read the text.
D. engaging in a think-aloud process
while reading aloud a selection to
the class.
11. The reading technique of scanning is
likely to be most effective for a reader
who wants to:
A. determine an author's logic.
B. locate specific examples of a
process described by the author.
C. assess an author's credibility.
D. synthesize information from a text
to develop a thesis.
3. Which of the following reading strategies
would best help middle school readers selfmonitor
comprehension of an informational
text?
A. reading the entire text slowly, then
quickly rereading the introduction
and conclusion
B. converting each header in the text to
a question, then reading to answer
the questions
C. making a detailed outline of the text
after reading, then discussing the
outline
D. reading aloud the introductory
section of the text, then silently
reading the remainder of the text
18. Which of the following techniques
is most effective in enhancing reading
comprehension?
A. refraining from considering
implications of the text until
one has completed the reading
B. reading the text slowly enough so
that every word can be understood
C. generating questions about the text
before and during the course of
reading
D. attempting to read the text in its
entirety in an uninterrupted period
12. Which of the following criteria is most
frequently used to evaluate the formal
characteristics of a literary work?
A. the author's intent when writing
the work
B. the relationship between the work
and the society in which it was
written
C. the coherence of each part of the
work with the whole
D. the length of the work in
comparison to other works in
the same genre
11. Ms. Lennox, a social studies teacher, and
Mr. Vale, a reading teacher, work with a
group of middle school students. Early in
the school year, Ms. Lennox mentions that
the students are having difficulty retaining
information from their geography textbook.
Which of the following would be
20. Which of the following instructional
strategies would best help fourth-grade
students learn to self-monitor their reading
comprehension?
A. Students take detailed notes while
reading texts written at their
instructional reading levels and then
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the most appropriate suggestion for
Mr. Vale to offer Ms. Lennox?
A. Have the students concentrate on
transitional words to keep track of
the relationship among ideas.
B. Encourage the students to focus on
the last sentence of each paragraph
to extract summary information.
C. Have the students read each
assignment slowly, looking up
definitions of unfamiliar terms.
D. Encourage the students to preview
the text to anticipate its content and
recall related knowledge.
answer comprehension questions.
B. The teacher models the process
of applying word identification
strategies while reading aloud a
grade-appropriate text.
C. Students read an age-appropriate
story and then create a story map
to describe the plot, characters,
and setting of the story.
D. The teacher displays a passage,
reads it aloud, and models a thinkaloud
approach by pausing to
question herself about the meaning
of what she is reading.
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
Students in a fourth-grade class are using reading materials in the classroom library to conduct research
on animals. Each student selects an animal to research and takes notes on a graphic organizer prepared
by the teacher. Before reading, students write in the first column of the graphic organizer questions they
have about the selected animal. Students then conduct their research by reading at least two sources that
provide information about the animal. As they read, students take notes in the second column of the
graphic organizer, recording information to answer each question in the first column. Shown below is
an excerpt from one student's partially completed graphic organizer.
Name: Karen
Research Topic: Anteaters
My Questions
Answers I Found By Reading
What do anteaters
look like?
Where do
anteaters live?
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How do the
anteaters catch the
ants to eat them?
12. Using the graphic organizer is likely to
promote the students' comprehension of
nonfiction texts primarily by helping the
students:
A. set a purpose for reading.
B. distinguish main ideas from
supporting details.
C. recognize logical patterns.
D. link prior knowledge to new
information.
Item 12, Objective 10, Correct Response A
Setting a purpose for reading can improve
comprehension of nonfiction texts by
activating prior knowledge related to the text,
alerting the reader to key words/ideas in
the text, and prompting the reader to self-monitor
understanding. The graphic
organizer guides students to set a purpose for
reading by providing a question-andanswer
structure for the assignment. Students are
prompted to formulate their own
questions, which activates their prior knowledge
and motivates them to read
thoughtfully and purposefully.
13. Which of the following additional
activities using the graphic organizer
would best promote students' ability to
synthesize and communicate research
findings?
A. Students copy the information
recorded in the graphic organizer
into a formal outline of their
research findings.
B. Students transfer the information in
the graphic organizer to a semantic
map to illustrate their research
findings.
C. Students give an oral presentation
to share their research by reading
aloud the notes they have recorded
in the graphic organizer.
D. Students prepare a research report
by converting the information in
each row of the graphic organizer
to a written paragraph.
Item 13, Objective 13, Correct Response D
Students use the second column of the graphic
organizer to record their notes on two
or more sources. By converting the information in
each row to a written paragraph,
students synthesize and communicate what they
have learned through their research.
The guiding question in the first column provides a
primary focus for each paragraph,
encouraging students to develop a clear topic
sentence.
7. Third-grade students are learning to
visualize characters and events in literary
texts. Students pause when reading a
story silently and describe how they
visualize an important part of the story.
Which of the following statements best
explains how visualizing characters and
events in a literary text is likely to promote
Item 7, Objective 9, Correct Response B
Visualizing the characters and events in a literary
text can be an effective strategy to
enhance comprehension. In order to visualize
literary characters or plot episodes, the
reader must make a personal connection with the
text, drawing on background
knowledge and experience to picture the
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students' understanding of the text?
A. Visualizing characters and events
in the text enhances comprehension
primarily by prompting students to
analyze organizational patterns in
the text.
B. Visualizing characters and events
in the text prompts students to
combine background knowledge
with the text to construct meaning
and to engage with literature in a
personal way.
C. Visualizing characters and events in
the text increases students' comprehension
of the text primarily by
enhancing their appreciation for
details of setting.
D. Visualizing characters and events
in the text prompts students to distinguish
different story elements
and to interpret the text by applying
literary analysis skills.
characters and events described.
9. A reading specialist considers ways to
use writing to promote the reading comprehension
of middle school students.
Which of the following writing exercises
is likely to be most effective in promoting
development of the students' inferential
comprehension?
A. Students analyze a news story by
writing answers to the questions
who, what, where, when, and how.
B. Pairs of students write an ending
to a story they have not finished
reading, then read and compare the
actual ending to what they wrote.
C. Students use a graphic organizer to
record the main ideas and important
details of a nonfiction text.
D. Pairs of students create an outline
of a story they have read that summarizes
the main characters, the
setting, and the sequence of events.
Item 9, Objective 11, Correct Response B
Inferential comprehension enables a reader to draw
conclusions based on information
that is not explicitly stated in a text. For example, a
student may connect prior
knowledge with implied information in a story to
make predictions about the plot or
the characters. In the activity described, the student
partners take the additional step
of writing a new ending for the story. Comparing
their own ending to the actual
ending of the story further strengthens the students'
ability to make inferences while
reading.
4. Which of the following instructional
activities for fifth-grade students is likely
to be most effective in improving their
inferential comprehension skills?
A. Students silently read a nonfiction
passage and then work with a
partner to create and discuss an
outline of the passage.
B. The teacher pauses periodically
while reading aloud a story and
prompts students to make and
discuss predictions about the story.
C. Students silently read a short story
and then work in small groups to
identify and discuss the story's plot
5. A middle school language arts teacher
uses a variety of reader response activities
(e.g., discussion, literature circles,
journaling) to develop students' literary
response skills. In addition to increasing
students' personal engagement with
literary texts, these activities are most
likely to promote students' reading
development in which of the following
ways?
A. Students learn how fiction and other
genres of literary texts differ from
informational or persuasive reading
materials.
B. Students become more skilled in
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and characters.
D. The teacher guides students to
analyze a nonfiction text by helping
them create a semantic map of the
text after reading it.
distinguishing classic literature from
popular reading materials that have
less literary merit.
C. Students learn how to identify the
correct interpretation of a literary
text by applying critical-thinking
skills.
D. Students become more aware
of their own reading strategies
and more responsible for selfmonitoring
their comprehension.
11. Which of the following prereading
exercises would best promote a reader's
comprehension of a difficult chapter in a
content-area text?
A. discussing the meaning of key
vocabulary words in the chapter
B. scanning the text's index and table
of contents
C. taking notes by copying the headers
and subheaders in the chapter
D. reading aloud the introductory
paragraph of the chapter
Correct Response: A. Discussing the meaning of
key vocabulary in a difficult content-area
chapter is an effective prereading exercise. Such
discussions promote comprehension by
clarifying the reader's understanding of important
words and concepts, focusing attention on
the main ideas of the chapter, and
activating/developing the reader’s relevant
background
knowledge.
5. A teacher reads aloud a story to emergent
readers. The teacher guides students to
discuss the story, focusing particular
attention on students' understanding of
the story's ending. Then the teacher
asks students to imagine and describe
another adventure that the main characters
in the story might have. This final step
of the activity is most likely to benefit
students by:
A. helping them identify text
structures.
B. promoting development of their
evaluative comprehension skills.
C. helping them identify story
elements.
D. promoting development of their
inferential comprehension skills.
•
examine the goals of reading
10 Reading Enjoyment
2. Students are most likely to develop
an interest in and an enjoyment of
literature through activities that
involve:
A. discussing favorite stories with
their classmates.
B. competing with other students to
see who reads the most books
each month.
C. using the library for practical
research projects.
D. writing book reports about
novels and short stories that the
students choose themselves.
41. Students in a fourth-grade class have been
reading and discussing a story. Which
of the following informal assessment
strategies would likely be most effective
14. A student is having difficulty with
reading and is beginning to display
behaviors associated with learned
helplessness. A student with a sense
of learned helplessness would likely
benefit most from reading instruction
that:
A. is based on repetitive exercises.
B. uses reading materials that are
related to the student's interests.
C. features group work with peers.
D. is designed to ensure that the
student will experience success.
42. Students in a middle-school class
frequently use Venn diagrams to clarify
their understanding of expository texts.
To assess a student's comprehension of a
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in evaluating students' ability to analyze
story elements and make personal
connections with the text?
A. Students write a brief essay
comparing the plot of the story to
the plot of other familiar stories of
the same genre.
B. Each student pretends to be a
character from the story and writes a
journal entry reflecting on the
significant events of the story.
C. Students cite passages from
the text in which the author uses
descriptive language to enhance
characterization.
D. Each student pretends to be the
author of the story and writes a
paragraph summarizing the story's
theme.
passage about comets and meteoroids, the
teacher asks the student to use facts from
the text to complete the following Venn
diagram.
This strategy is likely to be particularly
useful in helping the teacher evaluate the
student's ability to:
A. use inferential comprehension
skills to identify cause-and-effect
relationships.
B. draw on prior knowledge to clarify
understanding.
C. organize textual information
by analyzing similarities and
differences.
D. apply his/her vocabulary knowledge
in new contexts.
44. A fourth-grade teacher designs an
instructional activity in which students
work in small groups to create a different
ending to an adventure story they have
read. Each group then shares with the
class their new version of the story. This
activity is likely to promote students'
reading proficiency primarily by:
A. having them apply their understanding
of the elements of
literary texts.
B. helping them extend their
understanding of the meanings
of words.
C. enhancing their understanding of
literary genres.
D. helping them clarify their understanding
of English grammar.
48. Mr. Montaine plans to have his eighth
graders read Shakespeare's play, Romeo
and Juliet. He is concerned that Sharlene,
who has a reading disability, will have
trouble keeping up with and understanding
the reading. His best strategy for promoting
Sharlene's comprehension of the text
and her ability to participate fully in class
discussions would be to:
A. assign Sharlene to begin reading
the play several weeks before
her classmates are given the
assignment.
B. provide Sharlene with a narrative
version of the play to read rather
than the original, dramatic version.
49. When selecting texts for first graders
to read in the upcoming school year,
a teacher should be aware of the
importance of:
A. focusing primarily on realistic
texts that mirror the children's
own experiences.
B. including a wide range of fiction
and nonfiction texts in a variety
of genres.
C. focusing largely on simple fictional
narratives such as folk and fairy
tales.
D. providing students with transcripts
of their own oral language as their
primary reading materials.
96
C. assign Sharlene to read only
selected portions of the text, such
as key speeches and dialogues.
D. provide Sharlene with an audiotaped
version of the play to listen to in
conjunction with her reading.
1O Selecting Literature
18. A teacher is considering whether to add a
particular book to the classroom library.
Which of the following questions would
be most important for the teacher to
consider first?
A. Are there other age-appropriate
books in the classroom library that
address similar topics?
B. Does this book include a variety of
high-quality illustrations and other
graphics?
C. Are some students in the class likely
to find this book too challenging to
read independently?
D. Does this book support the goals
and themes of the literacy
curriculum?
Correct Response: D. A teacher may apply various selection criteria (e.g., recently-published
award-winning children's books) when assembling materials to create a classroom library.
However, the teacher should begin by identifying reading materials that support the goals and
themes of the literacy curriculum. For example, if one goal of the reading curriculum for
kindergarten students is to promote phonemic awareness, children's books that incorporate
rhyming and other playful sound-based elements would be important to include in the classroom
library.
2. To address issues of equity when selecting
literature for elementary students, it is
important to choose works that:
I. do not focus on characters and
situations that are associated with
one particular group.
II. address situations that students can
understand or with which they can
personally identify.
III. do not present individuals or groups in
a stereotypical fashion.
IV. illustrate both the commonalities and
the differences that exist among
diverse groups.
A. I and II only
B. I and III only
C. I, II, and III only
D. II, III, and IV onl
9. An English teacher is selecting reading
materials for a class in which several
students read below grade level. In
addition to ensuring that the level of
difficulty of the readings is appropriate for
the students, it is most important
for the teacher to select reading
materials that:
A. have accompanying drill-andpractice
activities that the students
can use to measure their progress.
B. do not deal with controversial or
disturbing issues.
C. enable the teacher to identify
individual students' specific reading
problems.
D. match the maturity level and
interests of the students.
2. Of the following, the greatest advantage of
interdisciplinary instruction is that:
A. students are less likely to develop a
24. Before fifth grade students begin reading
a chapter about reptiles in their science
textbook, the teacher leads a class discussion
97
dislike for particular topics or
subject areas.
B. teachers are permitted greater
flexibility in planning lessons and
activities.
C. students are given opportunities to
generalize and apply newly learned
knowledge in multiple contexts.
D. teachers are less likely to feel
overwhelmed by the multiplicity of
topics needing to be addressed in a
traditional curriculum.
in which the students generate a list
of questions about reptiles that they would
like to have answered. This discussion is
most likely to promote the students' comprehension
of the chapter by:
A. facilitating the students' use of
critical thinking skills.
B. setting a clear purpose for reading
and activating background
knowledge.
C. increasing the students' use of selfmonitoring
strategies.
D. introducing unfamiliar content-area
vocabulary and connecting it to
familiar concepts.
7. Which of the following general guidelines
should a first-grade teacher follow when
selecting texts for beginning readers?
A. Provide mostly texts in which the
vocabulary consists of regular and
irregular sight words that students
have already memorized.
B. Provide students primarily with
texts that relate to content-area
learning.
C. Provide mostly phonetically regular
texts that allow students to apply
their knowledge of letter-sound
relationships.
D. Provide students primarily with
texts that the teacher has already
read aloud in class.
6. A first-grade teacher plans to spend time
each day reading aloud to her class. The
primary goal of this activity is to promote
students' appreciation and enjoyment of
reading. In selecting books for this
purpose, it is most important for the
teacher to ensure that the books she
chooses:
A. reflect situations likely to be equally
familiar to all students.
B. have clear connections to the
content that students will be
learning.
C. feature controlled vocabulary with
which all first graders should be
familiar.
D. are engaging and of interest to the
students.
8. The most important factor to consider
when selecting remedial reading
materials at the secondary level is
whether or not the materials are:
A. vocabulary enriching.
B. at grade level.
C. related to a specific content area.
D. of high interest to students.
2. An elementary-school teacher is
considering various instructional
methods and materials to use in relation
to specific reading objectives. When
making these decisions, the teacher's first
priority should be to select methods and
materials that:
A. address the reading strengths and
needs of all students.
B. reflect the latest trends and ideas
related to reading instruction.
C. represent the most cost-effective
approach to reading instruction.
D. are recommended by other
experienced teachers in the school.
5. A sixth-grade teacher wants to ensure
that the classroom reading environment
supports content-area learning for the
English Language Learners in the class.
Which of the following strategies is likely
to be most effective in addressing this
objective?
A. replacing classroom content-area
33. The teacher plans a variety of
activities related to "Jabberwocky."
Students will work in pairs to make up
definitions for some of the nonsense
words (e.g., slithy). They will read the
poem aloud using tone of voice to express
various moods. Finally, they will create
their own nonsense poems and give oral
98
books with simpler texts on the
same subjects that the English
Language Learners can understand
more readily
B. scheduling daily practice drills in
which students use flashcards to
strengthen recall of content-area
vocabulary
C. making available in the classroom
library texts at various levels that
supplement and reinforce the
information presented in students'
textbooks
D. grouping the English Language
Learners together for study purposes
and for all instruction related to
content-area reading
readings of them. These activities are
most likely to promote students' reading
development by:
A. providing students with the
opportunity for an in-depth
analysis of a specific literary
genre.
B. developing students' understanding
of the differences between written
and oral English.
C. fostering students' enjoyment of
playing with and thinking about
language.
D. helping students make distinctions
between serious and whimsical
literature.
36. A fourth-grade teacher sets aside time each week for students to check out books from the school
library.
In the conversation shown below, the teacher is circulating among his students in the library, talking with
them about their selections.
Teacher:
Caleb:
Teacher:
Velma:
Teacher:
Rodrigo:
Teacher:
This book cover looks interesting. Why did you choose this book, Caleb?
It's just for fun.
So, you're reading for enjoyment. (turns to another student at the table) How about you,
Velma? Why did you choose this book about crocodiles?
I need to find out more about crocodiles for my research project.
You're reading for information. (turns to another student at the table) I see your book is
about France, Rodrigo. Did you choose it to help you with a research project?
No. My sister is going to Paris for an exchange program. I wanted to find out what Paris
is like.
Sounds like you're reading to learn about the world.
The teacher's conversations with
students in this situation are likely to
promote students' reading development
primarily by:
A. helping students understand that
there are different types of books
and purposes for reading.
B. modeling critical thinking and
literal comprehension skills for
the students.
C. demonstrating prediction and
clarification strategies to the
students.
D. increasing students' motivation to
read their books closely and take
their reading seriously.
37. Yusef is a third grader who reads at grade
level. Lately, when choosing a book to
read, Yusef always selects books from a
series that is written in a very formulaic
style that does little to extend his
conceptual or language development.
The teacher's best response to this
behavior would be to:
A. avoid interfering with Yusef's
selection of books as long as he
finds his choices enjoyable.
B. provide Yusef with books with
similar themes or on similar topics
that are more challenging for him.
C. point out to Yusef some of the
major limitations of the books he is
choosing to read and ask him not to
read those books at school.
D. advise Yusef that he should choose
books that will prepare him for the
99
more difficult reading he will
encounter in fourth grade.
6. Decodable texts are useful to include in
materials for early reading programs
primarily because such texts:
A. promote automatic recognition of
many high-frequency sight words.
B. give children practice applying
phonic associations that already
have been taught.
C. address high-interest topics that
motivate children to read.
D. introduce children to phonics
generalizations that they can use
to decode unfamiliar words.
Item 6, Objective 6, Correct Response B
Beginning readers learn to associate letters with
their most common sounds, then
develop phonics skills by blending the sounds of
letters to read simple printed words in
isolation and in connected text. Decodable texts
are composed primarily of words
with regular spellings that students are capable of
reading, based on their current
phonics knowledge. In this way, decodable texts
reinforce students' phonics skills and
build their confidence as readers.
13. A middle school ENL teacher is selecting
reading materials to use for developing
intermediate-level ENL students' English
literacy skills. Which of the following
is the most important criterion for the
teacher to consider in making these
selections?
A. Ensure that the selections are
written at students' instructional
reading levels.
B. Avoid selections that touch on
social issues or emotional content.
C. Ensure that selections collectively
represent the major genres of U.S.
literature.
D. Include selections that reflect
contexts from students' personal
and cultural experiences.
2. One of the goals in an elementary school
is to foster students' development as
lifelong learners. The school librarian
can best support this goal by:
A. ensuring that every student in the
school participates in a resourcebased
project at least once a year.
B. encouraging students to have a
specific purpose in mind whenever
they visit the school library.
C. developing an extensive collection
that includes both general and
specialized reference sources.
D. teaching research skills as students
seek information about topics of
interest to them.
11. The library media specialist can most
effectively contribute to the process of
curriculum development by:
A. supplying teachers with instructional
materials for resource-based
teaching units.
B. teaching information literacy skills
through integration with classroom
goals.
C. meeting with teachers to integrate
information literacy skills and
content standards.
D. gathering materials based on teacher
requests in advance of class
projects.
12. A library media specialist has begun a
library club for students' parents and
guardians. The library media specialist
offers workshops on topics such as
navigating the Internet and homework
help and shares information about library
media center events. Which of the
following is a major benefit of having
this club?
A. It provides parents/guardians with
the opportunity to experience the
same type of information literacy
skills lessons as their children.
B. It creates opportunities to meet with
parents/guardians about their
children's progress and learning
needs.
C. It helps the library media specialist
determine the most useful resources
to meet the needs of the school's
extended learning community.
D. It allows the library media specialist
to build community support for
100
library media center services and
activities.
101
10 Culture
11. According to the requirements of
the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act of 1997 (IDEA),
English language learners who may
need special education services must
be evaluated by tests that are:
A. written in both English and the
students' home language.
B. developed so as to be free of racial
or cultural discrimination.
C. approved by the students' parents
or legal guardians.
D. designed to measure a general level
of intelligence.
3. Students who are not part of the
dominant culture in a community are
most likely to maintain a positive view
of learning and their own literacy
development when:
A. teachers help them realize the way
literacy and learning will affect
their adult lives at home and at
work.
B. their peers are taught and reminded
to treat all students in the same
way.
C. staff members take steps to learn
about their languages and cultures.
D. the school values and uses their
experiences and backgrounds in
educational activities.
12. As a staff member in a school setting, an
ESL teacher can be most appropriately
expected to function in which of the
following roles?
A. cultural interpreter for teachers
regarding the background of
English language learners
B. multicultural education specialist
responsible for planning the
school's multicultural curriculum
C. translator for parents/guardians
with limited English proficiency
at teacher conferences
D. ongoing contact person between
the families/guardians of English
language learners and the school
6. A middle school ESL teacher regularly
includes news and magazine articles in
the ESL curriculum that focus on multinational
organizations or businesses
and that highlight careers in which it
is advantageous or essential to have
knowledge of more than one language.
The use of such reading materials in the
ESL program is beneficial for English
language learners primarily because the
materials will help students:
A. identify the features of different
types of speech communities and
networks.
B. recognize the benefits of being
bilingual and bicultural in a global
society.
C. understand the circumstances that
may have brought their families to
the United States.
D. decide where they would like to
live and work when they grow up.
17. The principal of an elementary school
has asked the literacy professional at the
school to form a task force to improve the
school's literacy program. Which of the
following steps should the task force take
first?
A. Identify particular objectives
for improving the school's literacy
program, and relate those goals to
the school's educational mission.
B. Review data from a variety of
sources to assess the current
strengths and weaknesses of the
school's literacy program.
C. Prepare guidelines for redesigning
the school's literacy curriculum
based on best-practice models in
other elementary schools.
D. Determine the level of financial
102
support that is available to fund
improvements in the school's
literacy program.
Correct Response: B. Planning to improve schoolwide literacy instruction should always
begin with analysis of the school’s current literacy program to determine how well it is working
and to identify areas for improvement. Data from a variety of sources at all levels—individual,
classroom, grade-level, schoolwide—will ensure the most complete evaluation of the strengths
and weaknesses of the current program.
When evaluating the multicultural
perspective of supplementary materials
in languages other than English, it is most
important that the materials:
A. highlight human commonalities
as well as cultural and social
differences.
B. highlight outstanding individuals,
both past and present, in various
cultures.
C. emphasize the positive as well as
the negative features of various
cultural groups.
D. stress cultural commonalities and
de-emphasize that which makes
individuals of a cultural group
different.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 6. Answer choice A is correct. Classroom materials with
multicultural content should help students understand and respect the characteristics that distinguish
various cultural and social groups, while developing appreciation of the common humanity of all
people. Materials that gloss over cultural differences (answer choice D) do not help students extend
their understanding beyond the limits of their own cultural assumptions. Answer choice C is a poor
criterion for evaluating multicultural materials because applying the terms "positive" and "negative" to
cultural characteristics implies a value judgment that is inevitably culture specific and therefore
potentially biased. Finally, while it may be desirable for students to know about the achievements of
outstanding people identified with different cultures (answer choice B), multicultural perspectives
should be presented in various contexts, not solely through biographies of distinguished individuals.
10. Which of the following guidelines
should teachers use when evaluating
the quality of multicultural books for
classroom use?
A. Multicultural books should
generally cover several cultural
groups.
B. Only books written by a member
of the culture represented should
be used.
C. A book must accurately reflect the
culture it represents.
D. All cultures in a book should be
represented only in positive ways.
3. The librarian in an elementary school
is aware that teachers often give research
assignments in which they specify
the materials that students must use
(e.g., "Read at least one book, one
encyclopedia article, and two journal
articles on your topic"). The librarian's
best strategy for promoting students'
success at this type of assignment would
be to:
A. ask that teachers provide the
librarian with the titles of materials
that fulfill the requirements of the
assignments.
B. plan with teachers to ensure that
such assignments correspond to
available resources.
C. ask that teachers provide plenty of
advance notice so that materials can
be pulled before students' visits.
D. advise teachers that the librarian
should specify the resources to be
used in such assignments.
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104
10 Using Computers
19. A school recently has acquired technological
resources to support students'
literacy development. All teachers have
received basic training in the use of these
technologies, but few teachers are actually
using them with their students. The
school's literacy professional considers
ways to encourage more teachers to take
advantage of these resources. Which of
the following approaches is likely to be
most effective for this purpose?
A. having teachers who actively use the
technologies give demonstrations
during faculty meetings or
professional development sessions
B. providing teachers with written
guidelines for effective use of the
new technologies
C. contacting teachers individually to
stress the importance of integrating
the new technologies into their
instructional planning
D. informing teachers that the literacy
professional is available to coach
them in using the technologies
Correct Response: A. Teachers who are unfamiliar with technological resources to support
literacy development may remain reluctant to use these resources in these classrooms, even
after basic training has been provided. Peer modeling is often effective in overcoming this
reluctance. Having teachers who actively use the technologies give demonstrations during
faculty meetings or professional development sessions can provide a nonthreatening forum for
other teachers to ask questions and motivate them to try out the technologies in their own
classrooms.
105
1O Parents
18. A number of parents and community
members have volunteered to help out for
several hours a week in an elementary
school classroom. Guidelines that the
teacher could establish to make the best
use of such volunteers include:
I. using volunteers primarily for tasks
that involve less intensive student
interaction, such as materials
distribution and bookkeeping.
II. recognizing that the volunteers
themselves are the best judges of
how they can be of most help in
the classroom.
III. obtaining specific time commitments
from volunteers and
establishing a regular schedule
for their work.
IV. providing ongoing training and
monitoring of the volunteers'
performance of clearly defined
tasks.
A. I and II only
B. I and IV only
C. II and III only
D. III and IV only
Correct Response: D. Parents and community volunteers can be an important resource in the
elementary school classroom. Obtaining specific time commitments from volunteers and
establishing a regular schedule (Option III) should help the teacher plan class activities more
effectively and enable the teacher to make the best possible use of the volunteers' time in the
classroom. Providing volunteers with ongoing training and monitoring their performance (Option
IV) can help ensure that their efforts will contribute to and be consistent with the instructional
goals of the class.
Other Responses:
• Responses A and B include Option I, which states that volunteers should be used primarily
for tasks that involve less intensive student interaction. This guideline would unnecessarily
limit the potential usefulness of volunteers in the classroom; many volunteers may have
important knowledge and skills that could allow them to play an important role in
instructional, recreational, and enrichment activities that involve significant interaction with
students.
• Responses A and C include Option II, which states that volunteers are themselves the best
judges of how they can be most helpful in the classroom. Decisions about how volunteers
should be used in individual classrooms should rest with the teacher, whose responsibilities
include organizing and coordinating all classroom activities to promote achievement of
instructional goals.
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3. Use the table below to answer the question that follows.
Line
Strategy
Purpose
1
previewing
identifying bias and examples of faulty reasoning in a text
2
skimming
evaluating whether a writer is a credible authority on a topic
3
rereading
understanding the overall organization of information in a text
4
scanning
determining whether a text contains information on a specific topic
Which line of the table matches a reading
strategy with an appropriate purpose for
using the strategy?
A. Line 1
B. Line 2
C. Line 3
D. Line 4
Correct Response: D. Scanning is the reading technique of looking quickly through a text to
locate particular information. For example, a reader who is researching a topic might scan a
chapter to determine whether charts and graphs included in the chapter contain information that
is relevant to the reader's purpose.
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23. A second-grade teacher is preparing to
meet with a parent to discuss a student's
performance on recently administered
formal and informal assessments. Which
of the following should be a primary
emphasis of the teacher during the
meeting?
A. sharing the assessment instruments
with the parent and eliciting
the parent's views about the
assessments, the results, and the
student's instructional program
B. helping the parent gain a basic
understanding of key principles of
student assessment and how those
principles apply to the assessments
that were used with the student
C. explaining the student's strengths
and needs as indicated by the
assessment results and answering
parent questions
D. providing the parent with a
clear analysis of the student's
performance on the assessments
relative to that of grade-level peers
7. An elementary reading teacher would
like to promote more active involvement
by families in their children's reading
development. Which of the following
plans would best help achieve this goal?
A. having students prepare informal
book talks about their favorite
books, which they can present to
their families at home
B. updating parents and guardians on
their children's progress through
regularly scheduled conferences
C. allowing students to take favorite
books home from school and
encouraging families to share these
books with their children
D. having students create ongoing lists
of the books they read and take
their lists home to show their
families every few months
8. An elementary school reading specialist
is asked to submit an article for a school
newsletter offering suggestions that
will involve parents, guardians, and
surrogates in the literacy learning of
their children. The most effective
suggestions the reading teacher could
make would be those that:
A. address the reading standards and
benchmarks that have been set for
children at different grade levels.
B. support the integration of reading
activities into the content areas.
C. promote the use of everyday
materials and activities to
make literacy a regular part
of family life.
D. reflect the findings of current
research into literacy development.
7. A kindergarten teacher could most
effectively support at-home reading by:
A. sending parents a regular newsletter
describing classroom reading
activities.
B. sharing with parents important
articles from professional reading
journals.
C. recommending available books that
parents might enjoy reading aloud
to their children.
D. providing parents with periodic
reports on their children's progress
in reading.
50. A teacher could most effectively support
at-home reading by:
A. sending parents a regular newsletter
describing classroom reading
activities.
B. sharing with parents important
articles from professional reading
journals.
C. recommending books that parents
would likely enjoy reading aloud to
their children.
D. providing parents with periodic
reports on their children's progress
15. A reading specialist wants to use a
coaching model to observe a reading
teacher and provide him with feedback
about his instructional performance. To
promote the most effective observation
experience, which of the following steps
should the reading specialist take first?
A. Have the reading teacher provide
a list of the instructional materials
he will be using.
B. Share with the reading teacher any
comments classroom teachers
have made about his work.
108
in reading.
C. Ask the reading teacher to help a
student who has been particularly
challenging.
D. Meet with the reading teacher in a
preconference to set goals for the
observation.
1. One goal of the library media program
is to improve student proficiency in
the use of reference sources. Which
of the following would be the most
appropriate initial step for the library
media specialist to take toward
achieving this goal?
A. Develop an outline for an
instructional unit on these
materials.
B. Administer a questionnaire to
students to determine which
reference sources they would
like to learn about.
C. Develop an annotated bibliography
of these materials that briefly
describes their purpose and use.
D. Meet with teachers to determine
which types of materials require
specific emphasis.
6. A reading teacher is seeking
supplemental materials for providing
instruction to several eighth-grade
students who are reading at
approximately the third-grade level.
Which of the following would be the
most appropriate way for the library
media specialist to respond?
A. Obtain books written at the
appropriate reading level from a
local elementary school.
B. Suggest that the teacher examine
the collection of young adult
filmstrips available in the library
media center.
C. Provide the teacher with a
bibliography of high interest/low
reading level titles available in the
library media center.
D. Provide the teacher with a list of
books in the library media center
that are accompanied by read-along
cassettes.
1O Community
7. In a classroom that includes a culturally
diverse group of students, learning is most
likely to be enhanced if the teacher
ensures that:
A. concepts related to cultural differences
are de-emphasized and the
ideas of cultural homogeneity and
conformity are stressed.
B. each student is encouraged to
examine issues and materials
primarily from the perspective
of his or her own cultural
background.
C. opportunities for recognizing and
valuing cultural similarities and
differences are integrated into all
aspects of the curriculum.
D. student discussions related to
aspects of culture focus on factual
information rather than individual
perceptions.
20. A new paraprofessional working in a
first-grade classroom works well in
individual and small-group situations,
but has difficulty managing activities for
19. Prior to beginning a new unit in a sixthgrade
class, a classroom teacher, reading
teacher, and special education teacher
meet to examine the materials that will
be available. Which of the following
tasks would be most important for the
teachers to complete first in this
meeting?
A. selecting instructional and
grouping strategies to use
B. identifying a set of common goals
and objectives
C. creating an assessment to measure
the success of the unit
D. setting a schedule of instructional
activities
10. An administrator wants English
language learners to take standardized
achievement tests of basic academic
skills that have been translated from
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larger groups. The reading teacher can
best help the paraprofessional by:
A. providing reading journal articles
related to large-group instruction
for the paraprofessional to read.
B. selecting instructional tasks for the
paraprofessional with small groups
and fostering the paraprofessional's
confidence.
C. modeling a large-group activity as
the paraprofessional observes and
conferring about the observation
afterward.
D. asking the paraprofessional to
watch videotapes of other staff
members leading large-group
activities.
English into the students' native
languages. Which of the following
best explains why this approach to the
assessment of students who are English
language learners is likely to yield
inaccurate results?
A. A translated test will have slightly
increased levels of validity and
reliability but will not reduce the
students' test anxiety.
B. Translations provide students with
a better understanding of the test
content but fail to reveal the full
extent of students' English needs.
C. A translated test may evaluate the
students' intellectual capabilities
but cannot measure students'
performance of specific skills.
D. Translations change the language
of a test but cannot eliminate
cultural differences between the
students' experiences and the
material tested.
12. An elementary school reading specialist
is leading a school literacy team that
will recommend improvements to the
reading program. The team will begin by
surveying stakeholders about their literacy
beliefs and goals. The team will use the
survey results to help develop a mission
statement for the school's reading program
that is consistent with state and district
standards. Creating the mission statement
is most likely to facilitate improvements
in the school's reading program by:
A. providing an action plan for making
needed changes to achieve the
agreed-upon goals of the school's
reading program.
B. establishing the literacy team's
leadership and authority to define
the overall goals of the school's
reading program.
C. detailing the essential elements of
a reading curriculum that reflects
schoolwide consensus on literacy
goals and standards.
D. clarifying the fundamental goals of
the reading program and motivating
members of the school community
to work toward achieving the goals.
Item 12, Objective 15, Correct Response D
The primary purpose of creating a mission
statement for a reading program is to
engage the school community in articulating, and
working to achieve, the fundamental
goals of the reading program. Formulated in this
way, the mission statement can
guide the process of planning and implementing
any needed improvements in the
reading curriculum.
13. A high school reading specialist considers
ways to keep faculty and staff informed
about current reading research. The
reading specialist secures funding to
create a small school-based lending library
of current professional publications related
to reading that will be accessible to all
Item 13, Objective 16, Correct Response B
A monthly literacy newsletter is an efficient,
convenient way to keep school personnel
informed about current reading research and
recommended instructional strategies.
Providing a common frame of reference, the
newsletter can help stimulate ongoing
110
teachers and staff. Which of the following
additional strategies would be the most
appropriate way to communicate relevant
research findings about reading to school
personnel?
A. Provide faculty and staff with a
comprehensive bibliography of
scholarly articles that analyze the
results of ongoing reading-related
research.
B. Distribute to all faculty and staff a
monthly literacy newsletter that
includes information about current
reading research and suggestions for
classroom applications.
C. Post a sign-up sheet on the door of
the reading specialist's office to
arrange individual meetings with all
faculty and staff to brief them on the
latest reading research.
D. Send a memo to all faculty and staff
inviting them to meet once a week
to discuss the latest research
findings about effective reading
instruction.
discussion among faculty and staff about effective,
research-based methods of reading
instruction.
18. Two or three times a year, two teachers in
a school's ENL department observe one
another's classes. Before the observations,
each teacher identifies an area of concern
for which he or she would like specific
feedback. Afterward, the teachers meet
to exchange observations and ideas.
This practice is most beneficial to the
participating teachers in that it:
A. provides them with a regular
structure in which to reflect on
and improve their own teaching
practices.
B. helps them demonstrate to school
officials that the ENL department
can supervise itself effectively.
C. provides them with a means of
determining which of the two is
best suited to teach particular
students.
D. helps them develop a list over time
of their individual strengths and
weaknesses.
13. Research indicates that the most effective
school programs for English Language
Learners include ESL staff development
programs that:
A. demonstrate methodology for
integrating content instruction
with linguistic objectives.
B. extend not just to ESL teachers
but to the entire school staff.
C. emphasize intensive literacy
instruction across the grade levels.
D. include not only ESL training but
also second-language training in the
primary language(s) of the students.
19. A high school ENL teacher arranges to
visit several businesses that are among the
largest employers in the local community.
At each setting, the teacher investigates
the types of work available, as well as the
levels of English proficiency and the
nature of oral and written communication
required in various positions. Which of
the following describes how the ENL
teacher could best use this information to
20. An elementary ENL teacher would
like to learn more about and establish
connections with a new group of ENL
students who are from a culture with
which the teacher is unfamiliar. Which of
the following strategies is likely to be
most effective for this purpose?
A. asking the new students to write
descriptions of specific features of
their culture (e.g., food, holidays,
111
support ENL students' learning?
A. by helping to ensure that the ENL
curriculum adequately prepares
students for the authentic demands
of the workplace
B. by suggesting after-school work
possibilities that can increase
students' exposure to authentic
English speakers and settings
C. by providing information about
potential career choices that can
be incorporated into effective
career counseling for students
D. by revealing the workplace
realities faced by the students'
parents/guardians and family
members, and the effect this
may have on the students
objectives.
customs) as their first homework
assignment
B. interviewing teachers, counselors,
and other school personnel who
have had some experience working
with this population
C. searching for individuals who have
traveled to or lived in the students'
home country, and asking them
about cultural, religious, and
educational differences they
observed
D. attending local cultural events,
performances, and celebrations that
take place in the students' cultural
community
12. The ESOL teachers at a high school make
efforts to learn about the home language
and culture of the English language
learners they serve. The ESOL teachers
could most appropriately use the linguistic
and cultural information they gather to
support the students' learning in contentarea
classes by:
A. providing experiences that enable
students to make connections and
understand new concepts.
B. guiding students toward meeting the
instructional and social expectations
of the school.
C. showing content-area teachers
why the students may be having
difficulties in class.
D. developing approaches to problem
solving students can apply across
the curriculum.
Correct Response: A. In order to help students build bridges between their prior knowledge
and new or less familiar content or concepts, teachers need baseline information on the cultural
and linguistic foundations students have when they enter the classroom. Once that information
is gathered, teachers can plan instruction that takes advantage of the knowledge and
experience students bring with them to school.
16. The teacher of a multilingual kindergarten
class is often asked by parents what they
can do to help their children learn English.
The teacher always replies, "Keep
speaking to your children in your native
language." The teacher's response is most
probably based on the understanding that:
A. children of this age are likely to
imitate and retain incorrect English
pronunciation.
B. language learning is most effective
when the language is introduced by
only one person.
C. hearing English spoken by
112
nonnative speakers reinforces
syntactic errors.
D. mastery of first-language skills
generally promotes successful
English acquisition.
Correct Response: D. Research has shown that second-language learners use what they
know about their first language to acquire skills in the second language. This observation
holds true for young children as well as for older learners and is the basis for the teacher's
recommendation. The other answer choices are all misconceptions about language learning.
16. Acting in his role as advocate for ESL
students, an ESL teacher has asked if
he could conduct a presentation at an
upcoming staff meeting on ways mainstream
teachers can improve communication
with English Language
Learners. Which of the following kinds
of information would be most helpful and
appropriate for the ESL teacher to share
with colleagues?
A. techniques for introducing
and reinforcing new language
constructions and how to coach
students on pronunciation
B. details about the cultural heritage
and religious beliefs of the various
ethnic groups represented in the
school and how these might impact
student achievement
C. suggestions on ways to correct
student errors in ways that avoid
damaging a student's self-esteem
and reward student initiative
D. strategies for clarifying information,
checking for comprehension, and
controlling the use of complex
phrasing, idioms, and cultural
references
Which of the following is not an example
of an intragroup cultural difference?
A. Hmong immigrants engage
in different religious practices
than Laotian immigrants.
B. Many third-generation
Puerto Ricans are less
proficient in Spanish than
are their grandparents.
C. Chinese immigrants from
Hong Kong celebrate the
New Year differently from
Chinese immigrants from
Vietnam.
D. Filipino immigrant children of
professionals face less difficulty
in adapting to the U.S. school
system than do Filipino immigrant
children of farm laborers.
This item is from knowledge and skill area 1.
Answer choice A is correct. The term intragroup
refers
to activities or attitudes within the same group.
Answer choices B, C, and D all make intragroup
comparisons among members of the same ethnic
community. Answer choice A makes an intergroup
comparison between members of two different
ethnic communities.
2. An eighth grade student has weak phonics
skills. A variety of the language arts
teacher's instructional strategies have been
unsuccessful in improving the student's
ability to rapidly decode unfamiliar,
phonetically regular words. This teacher
could best respond by taking which of the
following steps next?
A. Collaborate with the school's special
education teacher to design an
instructional intervention to improve
the student's phonics skills.
B. Help the student compensate for this
reading difficulty by developing the
student's skill in using context and
other word identification strategies.
C. Consult with the school's reading
specialist about screening the
student for a possible reading
disability.
D. Interview the student's parents or
16. In which of the following ways should
the library media specialist communicate
with the instructional staff to best identify
the resources required to meet students'
information needs?
A. charting timelines for instructional
units by grade level at the beginning
of the school year
B. maintaining a request log where
instructional staff can submit
suggestions for helpful materials
C. attending curriculum planning
meetings with instructional staff
at the beginning of each unit
D. having instructional staff select
materials to preview from a list
of possible acquisitions
113
guardians to determine whether
personal or social factors are
affecting the student's learning
7. Which of the following activities would
most effectively promote an appreciation
of literature and writing skills among
middle school students?
A. arranging visits from authors of
popular fiction for young adults
B. displaying books adapted for film
and television
C. creating a bulletin board that
features students' favorite books
D. compiling a bibliography of works
by local authors
9. A middle school library media specialist
who wants to encourage students to spend
more of their free time reading can best
motivate students to do so by using which
of the following approaches?
A. maintaining a display using a
collection of books based on
student recommendations
B. providing faculty who teach English
with annotated bibliographies of
high-quality fiction, particularly
classics, to discuss with their classes
C. specifying one section of the library
as a "quiet zone," to be used exclusively
by students who wish to
spend time reading
D. using the library bulletin board to
post information and reviews
clipped from newspapers and
magazines about current "best
sellers"
Correct Response: A. Having the writing process
described by authors of young adult literature
provides students with a first-hand look at what
inspired the books and what efforts went into
their writing. Moreover, giving students an
opportunity to ask questions of actual authors
demystifies literature while at the same time
enhancing students’ appreciation of both the works
themselves and the process that led to their
creation.
Correct Response: A. While all of the approaches
are good ways to encourage reading, using
student recommendations about good books is
particularly effective. Adolescents value their
peers’ opinions and are likely to have a higher level
of interest in books they know other
students have enjoyed.
114
10 Planning Units
4. A seventh-grade teaching team is
in the beginning stages of planning
interdisciplinary units for the upcoming
year. Which of the following would be
the best initial step to take in this process?
A. Brainstorm content units that are
likely to have immediate appeal to
students.
B. Create a curriculum map to help
identify themes and skills that
overlap across content areas.
C. Decide how many of such units
there will be and space them evenly
across the school year.
D. Develop a list of topics that
individual members of the team are
especially interested in teaching.
10. A fifth-grade teacher plans a multidisciplinary
unit on water pollution.
For this unit, students will read fictional
narratives as well as relevant chapters
from their social studies and science
textbooks. These materials also will
be incorporated into a variety of
instructional activities designed to
promote students' reading development.
Which of the following statements best
describes an important advantage of this
cross-curricular approach?
A. Interdisciplinary reading instruction
provides more opportunities for
teachers to tailor teaching strategies
to the needs of individual students.
B. Reading instruction that focuses on
both literature and content-area texts
helps students recognize and
understand differences between
written and oral English.
C. Interdisciplinary reading instruction
motivates students to apply a variety
of word identification strategies to
clarify the meaning of texts.
D. Reading instruction that
integrates related narrative
and expository texts enhances
students' comprehension and
maximizes their learning.
115
1O units
3. A second-grade teacher has developed
a unit on Japanese culture. The school
library media specialist can best support
this unit by:
A. placing all materials about Japanese
culture on special reserve for the
class.
B. creating a display in the library of
Japanese objects and literature.
C. inviting the class to the library for a
lesson on Japanese culture.
D. offering to assist the teacher by
providing aligned, age-appropriate
resources.
1.4 Assessment (ALL ASSESSMENT STUFF)
•
know a range of assessment methods and instruments
1P Tools
4. To create the most effective portfolio
of work samples, a student who wants
to pursue a career as a writer or editor
should be advised to select writings that
represent his or her best efforts and:
A. feature interesting topics.
B. reveal a unique writing style.
C. show editors' revisions.
D. display versatility in writing.
13. According to the New York State English
language arts standards, students are
expected to read for information and
understanding. As a first step toward
meeting this standard, it would be most
appropriate for fourth- and fifth-grade
English language learners to learn how to:
A. decide which information in texts is
relevant and which is irrelevant.
B. assess the relative value of specific
facts and ideas in texts.
C. ask specific questions to clarify and
extend the meaning of texts.
D. know which information in a text is
factual and which is an opinion.
Correct Response: C. Before English language learners can master skills such as
distinguishing fact from opinion or determining the relevance of information in a text,
they must first develop strategies for determining, inferring, and verifying meaning in
texts.
14. Use the child's writing sample below to
answer the question that follows.
I NO MI CAT R
HP T C ME
("I know my cats are happy to see me.")
Item 14, Objective 12, Correct Response D
The child's writing sample demonstrates knowledge
of the sounds that correspond to
some letters (e.g., the initial letters in my, cats,
happy, me). However, the child
116
This writing sample best supports which of the
following conclusions about the child's literacy
development?
A. The child is a prephonetic speller who has not
yet developed a basic understanding of the
alphabetic
principle.
B. The child has weak phonemic awareness skills
and most likely relies on recall of sight words when
reading and writing.
C. The child has strong beginning phonics skills but
lacks understanding of word boundaries and other
concepts of print.
D. The child demonstrates knowledge of basic
phonetic principles but sometimes substitutes letter
names for letter sounds when spelling.
substitutes the name of the letter "r" for the word
are and the name of the letter "c" for
the word see. These spelling patterns are
consistent with the early phonetic stage of
spelling development.
19. For the purpose of self-reflection, which
of the following questions would be
most important for students to consider
when they select the pieces to save in
their developmental portfolio?
A. Is this one of the best pieces that I
have completed this year?
B. What could I have done differently
to make this piece better?
C. Are there parts of this piece that I
could work on later?
D. What does this piece show about
what I have been learning?
20. During an open house at an elementary
school, a fourth-grade teacher is asked
why students in his class save work with
mechanical errors in their portfolios. To
promote a greater understanding of the
portfolio process, it would be most
important for the teacher to point
out that:
A. portfolio pieces provide a
picture of a student's learning
at a particular point during the
school year.
B. students do not worry about errors
in their work unless an adult does.
C. students need to feel approval from
their teacher for every writing
assignment that they complete.
D. portfolio pieces are selected by
the students based on their own
criteria.
1. A reading specialist could best determine
a student's independent, instructional, and
frustration reading levels by:
A. administering a norm-referenced
standardized reading test.
B. having the student complete a
series of cloze exercises.
C. administering an Informal Reading
Inventory.
D. having the student read aloud lists
of grade-appropriate words.
Item 1, Objective 1, Correct Response C
An Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) can help a
reading specialist select texts that are
written at an appropriate level of difficulty for
individual students. For the IRI, a
student reads aloud selected passages while the
reading specialist takes notes on the
student's reading performance. The student also
answers comprehension questions
about the passages. The student's reading levels
are determined by calculating the
percentage of words that were correctly identified
during the oral reading and the
percentage of comprehension questions that were
answered correctly.
12. To determine how well advanced-level
ENL students are meeting the Illinois
Learning Standard related to "composing
well-organized and coherent writing,"
10. The primary advantage of using a
student portfolio as a tool for assessing
ESL students is that it can:
A. accurately document an individual
117
an ENL teacher plans to develop a
checklist to use in evaluating students'
compositions. Which of the following
points would be most important for the
teacher to keep in mind in developing a
rubric-based checklist?
A. Since students with advanced
English proficiency should have
already mastered basic composition
skills, the checklist should primarily
focus on various elements of style.
B. To minimize the amount of class
time spent assessing students' work,
the checklist should be short and
limited to the key organizational
features of a composition.
C. Since prewriting and editing are
essential components of an effective
composition process, the checklist
should also include an evaluation of
students' outlines, notes, and drafts.
D. To ensure that the checklist could be
used with students at any grade level
or English proficiency level, the
checklist should focus on general
rather than specific writing skills
student's progress over time.
B. quickly identify specific language
concepts a student needs to learn.
C. clearly indicate how students in a
class compare with one another.
D. reliably predict a student's potential
for further language learning.
9. An ESOL teacher plans to use miscue
analysis to learn more about the reading
proficiency of an English language
learner. This analysis would be most
helpful in providing the teacher with
information about the:
A. grade level at which the student is
presently reading.
B. degree of first-language interference
the student is experiencing.
C. genres of literature the student
prefers to read.
D. strategies the student is using to
decode and comprehend a text.
Correct Response: D. Miscue analysis is a reading assessment tool that allows a teacher to
evaluate deviations from the actual text that students make during an oral reading. Miscue
analysis is an effective method for helping teachers determine how a reader is decoding and
processing printed words and using them to construct meaning.
10. A high school ESOL teacher creates a
holistic scoring system to assess sets of
papers written by English language
learners. Using this form of writing
assessment is most appropriate when a
teacher wants to evaluate the students':
A. ability to communicate ideas
through their writing.
B. progress in expanding their English
language vocabulary.
C. development of personal style or
voice in their writing.
D. mastery of English punctuation and
mechanics.
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Correct Response: A. Holistic scoring—in which a teacher judges the overall communicative
effectiveness of a student's written work—is best used to evaluate a writer's ability to communicate
ideas, rather than to assess more mechanical or discrete aspects of writing.
21. Read the sentence below; then answer
the question that follows.
Don't forget to lock the back window
when you close up the store.
When reading this sentence aloud, a
reader pronounces the italicized word as
/klos/, rhyming with dose. The most
likely cause of this miscue is that the
reader:
A. did not think of the most common
meaning of the word.
B. has a phonological processing
deficit.
C. did not attend to context cues in the
sentence.
D. has limited knowledge of synonyms
and antonyms.
Correct Response: C. The reader's miscue substitutes the adjective close (meaning near)
for the verb close (meaning to shut). Since the two words are spelled the same, though
pronounced differently, the reader must use context to identify the word correctly. Syntactic
clues (e.g., the word's position after a noun and before a preposition) and semantic clues
(e.g., the related meanings of "lock" and "close up") both suggest that the proper word is the
verb close.
7. In a classroom in which educational
technology has been effectively integrated,
which of the following is the
most appropriate role for student
portfolio assessment?
A. using students' work to examine
their progress in meeting learning
objectives
B. assigning grades to individual
projects using a weighted grading
system
C. reinforcing decisions based on
more traditional methods of student
assessment
D. determining whether computerbased
instruction has improved
students' content knowledge
7. Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 3.1) A portfolio is a collection of student work and can consist of
reports, presentations, video projects, and other work samples. When evaluated using reliable methods of
scoring, such as scoring rubrics, a student's portfolio can provide teachers with valuable information for
assessing the student's progress toward meeting learning objectives.
13. Which of the following features of
computer-assisted instruction is likely
to be most beneficial to students preparing
for standardized tests of reading
comprehension?
A. the presence and effectiveness of
built-in assessment tools
B. the presence of reading material
with which students are familiar
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C. the ability of the teacher to alter
the format of the material
D. the ability of students to navigate
the system independently
13. Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 3.2) Computer-assisted instruction for preparing students for
standardized tests of reading comprehension would be most beneficial if the instruction came with
effective built-in assessment tools. Effective assessment tools help students identify their strengths and
needs, become familiar with various standardized test question formats, and gain experience with
testtaking
skills and strategies.
7. An early elementary class includes one
highly proficient reader who reads several
grade levels above the other students in the
class. When planning instruction for this
student, which of the following guidelines
would be most important for the teacher to
follow?
A. Reinforce the student's mastery
of reading skills by including the
student in group instruction for the
other students in the class.
B. Use ongoing assessment of the
student's reading level to help select
challenging and engaging literature
for the student's independent and
guided reading.
C. Encourage the student to select a
wide variety of independent reading
materials from the texts that are
included in the classroom library.
D. Use paired reading activities that will
enable the student to model reading
skills and strategies for classmates
who are reading at a lower level.
4. Which of the following assessments
would best help a school district compare
the effectiveness of the various reading
programs in use across the district?
A. miscue analysis
B. norm-referenced test
C. observational assessment
D. informal reading inventory
Correct Response: B. A norm-referenced reading
test assesses a student's reading skills by
comparing the student's reading performance to
the performance of other students in the norm
group (e.g., other students in the same grade).
Norm-referenced reading tests are often used to
assess the reading skills of students at the district,
state, or national level.
5. Two standardized reading tests have
a similar mean score, but the standard
deviation of test A is significantly greater
than the standard deviation of test B. Based
on this information, which of the following
statements is accurate?
A. Scores on test A tend to be relatively
spread out, while scores on test B
tend to be relatively close to the
mean.
B. There were more students in the
norm group for test A than in the
norm group for test B.
C. A student's score on test A predicts
the student's reading achievement
better than the student's score on
test B.
D. Scores on test A are reported as raw
scores, while scores on test B are
6. An elementary student has shown little
improvement in reading skills after intervention
by the classroom teacher and
reading specialist. Which of the following
steps would be most appropriate for the
reading specialist to take next?
A. Conduct a variety of additional
assessments to verify the findings
of previous reading tests.
B. Meet with a prereferral team to
determine whether further evaluation
is needed.
C. Concentrate on increasing the
student's motivation through
independent reading of high-interest
texts.
D. Make an independent referral for the
student to receive special education
services.
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reported as grade-equivalent scores.
5. Which of the following methods of
assessment would be most effective in
providing the teacher with information
about whether students have internalized
and can apply the concept developed in
this lesson?
A. having each student independently
prepare a definition of the concept
B. asking students to create their own
examples and nonexamples of the
concept
C. providing students with examples of
the concept and asking them to use
the examples correctly in original
sentences
D. having students select examples and
nonexamples of the concept from a
page of paired sentences
8. A teacher regularly uses rubrics for
evaluating student performance on class
activities and projects. Before students
begin work on an activity or project, the
teacher gives them a copy of the rubric
for that task and discusses it with them.
Which of the following is a primary
advantage of using this approach to
evaluation over most other methods
of assessment?
A. The results can be communicated
more easily to parents and
guardians.
B. The amount of time the teacher
needs to devote to correcting
student work is significantly
reduced.
C. Specific gaps in knowledge or
skills can be identified more
readily.
D. Students have a better understanding
in advance of the
standards by which their work
will be evaluated.
16. A third-grade teacher has made the following notes about the reading performance of Ashley, one
of her students.
Ashley's oral reading speed and accuracy are about average for the class. Her errors, which tend to
occur when she encounters polysyllabic, unfamiliar words, usually consist of substituting real words
or nonsense words that are structurally similar to the printed words rather than words that are
semantically or syntactically correct.
Ashley's performance on oral and written comprehension questions that are based on silent and oral
reading selections is also average for the class; however, her miscues, if numerous, sometimes seem
to interfere with her comprehension.
Based on the teacher's notes about
Ashley's reading performance, Ashley
would benefit most from instruction to
help her:
A. recognize high-frequency words
with regular and irregular spellings.
B. use context clues and monitor her
comprehension as she reads.
C. apply knowledge of phonics to
decode unfamiliar words.
D. improve reading fluency and
vocabulary skills.
17. A teacher is assessing the performance of her students individually. As each student reads, she
makes notes on her copy of the text. Printed below is a portion of the teacher's notes on one
student's reading performance.
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The teacher's notes suggest that this
student was utilizing which of the
following reading skills to confirm the
pronunciation and meaning of the word
read?
A. using semantic and syntactic cues
B. recognizing a word root
C. recalling a sight word
D. analyzing word structure
4. The major reason that students with
reading disabilities become increasingly
at risk of falling behind their peers
academically is that, over time, such
students generally tend to:
A. limit their reading to high-interest
materials such as young adult
fiction.
B. avoid reading whenever possible.
C. receive less instruction in specific
reading skills such as decoding.
D. develop a smaller experiential base.
5. A student's oral reading includes several
miscues. For each miscue, the student
self-corrects after reading the rest of the
sentence. This pattern suggests that the
student most likely:
A. needs to work on adjusting reading
rate based on text difficulty.
B. has a concentration problem that
may indicate a learning disability.
C. understands how to analyze word
structure.
D. monitors the semantic and syntactic
plausibility of text while reading.
Correct Response: D. Beginning readers
sometimes self-correct a miscue after reading the
rest of the sentence in which the word appears.
This behavior suggests that the reader’s initial
identification of the word does not make sense in
the context of the sentence. The meaning of
other words in the sentence (semantic cues) as
well as the structure of the sentence (syntactic
cues) may help the student reconsider the miscue
and identify the word correctly.
Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.
At the beginning of the school year, a kindergarten teacher completes an oral language checklist
for each student in her class. The following is an excerpt from one of the completed checklist
Name: Julienne
When listening to literature . . .
Rarely
• recognizes words that begin with the same
sound
3. Based on the information in this
checklist, Julienne would benefit
from further instruction to help her:
A. increase her oral vocabulary.
B. foster her understanding of story
structure.
C. enhance her phonemic awareness.
x
x
• recognizes rhyming words
Usually
xxx
• recalls main characters and setting
• recalls events of a story in sequence
recalls facts and details from a story
Sometimes
4. Which of the following would be the
most appropriate use for a checklist
such as the one shown above?
A. screening for potential reading
difficulties
B. diagnosing a specific reading
disability
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D. improve her aural memory.
C. identifying specific auditory
deficits
D. determining the appropriate
reading placement level
15. When reading teachers and other
staff are working to ensure that their
assessment practices are closely aligned
with the school's literacy goals, which of
the following questions should they
consider first?
A. How frequently should we assess
students' literacy skills as they
move through the school system?
B. Which literacy skills do we identify
as being the most important for our
students to acquire?
C. How can we track students'
progress as they acquire the
literacy skills we expect of them?
D. Which assessment methods will
best help students demonstrate the
range of their literacy skills
16. To get the most complete understanding
of a student's ability to recognize or
decode words, a reading teacher should
use an assessment that requires the
student to:
A. identify words in context and in
isolation.
B. demonstrate correct pronunciation
and spelling.
C. recognize onsets and rimes for each
word.
D. distinguish inflectional endings and
other affixes.
17. A high school reading teacher wants
students in the reading class to develop
a rubric they can use to evaluate their
portfolios of written work. To help
students develop such a rubric, it would
be most effective for the teacher first to:
A. develop a list of requirements
based on curriculum standards for a
portfolio that would receive an A.
B. have students work in groups to list
the qualities of an average portfolio
by analyzing each other's
portfolios.
C. have the students use the individual
goals that they each developed at
the beginning of the year as the
rubric.
D. work with the class to list qualities
that should be present in inadequate,
proficient, and advanced
portfolios.
10. Which of the following would be an
appropriate responsibility to assign to a
paraprofessional in a reading program?
A. advocating with classroom teachers
on behalf of students
B. monitoring the implementation
of a student's individualized
education program (IEP)
C. tutoring, with teacher guidance,
individual or small groups of
students
D. interpreting the results of
diagnostic reading tests
1. Compared with standardized reading
assessments, one important advantage
of informal reading assessments is that
they allow the teacher to:
A. characterize a student's reading
proficiency in terms of typical
grade-level performance.
B. personalize reading assessments
to identify the needs of individual
students.
C. avoid bias in the administration
and interpretation of reading
assessments.
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D. compare the reading performance of
individual students to other students
in the class.
16. A reading specialist will be having a
series of individual meetings with the
parents, guardians, and surrogates of
students who had the lowest scores
on the latest statewide, standardized
reading test. In the context of preparing
for the meetings, which of the following
issues should the reading specialist
consider first?
A. which steps can be taken in the
home to support reading instruction
and literacy development
B. how to emphasize the importance
of students' mastering the skills
tested by this assessment
C. how to explain the nature and
purpose of the assessment and the
meaning of the scores
D. which specific instructional
interventions would be most
effective for the students
17. A reading specialist wants to implement
a literacy volunteer program for the
schools in his district. To create an
effective volunteer program, which
of the following steps will be most
important for the reading specialist
to take?
A. assigning equal numbers of
volunteers to each grade level and
in each school in the district
B. locating new reading materials and
resources for the volunteers to use
when they work with students
C. determining whether the volunteers
understand literacy development
and reading instruction
D. ensuring that volunteers understand
their role and how they
will function within the school
community
18. A reading specialist wants to use a
coaching model to observe a reading
teacher and provide him with feedback
about his instructional performance. To
promote the most effective observation
experience, which of the following steps
should the reading specialist take first?
A. Have the reading teacher provide a
list of the instructional materials he
will be using.
B. Share with the reading teacher any
comments classroom teachers have
made about his work.
C. Ask the reading teacher to help a
student who has been particularly
challenging.
D. Meet with the reading teacher in a
preconference to set goals for the
observation.
19. Which of the following types of
expertise would be most important for
reading specialists to provide in support
of the process of curriculum planning in
a school district?
A. an awareness of the broad goals
and objectives in the school district
B. a familiarity with the needs of
individual students
C. the skills needed to interpret scores
from standardized reading tests
D. the ability to identify the district's
best literacy teachers
3. A sixth-grade teacher is reviewing
the results of a standardized reading
test that include a grade-equivalent
interpretation of student performance
on the test. When reviewing these
data, the teacher should understand
that a grade-equivalent score of 6.4 is
intended to indicate that a student's
reading performance on this test:
A. was as good or better than
64 percent of students in the
same grade in the same school.
B. places her/him in the top 6.4 percent
4. When creating lesson plans to promote
specific reading skills, a middle-school
teacher should make sure that:
A. each planned activity for students is
designed to strengthen two or more
specific reading skills.
B. the targeted reading skills relate
to an appropriate instructional
progression and reflect students'
needs.
C. each planned activity connects
students' reading, writing, listening,
and speaking skills.
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of students at the same grade level
in the same school.
C. was as good or better than
64 percent of students in the
same grade nationwide.
D. corresponds to the expected skill
level of a student in the fourth
month of sixth grade.
D. the targeted reading skills are
grade-appropriate and taught
to all students using the same
instructional methods.
6. Of the following questions, which
would be most important for a teacher
to consider when interpreting the results
of a reading assessment for a particular
student?
A. How did the student's performance
on this assessment compare with
that of the student's classmates?
B. Are these findings sufficient to
assign a grade to the student's
performance?
C. How do these findings relate to the
student's performance on other
recently administered reading
assessments?
D. Do these findings provide information
about the student's ranking in
regard to national norms of reading
achievement?
31. A teacher plans to assess a student's
comprehension of a short story through
oral retelling. After the student silently
reads the story, the teacher will prompt the
student's retelling by asking open-ended
questions. To prepare for this assessment,
the teacher reads the story carefully and
composes the questions. Which of the
following additional steps would be most
helpful for the teacher to take before the
retelling activity begins?
A. Prompt the student to recall similar
tasks he or she has previously
performed.
B. Prepare a checklist of the key
elements that an effective retelling
of this story should include.
C. Review grades earned by the
student on recent tests and quizzes
in language arts.
D. Remind the student to concentrate
on recalling as many details as
possible during the retelling.
59. At the beginning of the school year,
Ms. Ignacio, a fifth-grade teacher, designs
the following activity in which students
interview one another.
1. The teacher guides students to
brainstorm interview questions
(e.g., What do you like to do for
fun?).
2. The teacher types the questions
and makes copies of the
"questionnaire."
3. Students interview one another
in pairs, with each student reading
the questions and writing his/her
partner's answers on the
questionnaire.
4. Students discuss their findings in
a whole-class discussion and then
give their completed questionnaires
to the teacher.
As an informal assessment strategy, the
interview activity designed by Ms. Ignacio
is likely to be most useful in helping the
teacher evaluate students':
A. oral and written language
proficiency.
B. ability to apply vocabulary
60. Mr. Cabrera, a second-grade teacher,
regularly engages in informal conversation
with students about stories they are
reading. Printed below is an excerpt from
his conversation with Alexandra, who is
reading a story about
a whale.
Alexandra:
The whale in this book
is enormous!
Mr.
Cabrera:
Sounds interesting.
What other words
would you use to
describe the whale in
this story?
Very very big! Huge!
Alexandra:
Bigger than my house!
This conversation is likely to be most
helpful to Mr. Cabrera in evaluating
Alexandra's ability to:
A. draw on a variety of cues to identify
unfamiliar words as she reads.
B. recall main ideas and significant
details after reading.
C. verify and extend the meaning of
words she reads by relating them to
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knowledge in new contexts.
C. understanding of differences
between oral and written language.
D. use of literal and inferential
comprehension skills.
familiar words and concepts.
D. draw conclusions or generalizations
from a text.
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1P Principles
3. A teacher reads aloud a story to a student
who is in the emergent literacy stage
of reading development. The teacher
wants to assess the student's literal
comprehension of the sequence of events
in the story. Which of the following
assessment strategies would be most
appropriate for this purpose?
A. encouraging the student to begin by
describing the beginning and the
end of the story
B. asking the student to identify the
most important episode in the story
C. providing the student with visual
aids to use in explaining what
happened in the story
D. asking the student to explain the
consequences of the characters'
actions
10. Use the information below to answer
the question that follows.
A fifth-grade student arrived from his
home country, El Salvador, last year with
no prior formal education. He is now in
his second year in a Texas school and is
receiving bilingual and ESL services. He
is still at the beginning stages of Spanish
literacy development, English language
development, and academic development.
What would be the state policy with
regard to the assessment of academic
skills in this student's case?
A. The language proficiency assessment
committee (LPAC) may
recommend that the assessment of
English language skills be waived;
however, an assessment of academic
skills must be administered in either
English or Spanish.
B. Since he is enrolled in the bilingual
program, assessment of academic
skills must be administered in either
English or Spanish.
C. The LPAC may determine that
neither English nor Spanish
proficiency tests would be an
appropriate measure for school
accountability.
D. Since he is now in his second
year of enrollment in a U.S. school,
the school must administer an
assessment of academic skills
in English.
11. A middle school ESL teacher is working
with a group of ESL students whose
English-language abilities vary. Which
of the following would be the most
appropriate strategy for evaluating the
progress of students who are at different
proficiency levels in English?
A. using multiple measures, such as
observations, test scores, and
samples of daily work
B. selecting language achievement
tests that have been normed on
a similar student population
C. establishing a grading curve and
distributing students' test results
along the curve
D. assessing students only in those
areas of English in which they
have achieved competence
3. The ongoing assessment of the literacy
skills of three year olds is most effective
and appropriate when preschool teachers
use the results to:
13. A second-grade teacher plans to address
the following science objective with his
class.
The student knows that systems are
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A. learn whether a child learns best by
seeing or hearing new information.
B. give parents and other family
members a description of a child's
abilities.
C. determine which children are ready
to begin writing letters and words.
D. design individualized instruction
that matches a child's interests and
strengths.
made up of parts, and that systems
may not work when parts are
separated from the whole.
Which of the following strategies is most
likely to help the teacher communicate
this concept effectively to his second
graders?
A. repeating the concept a number of
times, using somewhat different
words to describe it each time
B. using a familiar example to illustrate
the concept, such as showing that
a flashlight without a battery will
not work
C. drawing a diagram of a simple
system on the board, and showing
how the parts of the system connect
D. defining key words for students
(e.g., system, whole, part) before
beginning an explanation of the
concept
16. A third-grade teacher meets with a student
who is having trouble understanding a
chapter of a story the student is reading.
The teacher begins by asking the student
to describe what she has read so far. Of
the following, the primary benefit of this
approach is that it will:
A. help the teacher provide instruction
that is responsive to the student's
specific needs.
B. prompt the student's development
of a sense of ownership of her own
learning.
C. encourage the student to apply
higher-order thinking skills to
the task.
D. promote the student's awareness
of her own learning strengths and
needs.
17. Midway through a unit, a teacher gives
her students a quiz that includes multiplechoice
and short-answer questions. After
grading the students' quizzes, the teacher
is concerned about the students' poor
performance. The teacher reviews the
quiz and is satisfied that the questions are
clear and address the content that has been
taught. In reflecting on this situation, the
teacher will probably benefit most by
focusing on which of the following
questions?
A. Would a less formal assessment
give me a more accurate indication
of what my students have learned in
this unit?
B. How can I reteach this unit's content
in a way that increases students'
understanding?
C. How can I distinguish highly challenging
content in this unit from
content that is less challenging?
D. What steps can I take to communicate
more effectively to my students
the significance of this unit's
content?
9. A reading specialist serves on a
committee evaluating the reading
programs in the district's elementary
schools. Other members of the
committee include administrators,
classroom teachers, and library and
technology personnel. Of the following,
the most appropriate role for the reading
specialist would be to:
A. help committee members understand
and interpret the results of
reading assessments.
2. Five-year-old Michelle says the
following sentence as she is dictating
a story to her teacher.
The elephant eated up all the peanuts.
In a language-experience approach to
reading instruction, it would be most
appropriate for the teacher to respond
to Michelle's sentence in which of the
following ways?
A. writing Michelle's sentence using
correct grammar and reading it
back to her
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B. reading the sentence aloud and
asking Michelle to try to correct
her error
C. taking advantage of the situation to
teach Michelle a mini-lesson about
verb tenses
D. writing the sentence exactly as
Michelle dictated it
B. ensure that committee members are
aware of the limited resources
available for reading instruction.
C. explain to committee members the
rationales supporting different
methods of reading instruction.
D. familiarize committee members
with legal requirements relating to
reading instruction and assessment.
3. Appropriate teacher behaviors during an
oral diagnostic test include which of the
following?
I. recording student miscues
II. assessing comprehension
III. providing initial phonemes
IV. supplying omitted words
A. I only
B. II, III, and IV only
C. I and II only
D. I, II, III, and IV
5. When administering an IRI (informal
reading inventory) to a student to
diagnose possible reading difficulties,
it is important to begin by:
A. selecting passages with which the
student is familiar for the oral and
silent reading portions of the IRI.
B. assessing the appropriate level of
reading material at which to begin
testing.
C. reviewing with the student his or
her sight-word vocabulary and
decoding strategies.
D. previewing with the student the
materials and passages that will
be included in the IRI.
8. When selecting a passage to use for
a miscue analysis, a teacher should
ensure that the passage:
A. is taken from one of the student's
content-area textbooks.
B. contains no words that are
unfamiliar to the student.
C. represents the student's
frustrational reading level.
D. flows logically and reflects a
complete unit of meaning.
9. It would be most appropriate to ask
which of the following questions to
assess the overall effectiveness of a
school's reading program?
A. Are teachers in the program
generally able to implement their
original instructional plans with
minimal adjustments?
B. Do the teachers in the program
manage to maintain a rapid rate of
instruction?
C. Are most students in the program
able to transfer learned skills to a
variety of reading contexts?
D. Do significantly fewer students
require remedial reading
instruction than in previous years?
14. Read the excerpt below from a first-grade teacher's conversation with a reading group; then
answer the question that follows.
Teacher: So, here's the front cover of our book. What sorts of things do you see on this
front cover?
Student W: A boat with a big sail.
Teacher: Yes, I see that right there.
Student X: And there's a net with a bunch of fish.
Teacher: You're right; those are fish. Do you see anything else?
Student Y: (points) That's the title.
Teacher: Can you read the title?
Student Z: It's called One Week at Sea.
Teacher: Terrific. Now, tell me what you think this book will be about. Do you have
any ideas?
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As an assessment method, the teacher's
questions will elicit the most information
about the students' ability
to use which of the following skills
to construct meaning?
A. using context
B. predicting
C. generating questions
D. summarizing
15. Use the excerpt below from an eighth grader's dialogue journal to answer the question that
follows.
October 7
Teacher's response:
I've read another chapter in my book,
and it's getting easier for me. At first I
didn't get all the historical stuff. I got a
social studies book from a 7th grader
and read about the time when this story
is happening.
Which of the following teacher
responses to the student's entry would
best help the student use the journal
to engage in self-reflection and
assessment?
A. Getting the textbook is certainly
one good way to better understand
the story. Have you ever used any
other ways to get more information
about a topic?
B. I know historical fiction can be
very challenging, but I know that
you are the sort of student who
appreciates a good story, no matter
what time period it is set in.
C. While a social studies book
might have some information,
encyclopedias are frequently the
best source for the historical
information that you needed.
D. It sounds like you have a book
that is written at your frustration
reading level. Would you like to
know more about how to select
reading material that matches your
skills?
20. Two elementary reading teachers have
conducted research to determine the
effectiveness of several different
instructional strategies. The district's
reading specialist has seen their research
findings and urges them to offer this
8. Lawrence is a sixth grader who, although
of above-average ability, has difficulty
completing assigned reading selections in
the content areas. He appears motivated
when he begins reading, but he has
difficulty focusing his attention on the
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information to reading teachers and
paraprofessionals at schools in the
district. Sharing the research findings
within the district will be beneficial
primarily because other reading teachers
will be given the:
A. chance to put into practice and
further assess the effectiveness of
the strategies the first two reading
teachers found to be successful.
B. motivation to encourage their
students to work at achieving the
level of reading performance found
in students at other schools.
C. incentive to develop their own
research projects to ensure that
their students will be exposed
to a variety of instructional
methodologies.
D. opportunity to question the first
two reading teachers about their
hypotheses and their techniques
for conducting this research.
9. A second-grade teacher informally
assesses students' reading development
by listening to them read aloud. Anna,
a student who generally reads aloud
fluently, reads aloud a short story selected
by the teacher. In this instance, Anna
correctly decodes about two-thirds of the
words and pauses frequently as she reads.
This informal assessment suggests that
Anna:
A. needs instruction designed to
improve her phonemic awareness.
B. is likely reading a story at her
frustration reading level.
C. needs instruction designed to
improve her oral language skills.
D. is likely reading a story at her
instructional reading level.
13. During class discussions about stories,
a third-grade English Language Learner
often mispronounces key words from
the stories. The teacher's best response
would be to:
A. ask the student to pause and
correct her pronunciation before
she continues with her remarks.
B. analyze the student's pronunciation
patterns and plan an
task at hand and generally does not follow
through. Which of the following would
be his teacher's best strategy for
addressing this problem?
A. Adapt Lawrence's reading
assignments to reduce their
complexity and level of cognitive
challenge.
B. Tell Lawrence that his grades will
be based in part on his ability to
improve his concentration when he
works on reading assignments.
C. Break down Lawrence's reading
assignments into small steps and
help him learn to monitor his own
attention and progress.
D. Manage Lawrence's content-area
reading assignments so that he
generally has only one to work on
at any given time.
29. A second-grade teacher regularly
assesses students to monitor their
stages of spelling development. Based
on these assessments, she designs wordsort
activities for each student. Using a
set of word cards prepared by the teacher,
the student decides how to separate the
cards into two or more categories
(e.g., words that begin with the letter c
and words that begin with ch). This
activity is likely to promote the spelling
development of students primarily by:
A. guiding them to apply a variety
of strategies for expanding their
vocabulary knowledge while
improving their spelling.
B. motivating them to apply and
assess their spelling skills across
the curriculum.
C. enabling them to discover spelling
patterns and generalizations that can
then be applied to the reading and
spelling of unknown words.
D. helping them improve spelling
accuracy by strengthening their
proofreading skills.
17. An ENL teacher has learned that one of
the history teachers at the school uses
different sets of criteria for assessing ENL
students and students whose primary
language is English. When the ENL
teacher asks the history teacher about this,
the history teacher explains that grading
ENL students primarily on their classroom
participation rather than on written
assignments or test results is more
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intervention to address her needs.
C. encourage other students in the
class to help the student work on
pronouncing words correctly.
D. write down the words and include
them on a list of words for the
student to practice pronouncing.
•
assess abilities in listening
1Q
20. In order to distinguish fact from opinion in a
television news program, it is most important to:
A. identify exaggeration and hyperbole.
B. determine which statements are verified by
evidence.
C. understand potential conflicts of interest.
D. evaluate the newscaster's editorial point of view.
2. Mr. Espinosa has chosen an activity for
his kindergarten students to promote
listening skills. He plans to read the
same story several times during shared
reading time. The text of the story he has
chosen is predictable and contains rhymes.
When his students become familiar with
the story, Mr. Espinosa will read the
story with pauses and allow the students
to fill in the rhyming word. Which of the
following statements below best describes
the primary advantage in engaging children
in such an activity to promote
listening skills?
A. This activity allows the teacher
to assess whether the students are
developing listening comprehension
skills when a text is read aloud to
equitable because "otherwise they would
always end up with lower grades, even
though they may try just as hard." Which
of the following would be the most
appropriate response for the ENL teacher
to make in this situation?
A. Meet with the ENL students to
encourage them to work harder to
achieve parity with their Englishspeaking
classmates.
B. Explore with school officials the
possibility of providing additional
services to ENL students to help
them meet the same standards as
their classmates.
C. Urge the history teacher to
use the same assessment tools,
measurement criteria, and passing
standards for all students.
D. Encourage the history teacher to
make available to all students a
range of acceptable ways to
demonstrate mastery of the history
Correct Response: B. A major distinction between
fact and opinion is the degree to which they
can be verified by evidence. Identifying
exaggeration and hyperbole, understanding
potential
conflicts of interest, and evaluating the
newscaster's editorial point of view provide less
dependable ways of making such a distinction.
1. Which of the following activities,
performed by young children while
a story is being read to them, would
most likely encourage them to listen
for meaning?
A. tapping their feet to the rhythm of
the words
B. miming the action of the story
C. raising their hands when they hear
the main character's name
D. making a clay sculpture of their
favorite character
132
them.
B. This activity provides students
with an opportunity to listen to and
become familiar with the language
of books and enhances the students'
understanding of story structure.
C. This activity enhances the students'
developing understanding of lettersound
relationships.
D. This activity enhances the students'
ability to listen accurately, a skill
that is essential to the development
of literacy and the ability to
communicate.
3. Which of the following activities, performed
by young children while a story
is being read to them, would most likely
encourage them to listen for meaning?
A. tapping their feet to the rhythm of
the words
B. miming the action of the story
C. raising their hands when they hear
the main character's name
D. making a clay sculpture of their
favorite character
2. To address issues of equity when
selecting literature for elementary
students, it is important to choose
works that:
I. do not focus on characters and
situations that are associated with
one particular group.
II. taken together, address situations
with which students can
personally identify.
III. do not present individuals or
groups in a stereotypical fashion.
IV. taken together, illustrate both the
commonalities and the differences
that exist among diverse groups.
A. I and II only
B. I and III only
C. II, III, and IV only
D. I, II, III, and IV
3. A teacher reads aloud a story to a student
who is in the emergent literacy stage
of reading development. The teacher
wants to assess the student’s literal
comprehension of the sequence of events
in the story. Which of the following
assessment strategies would be most
appropriate for this purpose?
A. encouraging the student to begin by
describing the beginning and the
end of the story
B. asking the student to identify the
most important episode in the story
C. providing the student with visual
aids to use in explaining what
happened in the story
D. asking the student to explain the
consequences of the characters’
actions
7. A kindergarten student enjoys listening
and responding to stories the teacher reads
aloud. The student participates enthusiastically
in prereading conversations, enjoys
Item 7, Objective 9, Correct Response D
The student's reading-related behaviors reflect
some strengths in literary response (e.g.,
drawing on personal experience to interpret literary
133
making predictions, and makes personal
connections with literary characters.
However, the student often exhibits
confusion about what actually happened
in the story. Which of the following
instructional strategies is likely to be most
effective in strengthening the student's
comprehension of stories that are read
aloud?
A. asking the student direct comprehension
questions immediately after
reading a story
B. encouraging the student to listen
to stories on tape that the teacher
already has read aloud
C. having the student draw pictures of
characters from the stories and share
the pictures with the class
D. helping the student use a story map
or flannel board to retell stories that
the teacher has read aloud
•
assess abilities in speaking
1R
1. An English teacher has students write
their own poetry during an integrated
unit about poets from the United States.
Before the students can submit their
poems to the teacher, they must read
them aloud to at least three people. The
primary benefit of this requirement will
be that it encourages the students to:
A. exercise caution when selecting
topics for their writing.
B. identify overused sentiments or
expressions by soliciting the
opinions of other people.
C. select poetic structures that are
readily understood by others.
D. consider the clarity of the language
they have chosen by using it in a
second modality.
characters), but the student's
confusion about the plot of stories that the teacher
has read aloud suggests that the
student needs help understanding and recalling the
sequence of events. The teacher
can support the student's reading development in
this area by using concrete visual
aids, such as story maps or flannel boards, to help
clarify the student's understanding
of a story's plot.
6. One of Ms. Eskin's entering second
graders speaks with a strong regional
dialect. Ms. Eskin's best adaptation of
reading instruction for this student
would be to:
A. initiate speech training to help the
student learn to pronounce words
as the other students do.
B. focus initially on teaching the
student decoding strategies based
on phonetic principles.
C. provide the student with reading
material that is written in a style
representative of her dialect.
D. monitor the student's reading to
ensure that her dialect does not
interfere with her comprehension.
•
assess abilities in reading
1S
7. Early in the school year, a first-grade
teacher wants to conduct an assessment
of students' ability to read gradeappropriate
words, including phonetically
regular words and high-frequency
irregular sight words. Which of the
following assessment strategies would be
most appropriate and effective for this
purpose?
A. The teacher pairs each student with
134
a partner for shared oral reading of
simple texts and makes anecdotal
notes on their performance.
B. The teacher meets individually with
students and asks each student to
write a list of words the student
knows how to read.
C. The teacher allows each student to
select a grade-appropriate text from
the classroom library and asks each
student to try reading the text aloud.
D. The teacher prepares a list of
grade-appropriate words, asks each
student to try reading the words
aloud, and records the results.
34. One student pronounces gyre with a hard
g sound, while his classmate uses a soft
g sound. They ask the teacher who is
correct. The teacher's best response
would be to:
A. remind students to use their
knowledge of syntactic principles
to determine the pronunciation.
B. suggest looking in the dictionary
at words that begin with gy to see
what that suggests about the
pronunciation.
C. have the class vote and suggest that
students use the pronunciation that
is preferred by the majority.
D. advise them that since gyre is a
nonsense word, it does not really
matter whether they pronounce it
with a hard g or a soft g.
•
assess abilities in spelling and writing
1T
5. Children who are emergent writers would
benefit most from opportunities to:
A. explore and learn about a variety of
writing materials.
B. talk with a teacher about writing.
C. copy the texts of favorite story
books.
D. use magnetized letters to create
pictures and designs.
13. Students in a middle school class have
been learning about active and passive
verbs. Which of the following instructional
activities would best help students
recognize and understand differences
35. The teacher asks the students if they can
tell which of the nonsense words in the
poem are nouns. One student says that
toves is a noun. Another says that wabe
and borogoves are nouns and adds that
gyre and gimble are verbs. The class then
discusses how students were able to draw
these conclusions. This exercise would be
especially useful for helping students
understand that:
A. being familiar with conventions of
capitalization and spelling can help
a reader interpret a text.
B. recognizing the roots of words can
help a reader decode the words.
C. being familiar with common
language structures can help a
reader interpret a text.
D. recognizing a text's genre can help
a reader comprehend the text.
4. A teacher regularly analyzes the attempted
spellings of emergent readers. In addition
to providing information about students’
spelling development, this approach
would best help the teacher assess
students’:
A. level of reading fluency.
B. use of word identification strategies.
C. ability to apply phonics skills.
D. knowledge of comprehension
strategies.
14. Use the student writing sample below to
answer the question that follows.
("We went on a train to the beach. I
saw a red sailboat.")
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between the active and passive voice?
A. Working with partners, students
convert passive sentences to the
active voice; then the teacher guides
students to discuss how these
changes affect tone and meaning.
B. Students write a paragraph on an
assigned topic and then identify
whether each sentence in the
paragraph is in the active or the
passive voice.
C. Working in small groups, students
use active and passive sentences
provided by the teacher as models to
develop their own sets of active and
passive sentences.
D. Students keep ongoing lists of
memorable sentences they
encounter over several days and
decide whether each sentence is in
the active or passive voice.
The writing sample illustrated above most
strongly suggests that the student:
A. is in the transitional stage of
spelling development and would
benefit from instruction on vowel
digraphs.
B. lacks an understanding of lettersound
correspondence and would
benefit from basic phonics
instruction.
C. is in the phonetic stage of spelling
development and would benefit
from phonemic awareness
instruction.
D. lacks the ability to distinguish
vowel sounds and would benefit
from varied oral language activities.
1. Which of the following activities
is likely to be most effective in
helping emergent readers develop
an awareness of the various functions
and conventions of reading and writing?
A. having individual students
regularly dictate messages and
stories to the teacher for the teacher
to transcribe and read
back to them
B. teaching students the names of
different genres and asking them
to identify the genres of texts read
to them by the teacher
C. creating name cards for objects
in the classroom (e.g., chair, desk,
chalkboard) and posting the cards
prominently around the room
D. encouraging students to learn how
to write their own names
13. Laila, a kindergarten student, has
demonstrated the ability to write words
phonetically. However, she seems
reluctant to write because she is worried
about misspelling words. The teacher
could best promote Laila's written
language development by:
A. giving Laila a spelling list of highfrequency
sight words to copy and
learn each day.
B. reassuring Laila that it is okay for
now to express herself in writing by
spelling words as they sound.
C. helping Laila make a list of words
that she already knows how to spell
correctly.
D. suggesting that Laila spend time
copying some of the words found
in her favorite stories.
23. During which of the following stages of
spelling development do students typically
begin to show an understanding of the
correspondence between letters and
sounds?
A. pre-phonetic
B. phonetic
C. transitional
D. conventional
51. A middle-school teacher designs an
instructional activity in which students
combine several sentences to form a single
sentence, as illustrated below.
Combine:
Matthew stood and waited for the bus.
The sun was blazing hot.
Matthew fanned himself with the
newspaper.
Single sentence:
Waiting for the bus, Matthew stood
in the blazing sun, fanning himself with
the newspaper.
136
This activity is likely to be most effective
in helping students:
A. strengthen their ability to
comprehend and write complex
sentences.
B. apply literal comprehension skills
to identify and write main idea
statements.
C. improve their inferential
comprehension skills.
D. use self-monitoring techniques to
clarify the meaning of text.
9. When students read aloud and discuss
the sentences they composed, the teacher
guides the class to identify the selected
word's part of speech in each sentence
(e.g., whether root is being used as a noun,
a verb, or an adjective). This part of
the discussion is most likely to promote
students' vocabulary knowledge and
skills by:
A. helping students distinguish the
connotative meanings of words.
B. enhancing students' understanding
of the semantic and syntactic
functions of words.
C. motivating students to recognize and
avoid errors in grammar or usage.
D. reinforcing students' skill in
applying structural analysis as a
word-identification strategy.
Item 9, Objective 7, Correct Response B
When students discuss the meaning of root in a
given sentence, they are learning about
the word's semantic function. When they discuss
the grammatical function of root
(e.g., noun, verb, adjective) in a given sentence,
they are learning about the word's
syntactic function. Such discussions enrich
vocabulary knowledge and skills by
reinforcing students' understanding of the word's
varied meanings and by helping
students rapidly identify the word's meaning in
context (e.g., recognizing that root is a
verb rather than a noun in the sentence, "Root for
the home team.").
4. A teacher regularly analyzes the attempted
spellings of emergent readers. In addition
to providing information about students'
spelling development, this approach
would best help the teacher assess
students':
A. level of reading fluency.
B. use of word identification strategies.
C. ability to apply phonics skills.
D. knowledge of comprehension
strategies.
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Domain 2: Texts
2.1 Genres (WHAT TYPE OF TEXT DESCRIBES THIS PASSAGE?)
•
demonstrate an understanding of expository and narrative materials, including popular media
such as magazines and newspapers.
2A
13. Which of the following would be the
most effective format for a newspaper
to use to communicate to voters
information about issues involved
in a proposed ballot item?
A. a bulleted list organizing points of
argument into lists detailing both
sides of the issue
B. a photo essay presenting images of
the people and places that would be
affected by the ballot item
C. an interview with the individuals
who initially proposed the ballot
item
D. statements by local residents on
their views of the issue printed
beneath their photographs
14. A feature writer begins a story with the
following sentence: "The crowd in the
auditorium moved their bodies to the
sounds of the shaggy-haired musicians."
This sentence is an example of which of
the following types of lead?
A. astonisher
B. descriptive
C. chronological
D. anecdotal
10. A middle school science teacher is
planning a lesson to introduce a class
to the concept of equilibrium in various
types of systems. Which of the following
teacher strategies is most likely to help
promote students' understanding of a
concept of this type?
A. Begin the lesson by having students
write down what they believe the
word equilibrium might mean based
on their prior knowledge of related
words (e.g., equal, equivalent).
B. Use examples that are familiar to
students from their own lives and
experiences to illustrate the concept.
C. Give students a list of the lesson's
key terms and their definitions, and
have students refer back to the list
as each term is used in the lesson.
D. Incorporate into the lesson ample
time for teacher repetition of main
ideas and for student questions.
5. Which of the following story elements
would middle school students be more
likely to find in contemporary realistic
fiction than in any other narrative
genres?
A. heroism and admirable behavior
demonstrated by primary
characters
B. plots that feature suspense or
mystery
C. experiences and problems that
could occur in their own lives
D. settings with unusual or exotic
qualities
6. Which of the following descriptions
of a car accident is written in the most
appropriate style for the lead of a
newspaper article?
A. It was only a matter of time before
a serious accident occurred at this
notorious intersection, and yesterday
it happened—two cars collided at
Summer and Main Streets, injuring
five people.
12. A middle school teacher wants to improve
students' comprehension of informational
texts by helping the students analyze
comparison/contrast text structures.
Which of the following instructional
strategies would best address this goal?
A. Students read two different texts
that address the same topic and then
meet in small discussion groups to
compare/contrast the two texts.
138
B. The unmistakable sound of metal
against metal was heard yesterday
as two cars smashed into each other
at the town's most dangerous
intersection.
C. A two-car collision yesterday at the
intersection of Summer and Main
Streets sent five people to the
hospital and shut down traffic for
almost two hours.
D. Passersby were shocked as they
witnessed a collision in the center of
town yesterday; several went to the
aid of the occupants of the two cars
as others tried to divert traffic.
B. The teacher models for students
how to write a complex sentence
that compares/contrasts two
different items or ideas.
C. Each student outlines the main
ideas and significant details in two
comparison/contrast texts on a given
subject.
D. The teacher helps students create a
Venn diagram to summarize a
comparison/contrast text.
8. Read the passage below from Big Sur by Jack Kerouac; then answer the question that follows.
When the cab leaves I therefore turn on my railroad lantern for a timid peek but its beam gets lost just like
the car lights in a void and in fact the battery is fairly weak and I can hardly see the bluff at my left—As
for the bridge I cant see it anymore except for graduating series of luminous shoulder buttons going off
further into the low sea roar—The sea roar is bad enough except it keeps bashing and barking at me like
a
dog in the fog down there, sometimes it booms the earth but my God where is the earth and how can the
sea be underground!—"The only thing to do," I gulp, "is to put this lantern shinin right in front of your
feet, kiddo, and follow that lantern and make sure it's shinin on the road rut and hope and pray it's shinin
on ground that's gonna be there when it's shining," in other words I actually fear that even my lamp will
carry me astray if I dare to raise it for a minute from the ruts in the dirt road—
Which of the following characteristics of
the Beat literature of the 1950s and 1960s
is most clearly exemplified in this
passage?
A. use of literary texts to expound
radical political views
B. imitation in words of the
disconnected quality of raw
experience
C. assertion of individualism as
basic to American culture
D. adoption of the language of
visionary spiritual philosophies
7. Read the passage below from a
6. Which of the following is the most
important distinction between a news
magazine article; then answer the
story and a personal narrative?
question that follows.
Smith is perhaps best known for his live
A. A news story must be written in the
performances. At the end of a show,
third person.
which usually exceeds three hours in
B. A personal narrative should reflect
length, he is visibly exhausted. He then
the writer's personality.
comes back out for several apparently
C. A news story must be easily
spontaneous (though in fact carefully
understood by a diverse audience.
planned) encores, in which he turns up the
D. A personal narrative should not
energy yet another notch. It seemed to
emphasize specific details.
me, after watching him perform a few
times, that he feels it is his duty to leave
everything he's got on that stage, night
after night.
Which of the following characteristics of
this passage most clearly identifies it as an
excerpt from a journalistic essay rather
than a news story?
A. the use of idioms (e.g., night after
139
night)
B. the use of the first person
C. the use of detailed description
(e.g., visibly exhausted)
D. the use of a parenthetical remark
Correct Response: B. News stories traditionally use
a third-person style that minimizes the
personality of the reporter and focuses attention on
the facts of the story. In a journalistic
essay, however, writers are able to use the firstperson point of view, allowing them to include
personal impressions and to offer subjective
explanations and observations.
8. A writer wants to develop skill in creating
dialogue for original plays. Which of the
following exercises is likely to be most
effective in addressing this goal?
A. listening to a real conversation,
taking notes on the content and tone
of each person's remarks, and then
converting the notes to a written
dialogue
B. making and studying an audio
recording of dialogue from an actual
or videotaped play
C. creating a graphic organizer to
analyze the key elements of a
dialogue between two characters in
a play by a well-known playwright
D. freewriting to generate ideas for a
dramatic dialogue between two
characters
Correct Response: A. A writer who wishes to create
effective dialogue for an original play will
profit most from listening to a real conversation and
then translating it into dramatic dialogue.
This exercise connects the everyday world to a
new world of imagination by sharpening the
writer’s ability to recreate authentic tone and
content.
•
analyze literary genres (novels, short stories, folk and fairy tales, and poetry of various
types, for example), as they are represented in different cultures, according to their structure,
organization, and purpose.
2B
1. The poetic form known as the ballad may
best be described as a:
A. dramatic narrative poem that consists
of simple stanzas with a refrain that
is repeated throughout the poem.
B. celebratory song of praise expressing
spiritual feelings, usually addressed
to a divine being or beings.
C. long lyric poem written in an
elevated style with a serious tone and
having a complex stanzaic structure.
7. A soliloquy is most commonly used in a
dramatic work to:
A. describe the play's historical
context.
B. foreshadow a character's future.
C. reveal a major plot development.
D. express a character's hidden
thoughts.
Correct Response: D. In drama, soliloquy refers to
the convention by which a character who is
alone on the stage utters his or her thoughts aloud.
140
D. formal and sustained lyrical
expression of grief over the death
of a particular person, emphasizing
mutability and loss.
Playwrights often use this device to convey
information about the character's motives and state
of mind.
3. The critical approach of archetypal
analysis could best be applied to which
of the following types of literary texts?
A. narrative poems
B. folk tales
C. comic dramas
D. autobiographies
2. A fourth-grade class has been reading folk
tales from around the world. Which of the
following oral language activities would
be most effective in promoting students’
multicultural awareness and appreciation?
A. Students discuss folk tales from
various countries and then read
aloud and discuss descriptions
of the geography and cultural
characteristics of each country.
B. The teacher guides students to
discuss some features that folk tales
of various countries have in
common as well as some of the
unique features of each culture’s
folk tales.
C. Students read aloud "folk tales" they
have written themselves and then
review folk tales from various
countries and decide which culture’s
folk tales most closely resemble
their own.
D. The teacher helps each student
select a folk tale, present it to the
class, and answer any questions
that other students in the class may
have about the folk tale’s plot or
characters.
Read the excerpt below from Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills; then answer the
three questions that follow.
A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before
dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human
beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the
grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken workers are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their
pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air. . .
Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the window-pane, and looking
out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float
up before me,—a story of this old house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think
it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or
pleasure.—I know: only the outline of a dull life, that long since, with thousands of dull lives like
its own, was vainly lived and lost: thousands of them,—massed, vile, slimy lives, like those of the
torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.—Lost? There is a curious point for you to settle, my
friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest.
This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes,
and come right down with me,—here, into the thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I
want you to hear this story. There is a secret down there, in this nightmare fog, that has lain
dumb for centuries.
9. This passage best exemplifies which of
the following types of fiction?
A. folklore
B. realist
C. gothic
D. idealist
9. Poetry characteristically relies most
heavily upon which of the following to
convey meaning?
A. logic and reason
B. narrative metamorphosis
C. sequential action
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D. figurative language and form
9. Read the passage below, taken from an Apache oral tradition; then answer the question that
follows.
But now the earth was all dry, except for the four oceans and the lake in the center, where the beaver had
dammed up the waters. All the people came up [from the underworld]. They traveled east until they
arrived at the ocean; then they turned south until they came again to the ocean; then they went west to
the
ocean, and then they turned north. And as they went, each tribe stopped where it wanted to. But the
Jicarillas continued to circle around the hole where they had come up from the underworld. Three times
they went around it, when the ruler became displeased and asked them where they wished to stop. They
said, "In the middle of the earth." So he led them to a place very near Taos and left them, and there near
the Taos Indians, the Jicarillas made their home.
Which of the following best describes the
function of the oral tradition related above
in Jicarilla Apache culture?
A. to demonstrate the bravery and
perseverance of the Jicarillas
B. to explain the origins of Jicarilla
society
C. to explore the relationship between
human activities and the environment
in Jicarilla culture
D. to describe basic religious principles
of Jicarilla society
6. Which of the following is a significant
theme shared by Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi
creation myths?
A. the role of universal moral laws in
governing human conduct
B. the importance of collective effort to
attain long-term goals
C. the role of patience in overcoming
obstacles
D. the importance of living in balance
with the natural world
12. Which of the following is an example of
the folktale genre in literature?
A. Mother Goose's nursery rhymes
B. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone
C. stories by the Brothers Grimm
D. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild
Things Are
18. Which of the following statements
accurately describes one way in which
historical fiction differs from nonfiction
historical scholarship?
A. Works of historical fiction, unlike
works of historical nonfiction,
reflect the author's interpretation
of the historical record.
B. An author of historical fiction is
more likely than an author of
historical nonfiction to assume
background knowledge on the part
of the reader.
C. Works of historical fiction are more
likely than works of historical nonfiction
to draw on primary sources
as well as secondary sources.
D. An author of historical fiction,
unlike an author of historical nonfiction,
creates dialogue and events
to fill gaps in the historical record.
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Correct Response: D. Authors of historical non-fiction collect, organize, and present
information from a multitude of sources—including public documents, vital statistics such
as birth and death dates, texts of treaties, immigration records, letters, diaries, newspaper
reports—to interpret the events of the past. Those interpretations, however, must be grounded
in the evidence that the historian has found in the source materials. Authors of historical fiction,
although drawing on the same sources and information, freely invent dialogue and incidents to
fill in gaps and maintain a connected narrati
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2B authors
8. The Danish author Hans Christian
Andersen is known primarily for writing
which of the following types of literature?
A. epic poems that retell traditional
Scandinavian myths
B. plays that analyze contemporary
political movements
C. fairy tales that appeal to both
children and adults
D. nursery rhymes that experiment with
the sounds of language
Correct Response: C. Hans Christian Andersen
(1805-1875), a Danish author, wrote works in
various genres, but he is best known for his fairy
tales, which have been translated into more
than 80 languages. Tales such as "The Ugly
Duckling," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The
Snow Queen," and "The Little Mermaid" are
considered classics and continue to be appreciated
by readers of all ages.
16. A culture's mythology is most likely to
include stories that focus explicitly on
which of the following questions?
A. How did the universe and human
life begin?
B. How can the average person achieve
success and happiness?
C. How do cultural norms evolve
throughout history?
D. How do political institutions shape
cultural identity?
Correct Response: A. The mythology of a culture typically includes an account of the
beginnings of the universe and of human life. For example, the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish
describes how the world and all people came into being from the leftover body parts of a
defeated monster; the ancient Greek myth of Eurynome describes how a cosmic egg gave
rise to all life.
17. Which of the following statements
accurately describes one way in which
fables typically differ from folk tales?
A. Fables are more likely than folk
tales to have a narrative structure.
B. Fables are more likely than folk
tales to focus on conveying a clear
moral lesson.
C. Fables are more likely than folk
tales to be based on oral tradition.
D. Fables are more likely than folk
tales to portray realistic characters
and events.
Correct Response: B. Fables such as those attributed to Aesop typically teach a moral lesson.
For example, the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare teaches the importance of patience and
persistence. Folk tales, such as those collected by Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers, are
less likely than fables to draw an explicit moral and more likely to rely on fortuitous coincidence
or an unexpected rescuer (e.g., Cinderella's fairy godmother).
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•
analyze children’s literature from a range of cultures, for both literary elements and structural
features.
2CA Picture Books
4. Picture books are an essential part of
children's literature primarily because
they feature:
A. repetition and other elements that
foster children's appreciation of
language.
B. rhyming words and sentences that
reduce the cognitive demands on
young readers.
C. images that promote young readers'
understanding of complex events or
relationships.
D. grammatical structures that mimic
conversation and strengthen
children's communication skills.
19. Which of the following lists identifies
several well-known authors of literature
for young adults?
A. Tomie De Paola, Patricia Reilly
Giff, William Steig, Rosemary
Wells
B. David McPhail, Leo Lionni, Arnold
Lobel, Steven Kellogg
C. Margaret Wise Brown, Eric Carle,
Theodore Geisel, Maurice Sendak
D. Avi, William Golding, S. E. Hinton,
Mildred Taylor
Correct Response: D. Avi, William Golding, S. E. Hinton, and Mildred Taylor are well-known
authors of young adult literature. Young adult readers continue to enjoy works such as The
True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, Lord of the Flies by Golding, The Outsiders by
Hinton, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Taylor.
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2Cb
8. Read the excerpt below, from A Story A Story, An African Tale Retold, by Gail E. Haley; then
answer the question that follows.
"Oh Nyame," said Ananse, bowing low, "here is the price you ask for your stories: Osebo the
leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornets-who-sting-like-fire, and Mmoatia the fairywhommen-never-see."
Nyame the Sky God called together all the nobles of his court and addressed them in a loud voice:
"Little Ananse, the spider man, has paid me the price I ask for my stories. Sing his praise. I
command you."
"From this day and going on forever," proclaimed the Sky God, "my stories belong to Ananse and
shall be called 'Spider Stories.' "
"Eeeee, Eeeee, Eeeee," shouted all the assemble nobles.
So Ananse took the golden box of stories back to earth, to the people of his village. And when he
opened the box all the stories scattered to the corners of the world, including this one.
Which of the following commonly
expressed themes in children's literature
is best exemplified by this passage?
A. the importance of obedience
B. an explanation of how things came
to be the way they are
C. a belief in the magic of storytelling
D. the triumph of achieving the
impossible
4. Which of the following would be most
appropriate as a theme for second-grade
students to explore through literature?
A. the exploration of space
B. telling stories through biographies
C. how technology helps us
D. the ups and downs of friendship
2.2 Concepts and Conventions (WHAT LITERARY DEVICE IS IN THIS PASSAGE?)
•
identify and evaluate structural devices in prose (theme, simile, metaphor)
2D
1. Read the passage below from Kidnapped, a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson; then answer the
question that follows.
In this passage, the narrator, a boy named Davie, is attempting to climb a dangerous old tower.
This was a grand stair! I thought. And with the thought a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my
heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that
'perhaps,' if I should break my neck for it; I got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a
snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair.
The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were
now troubled and my mind confounded by the great stir of bats in the top part of the tower, and the foul
beasts, flying downward, sometimes beat upon my face and body.
Which of the following statements best
describes the author's use of a literary
device in this passage?
A. Flashbacks highlight the contrast
between the character's past and
present circumstances.
B. Personification intensifies the
threatening tone of the narrative.
C. Descriptive details relating to the
setting create a mood of suspense and
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foreboding.
D. Comic irony undercuts the
seriousness of the narrator's situation.
Use the excerpt below from a short story to answer the question that follows.
Claude had walked nearly a mile through a soaking rain by the time the last remnants of
daylight vanished. He had no more moments in half-light; no more reassuring dusk. He
heard his heavy boots slapping across widening rivulets that cut across the road.
He remembered walking out of the woods on another logging road when he was a boy. He
had walked with uncles on his right and his left. The two men spoke in rumbling baritones
that met and mingled above his head. He had to hurry to match their aggressive strides.
Each time they came to a barrier, cattle guard, or meandering drainage from the creek, their
hands would encircle his wrists. After pulling him up and swinging him beyond the point of
danger, his uncles would set him back onto the road. He found himself missing their
assistance.
5. Beginning in the first sentence of the
second paragraph shown above, the
author provides information about a
character through the use of:
A. foreshadowing.
B. a metaphor.
C. a flashback.
D. personification.
6. In this conversation, the student most
clearly demonstrates which of the
following reading skills?
A. making predictions based on
information in a passage
B. understanding the author's point of
view in a literary passage
C. interpreting the mood of a literary
text
D. identifying the main idea of a
passage
3. Read the passage below from The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow, in which the central character,
who has always lived in rural Kentucky, arrives in the city of Detroit. Then answer the question
that follows.
It seemed suddenly to Gertie as if all the things she had seen—the blurred buildings, the smokestacks,
the
monstrous pipes wandering high above her, even the trucks, and the trains—as if all these were alive and
breathing smoke and steam as in other places under a sky with sun or stars the breath of warm and living
people made white clouds in the cold. Here there seemed to be no people, even the cars with their
rolledup
windows, frosted over like those of the cab, seemed empty of people, driving themselves through a
world not meant for people.
In this passage, the author uses description
of a setting primarily to:
A. create a mood of fear and sense
of isolation as Gertie enters an
intimidating new environment.
B. establish Gertie as a poetic spirit
who views life with a fanciful
imagination.
C. satirize the naiveté of an unsophisticated
character who is bewildered
by a new experience.
D. portray the vitality and excitement
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of urban Detroit as seen by a
newcomer
7. Read the passage below from Deephaven, a novel by Sarah Orne Jewett; then answer the
question
that follows.
In the novel, the narrator and her friend Kate, who live in Boston, spend the summer in a rural
community where Kate spent time as a child. In the excerpt below, the friends travel to a small town
nearby to see a small circus.
The circus was like all other circuses, except that it was shabbier than most, and the performers seemed
to have less heart in it than usual. They did their best, and went through with their parts conscientiously,
but they looked as if they never had had a good time in their lives. The audience was hilarious, and
cheered and laughed at the tired clown until he looked as if he thought his speeches might possibly
be funny, after all. We were so glad we had pleased the poor thing; and when he sang a song our
satisfaction was still greater, and so he sang it all over again. Perhaps he had been associating with
people who were used to circuses.
7. Which of the following best describes the
use of a literary device in this passage?
A. Figurative language helps convey
the subtle levels of emotional
interaction between the circus
performers and the audience.
B. Descriptive details emphasize
the cynical apathy of the circus
performers and their indifference
to the audience.
C. Use of the first-person point of
view stresses the urban observer's
sense of detachment from the
circus performers and rural
audience.
D. Comic irony highlights the delight
the narrator and her companion
take in observing the circus
performers and audience.
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 1.2) Comic
irony results from an amusing reversal of
expectations.
In this passage, the reader's expectation of what
normally happens at a circus contrasts with the
actuality
of the characters' experience. The narrator and her
companion are more amused by the despondency
of
the performers than by the circus acts themselves,
and are more intent on pleasing the clown than on
being
entertained by him ("We were so glad we had
pleased the poor thing")
25. Read the passage below from "The Gentlemen of the Jungle" (1938), a story by Jomo
Kenyatta;
then answer the question that follows.
In the story, an elephant makes friends with a man and asks to share the man's hut. When the man
agrees, the elephant takes over the hut and forces the man out in the rain. In the passage below, the man
objects to this treatment.
The man, seeing what his friend had done to him, started to grumble; the animals in the nearby forest
heard the noise and came to see what was the matter. All stood around listening to the heated argument
between the man and his friend the elephant. In this turmoil the lion came along roaring, and said in a
loud voice: "Don't you all know that I am the King of the Jungle! How dare any one disturb the peace of
my kingdom?" On hearing this the elephant, who was one of the high ministers in the jungle kingdom,
replied in a soothing voice, and said: "My lord, there is no disturbance of the peace in your kingdom. I
have only been having a little discussion with my friend here as to the possession of this little hut which
your lordship sees me occupying." The lion, who wanted to have "peace and tranquillity" in his kingdom,
replied in a noble voice, saying: "I command my ministers to appoint a Commission of Enquiry to go
thoroughly into this matter and report accordingly."
Which of the following statements best describes the author's use of literary devices in this passage?
A. The author uses personification to illustrate the qualities necessary for effective political leadership.
B. The author uses conventions associated with the genre of the folktale to create entertaining
characters.
C. The author uses the technique of allegory to develop a plot that teaches a moral lesson.
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D. The author uses conventions associated with the genre of the animal fable for the purpose of
political satire.
Correct Response: D. An animal fable is typically a short narrative that uses animals
as characters and conveys an edifying or cautionary message. Political satire uses irony,
sarcasm, or wit to attack the folly or vice of political individuals or institutions. The passage from
"Gentlemen of the Jungle" contains elements of both genres. As the main characters
of the passage, the elephant and the lion are made to appear ridiculous in their respective
government roles as "high minister" and "king." The cautionary message focuses on the corrupt
self-interest and pretensions of political officials who take advantage of trusting citizens.
11. In writing a literary response to this
passage, it would be most appropriate to
approach the text through an analysis of:
A. imagery.
B. conflict.
C. character.
D. symbolism.
•
identify and evaluate structural devices in poetry (rhyme, metaphor, and alliteration)
2E
Read the excerpt below from "The Children of the Poor" (1949), a poem by Gwendolyn
Brooks; then answer the two questions that follow.
Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an icebox pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and to the chair falls with a beautiful crash,
And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.
And so forth.
Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions1 are legion2.
But reaching is his rule.
1lesions: injuries
2legion: m
22. Which of the following images from the
poem best illustrates the poet's use of
paradox?
A. "he reaches out and to the chair falls
with a beautiful crash"
B. "blocks fall, down on the people's
heads"
C. "the water comes slooshing sloppily
out across the floor"
D. "kicking over a chair or throwing
blocks out of a window
Correct Response: A. Paradox refers to a seemingly contradictory statement that nonetheless
may be true. In literature, paradox may reflect surprising deviations from common perceptions
or opinions. The image from the poem ("he reaches out and to the chair falls with a beautiful
149
crash") is paradoxical in its conjoining of positive and negative elements. The idea of a young
child falling with a "crash" evokes emotions of anxiety and fear, so the use of the positive
adjective "beautiful" seems contradictory in the context of the sentence. The larger context of
the poem, however, conveys the underlying truth of the paradox by reassuring the reader that
incidents such as this, though often loud and messy, are usually benign and even positive—
evidence of the child's "beautiful" freedom to experiment and grow.
Read the passage below from "An Ox Looks at Man," a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade;
then answer the question that follows.
The narrator of the poem is an ox; in the passage below, the ox considers the place of humans in the
world.
All their1 expression lives in their eyes—and loses itself
to a simple lowering of lids, to a shadow.
And since there is little of the mountain about them—
nothing in the hair or in the terribly fragile limbs
but coldness and secrecy—it is impossible for them
to settle themselves into forms that are calm, lasting,
and necessary. . . .
1their: throughout the passage, the third-person pronouns (their, them) refer to human beings
5. This passage most clearly illustrates
which of the following poetic devices?
A. use of metaphor to stress the
similarities between human
experience and the life of animals
B. use of personification to critique
humanity's disconnection from the
natural world
C. use of conventions associated with
the genre of the animal fable to
satirize the comic foibles of human
beings
D. use of irony to highlight the
thoughtless brutality of human
beings toward animals
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 1.2) The poet
uses personification to present this passage from
the
point of view of an ox. As the speaker of the poem,
the ox comments on humanity's detachment from
the
natural world ("there is little of the mountain about
them"). The ox judges human beings harshly for
their
weakness and isolation ("nothing in the hair or in
the terribly fragile limbs but coldness and secrecy").
Unlike animals, who live in harmony with nature,
human beings are unable to "settle themselves into
forms that are calm, lasting, and necessary."
6. In ancient Greek drama, the technique
of deus ex machina may best be
described as:
A. a method for solving the problems
of the characters through divine
intervention.
B. an efficient technique for transporting
and assembling stage
scenery.
C. a means to introduce new
characters into the plot of a play
without interrupting the action.
D. a way to effect the spiritual transformation
of a character in a play.
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 1.2) Deus ex
machina, literally "god from the machine," is a Latin
phrase derived from ancient Greek. In ancient
Greek drama, gods were lowered onto the stage by
a
mechanism to extricate characters from a
seemingly hopeless situation. The phrase has
come to mean any
turn of events that solves the characters' problems
through an unexpected and unlikely intervention.
14. Which of the following phrases provides
the best example of assonance?
A. "sweet silent thought"
B. "hid in death's dateless night"
C. "love's long since cancelled woe"
D. "fore-bemoanéd moan"
Correct Response: D. The poetic device known as assonance refers to the use of same
or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening
150
consonants. The phrase "fore-bemoanéd moan," with its repeated long o sounds, exemplifies
assonance.
1. The poetic form known as the ballad may
best be described as a:
A. dramatic narrative poem that consists
of simple stanzas with a refrain that
is repeated throughout the poem.
B. celebratory song of praise expressing
spiritual feelings, usually addressed
to a divine being or beings.
C. long lyric poem written in an
elevated style with a serious tone and
having a complex stanzaic structure.
D. formal and sustained lyrical
expression of grief over the death
of a particular person, emphasizing
mutability and loss.
2. Which of the following events most directly
influenced the shift from Romanticism to
Realism in U.S. literature?
A. the outbreak of the American
Revolution
B. the disputes between the United
States and other governments over
westward expansion
C. the Civil War and the rapidly
growing industrialization of the
Northern states
D. the economic depression between
World Wars I and II
24. By setting The Canterbury Tales within
the context of a pilgrimage, Chaucer used
which of the following literary devices?
A. allegory
B. literary allusion
C. prologue
D. narrative frame
Correct Response: D. The Canterbury Tales is a long narrative poem by the fourteenth-century
English writer Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem tells a series of stories that are set within the
narrative frame of a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. The pilgrims tell the stories to win a
dinner and make time pass pleasantly as they journey from London to Canterbury. The
dramatic interaction between the tales and the framing story allows Chaucer to develop the
individual personalities of the pilgrims.
•
identify and evaluate the use of elements of persuasive argument in print
2F
9. A writer prepares to draft a persuasive
25. A seventh grade teacher designs an activity
essay that will present the writer's point
in which students first read several
of view on a controversial issue. When
news accounts of a recent event, then read
planning the essay, the writer reviews
editorials and commentaries that discuss
several major arguments that oppose the
the same event. This activity is likely to
writer's point of view. This step is most
promote the students' literacy development
likely to help the writer:
primarily by:
A. appeal to the reader's emotions.
A. providing examples of various
B. eliminate distracting details from the
nonfiction text structures (e.g.,
text's organization.
chronological, cause-and-effect).
C. define the thesis of the essay.
B. helping the students identify bias
D. present a balanced consideration of
and faulty reasoning in expository
the issues.
texts.
Correct Response: D. When preparing a
C. requiring the students to note
persuasive essay, the writer should review
differences between literal and
opposing
inferential comprehension of a text.
points of view. Understanding opposing arguments
D. increasing the students' awareness
and identifying both their strengths and
of differences between persuasive
weaknesses will help the writer develop a fair and
and informational modes of writing.
balanced essay that is persuasive to readers.
151
5. Which of the following questions
would be most useful to a reader when
attempting to determine the position of
a writer of a controversial article?
A. What facts does the author
emphasize in the article?
B. Has the author structured the article
coherently?
C. What is the author's reputation as a
writer?
D. How many authorities does the
writer cite in the article?
6. It is most important to include which
of the following when writing a
persuasion paper directed to a hostile
audience?
A. acknowledgment of the
opposition's side of the issue
B. quotations from opponents of the
readers' views
C. emotional language to bolster the
argument
D. sophisticated language to display
scholarship
9. Teaching students to look for words such
as apparently and likely when reading for
information is most likely to promote their
ability to:
A. recognize conclusions stated by the
author.
B. distinguish unsupported information
from confirmed facts.
C. make inferences about what the
author wants them to understand.
D. identify an author's use of faulty
reasonin
2.3 Interpretation of Texts (WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? IS IT ANY GOOD?)
•
analyze themes both implicit and explicit and interpret both literal and figurative meaning
2G
Read the excerpt below from "The Children of the Poor" (1949), a poem by Gwendolyn
Brooks; then answer the two questions that follow.
Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an icebox pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and to the chair falls with a beautiful crash,
And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.
And so forth.
Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions1 are legion2.
But reaching is his rule.
1lesions: injuries
2legion: m
23. Which of the following statements best
describes a significant theme of the poem?
A. Children are vulnerable to many
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physical and emotional injuries, so
adults must teach and protect them.
B. Children should be supported in
their willingness to take risks and
defy social conventions as they seek
to express themselves freely.
C. Children must be helped to conquer
their natural fears in order to overcome
obstacles in life.
D. Children must learn from experience
to regulate their actions by
developing realistic expectations
about the consequences of
destructive behavior.
Correct Response: B. The child's behaviors described in the poem appear to be physically
risky and/or socially inappropriate (e.g., kicking over a chair, throwing blocks on people's
heads, spilling water, pulling down curtains, fingering an electric outlet). However, as the
child's parent, the speaker of the poem does not express disapproval of the child's actions.
The parent shares the child's immediate desires ("we both want joy of undeep and unabiding
things") and implicitly affirms the child's courage and persistence ("Not that success, for him, is
sure, infallible./ But never has he been afraid to reach."). In this way, the poem expresses the
theme that children should be supported in their willingness to take risks and defy social
conventions as they seek to express themselves freely.
Read the poem below by William Shakespeare; then answer the two questions that follow.
Sonnet 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes bewail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan th'expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,
Which I new pay, as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
13. The tone of this poem changes from:
A. somber and mournful to serene.
B. sarcastic to sympathetic.
C. indignant and bitter to apathetic.
D. rejecting to warmly approving.
Correct Response: A. The poem begins with a somber evocation of memory, moving from mild
regret to bitter anguish as the speaker recalls unspecified failures and personal losses. In the
final couplet, the mood changes abruptly, as the speaker's recollection of a friend seems
miraculously to restore the speaker's inner peace and capacity for happiness.
6. Read the excerpt below from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," in which Aylmer
considers
a hand-shaped birthmark on the face of his young wife; then answer the question that follows.
Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at,—he might have felt
his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart;
but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every
153
moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another,
stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their
perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which
mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest,
and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it
as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not
long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever
Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
Which of the following characteristics of the
passage above represents Hawthorne's most
distinctive influence on U.S. fiction?
A. its strong emphasis on the inner life of
its characters
B. its grace and complexity of verbal
expression and style
C. its studied concentration on a minor
physical feature
D. its implicit view of nature as
inherently flawed
1. Read the poem below, "song at the african middle class" by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie; then
answer the question that follows.
we charge through the skies of disillusion,
seeking the widening of eyes, we gaze at chaos,
speak to deadened hearts and ears stopped with
commerce. We drift around our region of clowns,
walking on air as dreams fly behind our eyes.
we forage among broken bodies, fractured minds
to find just ways retraced and new like beaten cloth.
and if they come again
will they come again?
and if they come again
will they dance this time?
will the new egungun1 dance once more
resplendent in rich-glassed cloth?
will they be of their people's needs,
rise to those needs, settle whirling rifts
salve, O, festering hearts?
will they say when they come
O my people, O my people, how to love you delicately?
1egungun: a masqueraded dancer who dances in a religious ritual with the intention of making contact
with the supernatural
This poem best addresses which of the following concerns of contemporary African writers?
A. the need to retain regional cultural and language differences in the face of African unification
B. the importance of spiritual leadership and political solidarity in opposition to tyrannical dictators
C. the matriarchal role of women in nurturing and healing future generations of Africans
D. the spiritual and emotional bankruptcy arising from the loss of traditional values and aspirations
of wealth
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 1.1) This poem refers to disillusion, chaos, fractured minds,
festering hearts, and materialistic ambitions ("ears stopped with commerce"). It also conveys a
melancholy tone of longing for traditional religious rituals ("will the new egungun dance once
more . . . ?"). These elements suggest the spiritual and emotional bankruptcy associated with loss of
traditional values and aspirations of wealth, a theme addressed by many contemporary African writers
8. Read the poem below, "I Am Through" by Nguyen Trai; then answer the question that follows.
I am through living with others and their tricks.
I stay in the country, care only to be left alone.
Bamboo and plum trees do not betray you,
Monkeys and cranes are tolerant of independent souls.
I pick chrysanthemums, tend orchids:
154
Their fragrance stays in my coat.
I step on the moon in search of my plum trees,
The snow wets my kerchief.
My ears are attuned to the harp music of the brook.
As for friends, a green mountain is enough for me.
Which of the following best describes the
mood of the poem?
A. The speaker's vehement rejection of
urban life leaves him living a life of
rural deprivation.
B. The speaker's bitter anger persists
despite the temporary distractions
of seasonal change.
C. The speaker's initial loneliness and
sorrow are healed through an
ecstatic vision of cosmic unity.
D. The speaker's enhanced awareness
of nature's beauty eases his anger
and disappointment.
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 1.2) In the
opening lines of the poem, the speaker expresses
angry
disappointment with "others and their tricks" and
withdraws from society. A solitary life in nature
offers
freedom from betrayal and conformity ("Bamboo
and plum trees do not betray you, / Monkeys and
cranes
are tolerant of independent souls"). The imagery
presented in the remainder of the poem focuses on
the
peaceful beauties of nature, with a single backward
glance at the speaker's former life ("As for friends,
a
green mountain is enough for me").
Read the excerpt below from Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills; then answer the
three questions that follow.
A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before
dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human
beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the
grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken workers are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their
pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air. . .
Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the window-pane, and looking
out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float
up before me,—a story of this old house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think
it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or
pleasure.—I know: only the outline of a dull life, that long since, with thousands of dull lives like
its own, was vainly lived and lost: thousands of them,—massed, vile, slimy lives, like those of the
torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.—Lost? There is a curious point for you to settle, my
friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest.
This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes,
and come right down with me,—here, into the thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I
want you to hear this story. There is a secret down there, in this nightmare fog, that has lain
dumb for centuries.
10. In this passage, the author primarily
addresses which of the following
nineteenth century issues?
A. the environmental damage caused
by industrialization
B. the trend of intemperance in
industrial centers
C. the darker side of American
industrial prosperity
D. the social mobility brought about
by industrialization
5. The literature of Chinua Achebe, Wole
Soyinka, and other twentieth-century
African writers frequently examines
conflicts between:
A. traditional values and modern
Western ways of life.
B. individual desire and conscience.
C. women's rights and traditional
patriarchal society.
D. government policy and tribal unity.
3. Read the traditional Zen parable "The Tigers and the Strawberry" (ca. 1400 C.E.) below; then
answer the question that follows.
A man was walking across a field when he saw a tiger. He fled, but the tiger ran after him. Coming
to the edge of a cliff, he spied the root of a wild vine. Grabbing on to it, he swung himself down over the
155
edge, out of reach of the tiger. He was safe!
The tiger came to the edge and sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down and saw
another ferocious tiger prowling below. Only the thin vine held him.
Two mice, one white and one black, scurried out of a nearby nest in the cliff and began gnawing at
the vine. As they chewed, the man saw a luscious strawberry on a nearby ledge. Grasping the vine with
one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
Ah, how sweet it tasted!
The above parable most reflects the Zen
sensibility in its depiction of an
individual:
A. drifting through an indifferent,
unpredictable universe.
B. finding peace in a single, brief
moment.
C. discovering a natural, balanced order.
D. meeting the challenges of survival in
a harsh and cruel world.
4. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight most
clearly reflects which of the following
concerns of the medieval period in
Britain?
A. the decline of feudalism
B. the ethical conduct of the nobility
C. the role of the Crusades
D. the authority of the Church
5. Read the poem below by William Shakespeare; then answer the question that follows.
Sonnet 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes bewail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan th'expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,
Which I new pay, as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
The tone of this poem changes from:
A. sarcastic to sympathetic.
B. somber and mournful to serene.
C. indignant and bitter to apathetic.
D. rejecting to warmly approving.
•
analyze an author’s or narrator’s perspective in both fiction and non-fiction.
2H
4. Read the excerpt below from "A Vision Beyond Time and Place" by N. Scott Momaday; then
answer the question that follows.
When my father was a boy, an old man used to come to [my grandfather] Mammedaty's house and pay
his
respects. He was a lean old man in braids and was impressive in his age and bearing. His name was
Cheney, and he was an arrowmaker. Every morning, my father tells me, Cheney would paint his
wrinkled face, go out, and pray aloud to the rising sun.
I often think of old man Cheney, and of his daily devotion to the sun. He was a man who saw very
deeply into the distance, I believe, one whose vision extended far beyond the physical boundaries of his
time and place. In his mind's eye he could integrate all the realities and illusions of the earth and sky;
they became for him profoundly intelligible and whole.
Most Indian people are able to see in these terms. It is indeed the basis upon which they identify
themselves as individuals and as a race. When old man Cheney looked into the sunrise, he saw as far
into
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himself, I suspect, as he saw into the distance. He knew certainly of his existence and of his place in the
scheme of things.
In contrast, most of us in this society are afflicted with a kind of cultural nearsightedness. . . . [W]e do
not see beyond the buildings and billboards that seem at times to be the monuments of our civilization,
and consequently we fail to see into the nature and meaning of our own humanity. Now, more than ever,
we might do well to enter upon a vision quest of our own, that is, a quest after vision itself.
Which of the following best describes the
Native American "vision" the author
discusses?
A. a firm conviction of the uniqueness
of Native American culture
B. a unifying perception of the
interconnectedness of all things
C. a psychological insight into the
common needs of all human beings
D. a philosophical awareness of the
illusion of the material world
5. Read the excerpt below from "Discovery of the New World" by the Native American poet Carter
Revard; then answer the question that follows.
The creatures that we met this morning
marveled at our green skins
and scarlet eyes.
They lack antennae
and can't be made to grasp
your lawful proclamation that they are
our lawful food and prey and slaves
nor can they seem to learn
their body-space is needed to materialize
our oxygen absorbers—
which they conceive are breathing
and thinking creatures whom they implore
at first as angels or (later) as devils
when they are being snuffed out
by an absorber swelling
into their space. . . .
We need their space and oxygen
which they do not know how to use,
yet they will not give up their gas unforced,
and we feel sure,
whatever our "agreements" made this morning,
we'll have to cook them all:
the more we cook this orbit,
the fewer next time around.
Which of the following statements best describe the ways in which the literary techniques used in this
passage draw the reader into an unexpected point of view?
I. A metaphor from science fiction is extended to reveal a particular sensibility.
II. A distinctive diction and vivid sensory images create a convincing aura of exoticism.
III. A meditative monologue unfolds the speaker's most intimate thoughts and feelings.
IV. A dispassionate poetic voice contributes to a satiric characterization.
A. I and III only
B. I and IV only
C. II and III only
D. II and IV only
15. Read the passage below; then answer the question that follows.
In contrast to European fairy tales and folk tales, American Indian folk tales and legends
are not always self-contained stories but are frequently portions of lengthy episodes that
flow one into the next. These episodes often reach back to a nation's most ancient
traditions.
157
Characters in American Indian stories often transform their personalities unexpectedly
and without explanation. Coyote, a prominent figure in southwestern Indian tales, is one
example of this type of character. One minute Coyote is manipulative and cowardly, while
in the next he is brave and powerful. He is much like a "shape-shifter" or trickster and his
behavior reflects the dualities of nature.
These ancient tales are told for adults and children alike, often within the context of
important religious ceremonies. They serve to teach people lessons about human and
animal behavior. If one tries to apply a "Western" aesthetic to American Indian tales, one
can miss their power and beauty.
Which of the following facts from the
passage best supports the writer's
contention that American Indian tales
are quite different from European folk
tales?
A. Coyote, a prominent figure in
southwestern Indian tales, is a
character that can change
personalities unexpectedly.
B. The lengthy episodes of which
many American Indian folk tales
are a part often reach back to a
nation's most ancient traditions.
C. American Indian folk tales are
generally not self-contained stories,
but parts of longer tales that
comprise many stories.
D. American Indian folk tales serve to
teach people lessons about human
and animal behavior.
Read the excerpt below from Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man; then answer the two questions
that follow.
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I
one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and
liquids and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because
people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as
though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they
see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination indeed, everything and
anything except me.
Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That
invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with
whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which
they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting
either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the
nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you
often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other
people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to
destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back.
And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince
yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're part of all the sound and anguish, and you
strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's
seldom successful.
16. Which of the following statements most
accurately identifies the significance of
the narrator's invisibility?
A. The narrator's invisibility is the
fantastic science fiction premise
17. The voice of this passage was most
likely employed by the author for the
purpose of:
A. involving the reader more
immediately in the experience
158
that introduces the theme of an
alien's isolation among humankind.
B. The concept of the narrator's
invisibility symbolizes his personal
dilemma stemming from a sense of
social exclusion.
C. The narrator's feeling of invisibility
reflects his perception that other
people are incapable of
appreciating his superiority.
D. The narrator's invisibility
represents the first stage in his
recognition that he has died and
now exists as a ghost among the
living.
of the author's own writing process.
B. creating a sense of the uncanny
through the reader's shared
experience of this character's
strange situation.
C. drawing the reader in on a direct,
personal level to the narrator's
emotional experience.
D. reinforcing the narrator's selfcentered
egotism and aloof
detachment from those around him.
Read the excerpt below from "A Wagner Matinee" (1905), a short story by Willa Cather; then
answer the two questions that follow.
In this excerpt, the narrator listens to an orchestra perform an overture and remembers the prairie
landscape where he was raised.
With the battle between the two motifs, with the bitter frenzy of the Venusberg1 theme and its ripping of
strings, came to me an overwhelming sense of the waste and wear we are so powerless to combat. I saw
again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I
had learned to swim, the rain-gullied clay about the naked house; the four dwarf ash seedlings on which
the dishcloths were always hung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there is the flat world of the
ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched out to daybreak; to the west, a corral that stretched to
sunset; between, the sordid conquests of peace, more merciless than those of war.
1Venusberg: A legendary mountain in Germany where Venus, the Roman goddess of love, held court.
1. This excerpt is characteristic of Cather's
writing in that it:
A. clusters images of prairie life to
explore themes of war and peace.
B. draws parallels to assert the necessity
for artists to acknowledge personal
adversity in their work.
C. endows objects and events with
explicit symbolic meanings.
D. uses memory to suggest the endurance
of pioneers living on the
American frontier.
2. In this excerpt, the narrator's attitude
toward the setting can best be
described as:
A. nostalgia for the landscape that
defined the narrator's childhood.
B. a combination of respect and dread
for the power of the land.
C. regret at failing to appreciate the
prairie's underlying beauty.
D. veneration of the scale and beauty of
the prairie.
•
recognize and analyze instances of bias and stereotyping in a text.
2I
9. Read the paragraph below written by
8. Read the passage below; then answer
a seventh-grade student; then answer
the question that follows.
Politics is like parenting. In a family,
the question that follows.
I think that my brother is a gang member.
if a child doesn't follow the rules, the
This gang that I know about they all wear
parent punishes the child. Obviously any
these red and black shirts. My brother has
politician who doesn't obey the head of the
a red and black shirt a lot like that, so I
party should be punished.
think he's in that gang.
The passage best illustrates which of the
Which of the following is a major
following fallacies in logic?
weakness in the student's argument?
A. circular reasoning
A. He or she is getting information
B. false cause
from an unreliable source.
C. overgeneralization
159
D. false analogy
B. He or she is focusing on irrelevant
or unimportant details.
C. He or she does not have sufficient
facts to support his or her
conclusion.
D. He or she is not able to be objective
about this subject.
2. Read the excerpt below from "The Elk-Tooth Dress" by Dorothy M. Johnson; then answer the
question that follows.
Natalie, the teenage narrator, is describing the interaction between her grandfather and a tourist
at a meeting of Native American tribes in Montana.
Grandpa was being very Noble Red Man. He is not very tall, but he can look awful noble. He
was just looking past this white woman in a baggy tweed suit and not answering her. She was
getting more and more earnest, pointing at her camera and talking her idea of Indian English:
"Me take picture, okay? You stand still, me take nice picture?"
I was so grateful to Grandma for being on my side that I walked over and rescued him for her.
I said to him in Salish, "Come on with me if you want to get away."
The white woman said, "Honey, maybe you talk English—just tell him I want to take his picture."
So if she wanted to, why didn't she go ahead?
I murmured, "Je ne parle pas l'anglais. Mon grandpère ne parle pas l'anglais." [I don't speak
English. My grandfather doesn't speak English.]
She shook her head and said, "Oh, dear. They all talk Indian," and walked away.
This passage best illustrates:
A. multiple languages being spoken in
one setting.
B. the growth of relationships
between family members.
C. conflicts arising from stereotyping.
D. the use of humor to escape a
difficult situation
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Domain 3: Non-Written and Written Communication
3.1 Conventions of Language (WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PUNCUTATION?)
•
identify and use the conventions associated with what is called standard English in both spoken
and written English, including varieties of sentence structure, preferred usage and conventional
forms of spelling, capitalization and punctuation in written English.
3A
Use the passage below to answer the two questions that follow.
1The sled dogs were bearing the brunt of the burden, but they were rewarded for their efforts with
a fine feast each evening. 2And, as the journey across the tundra progressed, the packs on their
sleds grew lighter. 3In the evenings, the dogs lay next to one another in a furry mass to keep warm.
4Sometimes they joined in the howling of the wolf packs encircling the camp in the distance, making the
humans extremely edgy. 5The wolves seemed fearful of the campfires. 6In the mornings, the dogs will
have scrambled to their feet and shook themselves off, sometimes creating momentary rainbow bursts as
the early morning rays of sun filtered through the spraying snow and ice droplets.
3. Which of the following changes in verb
form should be made to this passage?
A. Sentence 1: Change "were rewarded"
to "have been rewarded."
B. Sentence 2: Change "grew" to "would
grow."
C. Sentence 4: Change "encircling" to
"having encircled."
D. Sentence 6: Change "will have
scrambled" to "scrambled."
2. Which of the following sentences
should be edited to correct a punctuation
error?
A. During the 1980s, my summers
were filled with grand adventures.
B. I thought, "This is a good time for
the family to gather."
C. My mother doesn't drive anymore;
she took a flight from Santa Fe.
D. Having driven all night I was
exhausted when I arrived.
Read the excerpt below from Patrick Henry's speech of March 23, 1775, to a meeting of his fellow
Virginians; then answer the two questions that follow.
I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what
there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with
which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?
Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove
a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious
reception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken
our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown
ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not
deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation—the last arguments to which
kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to
submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in
this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?
No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind
and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been for so long forging.
13. In this passage Patrick Henry develops
the question-and-answer organization
of the speech by using rhetorical
questions to:
A. highlight the discrepancy between
the conciliatory manner of the
British and their warlike actions.
B. compare and contrast the past
actions of the British with their
current policies.
C. explore a variety of possible
interpretations of the current
actions of the British government.
D. emphasize the power of American
Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 3.2) In this
passage, the use of rhetorical questions creates
dramatic emphasis for the step-by-step analysis of
the political situation in colonial America. Each
question highlights the discrepancy between Great
Britain's conciliatory manner and its warlike actions,
while each answer forcibly reveals the true motives
of the British ("Are fleets and armies necessary to a
work of love and reconciliation? . . . These are the
implements of war and subjugation. . . .").
161
colonists to triumph in an armed
conflict with the British.
the passage below; then answer the two questions that follow.
1It is not often that the publication of a single book marks an important turning point in the emergence of
a major social movement. 2But Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique did just that. 3Unlike most books,
Friedan struck a nerve in her widely read work. 4In the book, she used a number of case studies to
examine the alienation felt by many American housewives. 5These were women who had been told that
marriage and family provided all one could reasonably expect from life and later found that it did not.
6Friedan's book tried to explain this discrepancy by looking at the ways in which educators, women's
magazines, and advertisers manipulated the feminine mystique to convince women that happiness was a
house filled with the latest consumer goods.
7The women who responded to Friedan's message did not immediately take their case into the streets.
8They did, however, begin to reexamine their lives. 9Many also began searching, often outside the home,
for new means of achieving the sense of fulfillment they had been promised.
8. Which of the following sentences should
be revised to correct a misplaced
modifier?
A. Sentence 3
B. Sentence 6
C. Sentence 7
D. Sentence 9
9. Which of the following revisions is
needed to correct an error in usage?
A. Sentence 1: Change that to when.
B. Sentence 2: Delete just.
C. Sentence 5: Change it to they.
D. Sentence 9: Insert that after
fulfillment.
Read the passage below, which contains one or more errors in standard, written American
English;
then answer the two questions that follow.
1The daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, Maxine Hong Kingston grew up in Stockton, California.
2Although she could not speak English before starting school, Kingston learned quickly; later winning
a scholarship to the University of California in Berkeley. 3In 1967, she and her husband departed the
mainland for a seventeen-year stay in Hawaii. 4It was during this period that she wrote two of her
bestknown
novels: The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980).
5_____________________________________________________________. 6Memory, she explained
to
one interviewer, helps a writer capture an eternal essence. 7Once she has captured that essence,
Kingston
struggles to put it into a written form that will be accessible to readers. 8In the process, she uses her
imagination to approach and develop the characters in her work. 9Indeed, as these characters are
generally
ancestors whom she has never met, it is imperative that she be able to deal with them imaginatively.
5. Which revision is needed to correct an error
in punctuation?
A. Sentence 2: Change the semicolon
after "quickly" to a comma.
B. Sentence 4: Change the colon after
"novels" to a semicolon.
C. Sentence 6: Eliminate the comma
after "interviewer."
D. Sentence 7: Eliminate the comma
after "essence."
6. A word processing program's spell-check
feature is most likely to identify a spelling
error in which of the following sentences?
A. They gave the horse some oats and
braided its main the morning of the
big race.
B. After washing the car, she changed
it's oil and spark plugs.
C. The commitee decided to meet again
the following day for further
discussion.
D. I was feeling a little week after
running five miles.
Correct Response: C. A computer spell-check
feature identifies as incorrect only those words
that violate standards of conventional modern
English spelling. Because a computer spellcheck
162
program does not usually evaluate context, the
spell-check cannot distinguish between
homophones (e.g., main/mane) or account for
usage (e.g., it's/its). The word committee has no
homophones and retains the same spelling in all
contexts, so a spell-check would identify
commitee as a misspelling.
Read the paragraph below; then answer the two questions that follow.
1Some writers produce early works that foreshadow future masterpieces. 2At the tender age of thirteen,
H. G. Wells wrote an entire novella, The Desert Daisy, complete with a map and illustrations. 3Virginia
Woolf, at age ten, wrote a journal entry and gave it the title "To the Lighthouse." 4As a nine-year-old,
Helen Beatrix Potter's drawings of wild flowers won acclaim; by the time she was a teenager, Potter's
descriptive prose was as beautiful as her drawings. 5By age sixteen, T. S. Eliot had written a South Seas
vignette and a lovely poem called "A Lyric."
8. Which of the following revisions is
needed to make this paragraph conform
to the conventions of standard written
English?
A. Reposition the period in Sentence 3
to be outside the quotation marks.
B. Revise Sentence 3 to correct an error
in pronoun-antecedent agreement.
C. Revise Sentence 4 to eliminate a
misplaced modifier.
D. Replace the semicolon in Sentence 4
with a comma.
8. Which of the following sentences needs
to be revised to correct a grammatical
error?
A. While hiking through the forest,
one of the campers sprained his
ankle.
B. There will be additional copies of
the textbook available next week.
C. It rained for an hour each morning,
but all of the clouds vanished by
noon.
D. My self-defense instructor saw my
sister and I at the grocery store.
15. Inspection of Property
a) Property Inspection: Unless otherwise stated, Buyer shall have the choice of inspecting the
property to determine its condition. Buyer may also, at Buyer's expense, hire an outside service
to perform the inspections. To satisfy the terms of this contract, the property must meet the
following requirements to ensure that it is in livable condition:
1. The electricity, plumbing, heat, and major appliances are working properly and not in
need of immediate repair.
2. The roof, windows and doors, and all structural elements of the property are not in need
of immediate repair.
3. The property shows no evidence of flooding or other unusual water leakage.
4. The property contains no loose or crumbling lead paint or asbestos.
b) Destructive Insects: Unless otherwise stated, Buyer may obtain, at Buyer's expense, an
inspection report performed by a licensed pest control service. This report shall list any
evidence of termites, carpenter ants, or other wood-destroying insects, or damage from such
insects.
c) Repairs: If any repairs are necessary, Seller may choose or refuse to complete them. If Seller
refuses to complete the repairs, the Buyer may choose between the following two options: The
Buyer may either 1) except the property in its present condition or 2) terminate the contract. In
the case of terminating the contract, all down payments by the Buyer shall be refunded. Any
items not included under a), b), or c) above shall be excluded from the terms of this contract.
d) Closing: The Closing on the property shall indicate acceptance by both Buyer and Seller of all
items and conditions of the property listed above.
1. Which of the following words underlined in
the excerpt above is used incorrectly?
A. its
B. loose
C. between
D. except
2. In which sentence is the underlined verb
form used correctly?
A. All of the seedlings germinates in
greenhouse 7.
B. A potential source of contamination
threaten the aquifer.
163
C. One farmer in this area utilizes
integrated pest management.
D. The horse trainer supplement the feed
with high-quality hay.
4. Read the passage below; then answer the
question that follows.
1The accuracy of weather forecasting
has greatly improved with computer
technology, predicting the weather remains
imperfect. 2Weather forecasters observe the
weather at any given moment; then they
predict what the weather will be hours or
days later. 3In the 1800s, scientists began to
make simultaneous weather observations at
a particular time across a region, they
plotted these observations on a map. 4Today
television weather reporters illustrate their
forecasts; using computer-generated weather
maps.
In which sentence above are two ideas
joined using correct structure and
punctuation?
A. Sentence 1
B. Sentence 2
C. Sentence 3
D. Sentence 4
5. Which underlined word in the sentence
below is spelled correctly?
After consulting with the decorater, the
carpenter created a beautifull table for the
hotel dinning room.
A. decorater
B. created
C. beautifull
D. dinning
164
Use the passage below to answer the two questions that follow.
1The sled dogs were bearing the brunt of the burden, but they were rewarded for their efforts with
a fine feast each evening. 2As the journey across the tundra progressed, the packs on their sleds
grew lighter. 3In the evenings the dogs lay next to one another in a furry mass to keep warm.
4Sometimes they joined in the howling of the wolf packs encircling the camp in the distance.
5The wolves were fearful of the campfires. 6In the mornings, the dogs will have scrambled to
their feet and shook themselves off, sometimes creating momentary rainbow bursts as the early
morning rays of sun filtered through the spraying snow and ice droplets.
4. Which of the following changes in verb
form should be made to this passage?
A. sentence 1—change were rewarded
to have been rewarded
B. sentence 2—change grew to would
grow
C. sentence 4—change encircling to
having encircled
D. sentence 6—change will have
scrambled to scrambled
Correct Response: D. In sentence 6, the phrase "will have scrambled" is in the future
perfect-tense, communicating the idea that the dogs' actions will be happening at some
time in the future. In fact, the actions described occurred in the past. Therefore, the past
tense "scrambled" should be used instead of "will have scrambled.
2. Which of the following sentences
should be edited to correct a punctuation
error?
A. During the 1980s, my summers
were filled with grand adventures.
B. I thought, "This is a good time for
the family to gather."
C. My mother doesn't drive anymore;
she took a flight from Santa Fe.
D. Having driven all night I was
exhausted when I arrived.
3. Choose the best word or words to
complete the sentence below.
The finished commercial that he
produced was ________ replaced by
an earlier version.
A. on accident
B. accidentally
C. as accident
D. accidental
3.2 Writing Applications (WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PARAGRAPH?)
•
demonstrate their knowledge of principles of composition, such as paragraphing, transitional
phrases, appropriate vocabulary, and context.
3B
1. Read the paragraph below; then answer
the question that follows.
1Day-care center staff members are required
to wash all surfaces with a cleaning solution
at least four times each day. 2You also
sanitize the diaper-changing areas
thoroughly after each use. 3Staff follow
specific procedures for cleaning children
during diaper changes and after eating.
4They also wear latex gloves when handling
food or changing diapers and wash their
hands thoroughly and frequently.
In which sentence does the writer change
from a third-person to a second-person point
165
of view?
A. Sentence 1
B. Sentence 2
C. Sentence 3
D. Sentence 4
10. Read the paragraph below; then answer the question that follows.
Whether it is better to buy a home or rent a place to live is a debatable issue. Those who favor buying
usually mention tax deductions and potential profits from the resale of property as major advantages.
They also note that there is comfort in being able to make residential modifications without having to
consult a landlord. ________, those who favor renting contend that a renter is not tied down with the
financial and maintenance obligations of a homeowner. In addition, many people simply cannot afford
the large down payment required for a mortgage. For anyone faced with the choice of buying or renting,
both sides offer points well worth considering.
Which of the following words would
provide the best transition if inserted
into the blank space in this paragraph?
A. Similarly
B. In addition
C. On the other hand
D. Instead
4. When skimming and scanning an
informative text to find a sequence
of steps, it is most useful to look
for transition cues such as:
A. because; since.
B. if; unless.
C. although; while.
D. initially; next.
•
compose and/or analyze writing according to conventions in different genres, including narrative,
interpretive, descriptive, persuasive and expository writing, as well as summaries, letters, and
research reports.
3C
3. Read the excerpt below from an essay written by a ten-year-old child; then answer the question
that follows.
1Summer is supposed to be carefree and fun. 2This past summer at the city pool was anything but
carefree. 3Three different kids had accidents at the pool that happened because someone was not
careful. 4If swimmers don't follow the safety rules at the swimming pool, accidents and injuries
can happen too easily. 5In June, a fourth grader dove into very shallow water and just missed
hitting his head at the bottom of the pool. 6He was lucky. 7Two weeks later, a girl was pushed
into water that was over her head by someone who was playing around. 8The girl was surprised
and frightened. 9She swallowed some water and had a hard time getting to the side of the pool.
10The person who pushed her in did not know that she was a poor swimmer. 11During August,
three 8-year-old girls were running across the wet deck, when one girl fell and broke her wrist.
12Kids that age should not be at the pool without an adult. 13Nobody likes to be told what to do,
and some kids think that the pool rules are too strict. 14Looking back at last summer, however,
we can see that there are good reasons for rules.
In which of the following parts of the
excerpt does the writer use faulty
reasoning?
A. Sentences 4 and 5
B. Sentences 7 and 8
C. Sentences 11 and 12
D. Sentences 13 and 14
1. Students in a middle school social
studies class are learning about the Civil
166
War. They have read various historical
and fictional accounts about the people
who experienced the war firsthand.
Which of the following activities would
be most likely to extend the students'
understanding of the social and
emotional issues surrounding the war?
A. creating a videotaped reenactment
of various Civil War battles
B. writing historically accurate
fictional letters home from the
viewpoint of one of the soldiers
C. presenting oral reports based on
research from history resources
D. creating timelines that chart the
significant events leading up to
the Civil War period
The words "for purple mountain majesties" might well have been written with New York State's Catskill
Mountains in mind. Well-wooded and replete with clear lakes, rushing streams, and roaring waterfalls
dropping into deep gorges, the Catskills have long inspired artistic imaginations. During the nineteenth
century, the artists of the Hudson River School struggled to depict the distinctive beauty of these
spectacular mountains with their combination of misty light, brilliant color, and awesome topography.
Which of the following additional details
would contribute most to the development
of the main point of the passage?
A. The Catskills are not particularly
tall; Slide Mountain, their tallest
peak, rises only 4,024 feet above sea
level.
B. Asher B. Durand, in particular,
experimented with the misty light
and craggy views of the Catskills in
his romantic representations of
them.
C. During the early twentieth century,
developers capitalized on the beauty
of the Catskills by building posh
resorts there.
D. Later artists such as Albert Bierstadt
followed the example of the Hudson
River School in painting landscapes
of the American West.
Correct Response: B. The main idea of the passage is that the distinctive beauty of the
Catskills has been an inspiration to artists. Of the possible answers, only B develops this
idea, describing the way in which a particular artist depicted the Catskills in his painting
•
revise and edit writing, drawing upon their understanding of principles of organization,
transitions, point-of-view, word-choices, and conventions.
3D
Read the passage below; then answer the two questions that follow.
1Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. 2Despite extensive travel later
in
life, he never forgot the Mississippi River town where he spent his earliest years. 3With his father's death, he
left
school at age eleven to learn the printing trade. 4In such works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and
Life
167
on the Mississippi (1883), he turned his boyhood experiences into memorable fictional narratives. 5Hannibal
and
the Mississippi also provided the backdrop for his most influential novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884). 6In it, Twain combined broad-ranging humor with biting social satire in a masterful exploration of the
freedom and innocence of youth.
7_________________________________________________________________________ 8To be sure, he
continued to write successful books. 9Nor did he ever lose the extraordinary command of language that had
marked his writing from the outset. 10But his increasingly dark vision of society and human nature formed an
unappealing contrast with the cheerful skepticism of earlier novels. 11As the personal, economic, and physical
misfortunes of old age clouded once vibrant memories of youth, Twain became ever more embittered and his
work suffered as a consequence.
3. Which of the numbered sentences contains
distracting details that interfere with the
development of the main point of the first
paragraph?
A. Sentence 2
B. Sentence 3
C. Sentence 5
D. Sentence 6
4. When added to the beginning of the
second paragraph, which sentence would
provide the best transition?
A. In later novels, Twain never
recaptured the balance between
humor and pessimism that made
Huckleberry Finn so compelling.
B. After Huckleberry Finn, Twain
adopted a different tack in his work.
C. A Connecticut Yankee at King
Arthur's Court (1889), The Tragedy
of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and
other later novels were not nearly as
well received as Huckleberry Finn.
D. Huckleberry Finn was the best, but
by no means the last, of Twain's
novels.
Use the passage below to answer the two questions that follow.
1The sled dogs were bearing the brunt of the burden, but they were rewarded for their efforts with
a fine feast each evening. 2And, as the journey across the tundra progressed, the packs on their
sleds grew lighter. 3In the evenings, the dogs lay next to one another in a furry mass to keep warm.
4Sometimes they joined in the howling of the wolf packs encircling the camp in the distance, making the
humans extremely edgy. 5The wolves seemed fearful of the campfires. 6In the mornings, the dogs will
have scrambled to their feet and shook themselves off, sometimes creating momentary rainbow bursts as
the early morning rays of sun filtered through the spraying snow and ice droplets.
4. Which of the following revisions would best
improve the overall unity of this text?
A. Delete the second part of Sentence 1.
B. Switch the order of Sentences 2
and 3.
C. Delete Sentence 5.
D. Move Sentence 6 to the beginning of
the text.
14. Students watch a videotaped news story
about events that took place during a
political protest. The camera operator
has taken only "live" footage. To
initiate a discussion of the methods that
can be used to create visual messages,
which of the following questions should
the teacher ask first?
A. Which elements of the protest did
the camera operator choose to
record?
B. Does this footage make you want
to participate in a protest like this
one?
C. Why was the camera operator sent
to videotape this political protest?
D. Will viewers understand what
happened during this protest?
2. Use the excerpt below from an essay by
a fourth-grade student to answer the
168
question that follows.
1In my opinion, dogs are the smartest animals. 2Dogs can learn to do lots of
stuff, like chasing a ball and sitting. 3Cats don't really like to learn things, most of
the time. 4Some dogs can roll over and bark when you tell them. 5I saw on TV there was a dog that saved a
family from a
fire. 6My friend has a cat. 7It just sits in
the window when it is sunny. 8This is
why I want a dog more than a cat.
Which of the following changes would
most improve the coherence of the
excerpt?
A. Clarify the reference of the pronoun
it in Sentence 7.
B. Place Sentence 3 after Sentence 5.
C. Provide more evidence for the claim
in Sentence 3.
D. Place Sentence 8 after Sentence 1.
Read the passage below, which contains one or more errors in standard, written American English;
then answer the two questions that follow.
1The daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, Maxine Hong Kingston grew up in Stockton, California.
2Although she could not speak English before starting school, Kingston learned quickly; later winning
a scholarship to the University of California in Berkeley. 3In 1967, she and her husband departed the
mainland for a seventeen-year stay in Hawaii. 4It was during this period that she wrote two of her bestknown
novels: The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980).
5_____________________________________________________________. 6Memory, she explained to
one interviewer, helps a writer capture an eternal essence. 7Once she has captured that essence, Kingston
struggles to put it into a written form that will be accessible to readers. 8In the process, she uses her
imagination to approach and develop the characters in her work. 9Indeed, as these characters are generally
ancestors whom she has never met, it is imperative that she be able to deal with them imaginatively.
4. Which of the following sentences, if added
as Sentence 5, would best fit the writer's
ordering of ideas in the second paragraph?
A. Childhood experiences made a
lasting impression on Kingston.
B. Kingston has an excellent memory.
C. Memory and imagination are two key
elements in Kingston's work.
D. Kingston spends a great deal of time
thinking about the past.
Read the paragraph below; then answer the two questions that follow.
1Some writers produce early works that foreshadow future masterpieces. 2At the tender age of thirteen,
H. G. Wells wrote an entire novella, The Desert Daisy, complete with a map and illustrations. 3Virginia
Woolf, at age ten, wrote a journal entry and gave it the title "To the Lighthouse." 4As a nine-year-old,
Helen Beatrix Potter's drawings of wild flowers won acclaim; by the time she was a teenager, Potter's
descriptive prose was as beautiful as her drawings. 5By age sixteen, T. S. Eliot had written a South Seas
vignette and a lovely poem called "A Lyric."
7. Which of the following sentences in the
paragraph shown above should be revised
to eliminate the use of a cliché?
A. Sentence 2
B. Sentence 3
C. Sentence 4
D. Sentence
169
17. Read the letter below to a publisher; then answer the question that follows.
To whom it may concern:
1 I am writing to suggest a revision to the Third Edition of your anthology on children's
literature One Before the Mast: Sailing on a Sea of Stories. 2 One of the stories, "Janey on
Board," contains images and language that are biased against girls.
3 In this story, the girls are always described as cute and sweet. 4 They all wear pink or pastelcolored
clothing, and are described with weak, passive language. 5 In contrast, the boys are
described as tough and strong, and are usually described with bold, active language. 6 While
I realize an author may sometimes make this choice in order to prove a particular point, this
is not the case in this story. 7 Rather, the author simply lacks sensitivity to gender bias.
8 I think it is crucial to children's development for boys and girls to be treated equally,
especially in literature. 9 Frankly, I am surprised to encounter this kind of bias in a highquality
publication such as yours, and am disappointed to find this story among so many
other good ones. 10 My favorite was the trilogy about the mermaid's adventures among the
whales, which reminded me of dreams I had as a child vacationing with my family by the
sea. 11 Please consider eliminating "Janey on Board" from your next edition. Thank you.
Which of the following sentences
interferes with the development of the
main point in this passage?
A. sentence 1
B. sentence 7
C. sentence 8
D. sentence 10
170
3. Read the excerpt below from an essay written by a ten-year-old child; then answer the question
that follows.
1Summer is supposed to be carefree and fun. 2This past summer at the city pool was anything but
carefree. 3Three different kids had accidents at the pool that happened because someone was not
careful. 4If swimmers don't follow the safety rules at the swimming pool, accidents and injuries
can happen too easily. 5In June, a fourth grader dove into very shallow water and just missed
hitting his head at the bottom of the pool. 6He was lucky. 7Two weeks later, a girl was pushed
into water that was over her head by someone who was playing around. 8The girl was surprised
and frightened. 9She swallowed some water and had a hard time getting to the side of the pool.
10The person who pushed her in did not know that she was a poor swimmer. 11During August,
three 8-year-old girls were running across the wet deck, when one girl fell and broke her wrist.
12Kids that age should not be at the pool without an adult. 13Nobody likes to be told what to do,
and some kids think that the pool rules are too strict. 14Looking back at last summer, however,
we can see that there are good reasons for rules.
In which of the following parts of the
excerpt does the writer use faulty
reasoning?
A. Sentences 4 and 5
B. Sentences 7 and 8
C. Sentences 11 and 12
D. Sentences 13 and 14
171
Use the passage below to answer the two questions that follow.
1The sled dogs were bearing the brunt of the burden, but they were rewarded for their efforts with
a fine feast each evening. 2And, as the journey across the tundra progressed, the packs on their
sleds grew lighter. 3In the evenings, the dogs lay next to one another in a furry mass to keep warm.
4Sometimes they joined in the howling of the wolf packs encircling the camp in the distance, making the
humans extremely edgy. 5The wolves seemed fearful of the campfires. 6In the mornings, the dogs will
have scrambled to their feet and shook themselves off, sometimes creating momentary rainbow bursts as
the early morning rays of sun filtered through the spraying snow and ice droplets.
5. Which of the following revisions would
best improve the overall unity of this text?
A. delete the second half of sentence 1
B. switch the order of sentences 2
and 3
C. delete sentence 5
D. move sentence 6 to the beginning of
the text
Correct Response: C. The passage describes a
particular group of sled dogs during a journey.
Sentence 5, "The wolves were fearful of the
campfires," does not pertain to the main idea of the
narrative and should be deleted to improve the
overall unity of the passage.
6. Read the paragraph below from a twelfth-grade student's paper; then answer the question that
follows.
1Many people in our community want to see a new youth center built on Henry Street.
2When it comes to activities and entertainment, the teens in this town have too few options.
3It is good that the mayor and chief of police support the center, but actions speak louder than
words. 4They are the people who are in a position to move the project forward.
Which of the following sentences in the
paragraph shown above should the
student revise to eliminate the use
of a cliché?
A. Sentence 1
B. Sentence 2
C. Sentence 3
D. Sentence 4
1. Read the passage below; then answer
the question that follows.
1Our town library is a small, square,
granite building. 2In its pleasantly
cluttered rooms—amid pots of daffodils,
books in the process of being logged
in, a basket of photos from last year's
costume party—musical performances are
held on Sunday afternoons. 3There's
almost always an evening reading-anddiscussion
group available for adults,
on subjects from world religions to Native
Americans and the colonial landscape. 4In
the back corner is the volunteer-staffed
homework center, which includes a
computer with a CD/ROM that is used by
everyone from six year olds reading
animated storybooks to middle school
students researching their reports on the
172
states. 5Modest as it is, our little library is
a vital center of our community.
Which of the following sentences from the
passage above is a general statement?
A. sentence 1
B. sentence 2
C. sentence 4
D. sentence 5
7. Read the passage below; then answer the question that follows.
The words "for purple mountain majesties" might well have been written with New York State's Catskill
Mountains in mind. Well-wooded and replete with clear lakes, rushing streams, and roaring waterfalls
dropping into deep gorges, the Catskills have long inspired artistic imaginations. During the nineteenth
century, the artists of the Hudson River School struggled to depict the distinctive beauty of these
spectacular mountains with their combination of misty light, brilliant color, and awesome topography.
Which of the following additional
details would contribute most to the
development of the main point of the
passage?
A. The Catskills are not particularly
tall; Slide Mountain, their tallest
peak, rises only 4,024 feet above sea
level.
B. Asher B. Durand, in particular,
experimented with the misty light
and craggy views of the Catskills in
his romantic representations of
them.
C. During the early twentieth century,
developers capitalized on the beauty
of the Catskills by building posh
resorts there.
D. Later artists such as Albert Bierstadt
followed the example
of the Hudson River School
in painting landscapes of the
American West.
3.3 Writing Strategies (HOW DO I TEACH WRITING?)
•
describe the stages of the writing process.
3E
3. As part of the writing process, it is most
appropriate and effective for students to
use peer conferences for which of the
following purposes?
A. to develop a list of potential topics
to use for their writing
B. to learn whether their ideas are well
developed and their writing is clear
C. to put the important ideas for their
writing down on paper
D. to correct the most obvious errors in
their spelling and punctuation
7. Peer revision aids writers in the
composing process primarily by:
A. allowing for time between writing
steps.
B. providing insight into how the text
communicates to others.
C. exposing writers to a broad variety
of styles and genres.
D. providing an opportunity for
writers to socialize and see
each other's work.
1. Read the poem below, "Sowing Season. Evening" by Victor Hugo; then answer the question that
follows.
It is the moment of twilight.
Seated under a portal, I admire
173
This end of day illuminating
The last hours of labor.
In the fields bathed by night,
Deeply moved, I gaze on the rags
Of an old man scattering fistfuls
Of future harvest in the furrows.
Tall, his dark silhouette
Towers above the deep ploughing.
The fruitfulness of fleeing days
Forms visibly his belief.
He walks along the endless plain,
Going, coming, casting seeds afar,
Opens his hand once more and begins afresh,
And, a hidden witness, I meditate
While unfolding its veils
The shadow where sound mixes in
Seems to stretch up to the very stars
The august gesture of his sowing.
This poem illustrates most clearly which
aspect of Romanticism?
A. the elevation of emotion over
reason
B. the preoccupation with the heroic
figure
C. the belief in the transcendental
power of nature
D. the preference for the exotic and
remote
14. Which of the following best describes the
role of revision in the writing process?
A. Revision is a discrete phase of the
writing process that should occur
after the initial drafting phase.
B. Substantive revisions should be
finalized during the second-draft
phase of the writing process.
C. Revision is a recursive activity that
may occur at any phase of the
writing process.
D. Substantive revision should occur
primarily during the editing phase
of the writing process.
Correct Response: C. (SMR Code: 3.1) Revision
is not a single activity but is recursive, occurring as
many times as needed at any phase of the writing
process. Students, for example, may revise
outlines for
a paper to modify the topics covered or revise
prewriting exercises to explore different
approaches. Drafts
at all levels may be revised to improve any aspect
of the composition, including structural or stylistic
elements as well as written-language conventions.
Read the poem below, "I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman; then answer the two
questions that follow.
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at
sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
18. Which of the following techniques is used
19. The verse form of this poem contributes to
174
in this poem to enhance the impression of
multiple voices raised in song?
A. internal rhymes
B. syntactic parallelism
C. metrical regularity
D. onomatopoeia
its meaning primarily by:
A. emphasizing the diverse individual
cadences found in the voices of the
American people.
B. illustrating his qualifications as
a poetic spokesperson for the
American people.
C. allowing him to celebrate the
patriotic unity and loyalty of the
American people.
D. establishing a metaphor for the
disciplined industriousness of the
American people.
2. A middle school teacher meets with
students in individual conferences to
help them revise a draft essay. For
each conference, the teacher begins by
highlighting a positive aspect of the
student's draft. The conference is likely
to be most effective if the teacher takes
which of the following steps next?
A. The teacher paraphrases the main
ideas that the draft appears to
convey and encourages the student
to respond and elaborate.
B. The teacher helps the student edit
the draft to correct errors in usage
and to conform to written language
conventions.
C. The teacher identifies the weakest
aspect of the draft and explains how
the student could revise the draft to
eliminate this weakness.
D. The teacher guides the student to
create and discuss an outline of the
draft's main ideas and significant
details.
12. A teacher wants students to develop
resources for revising their writing and
wants them to be comfortable sharing
their written drafts with others. Which
of the following strategies would most
effectively address both of these goals?
A. modeling procedures for small
group revision
B. beginning each writing period with
a brainstorming session
C. asking students to read their drafts
aloud to the class
D. showing examples of final drafts to
the students
17. A middle school teacher wants to help
students learn how to offer constructive
feedback when they confer with their
partners during the initial stage of a
writing project. Which of the following
guidelines for students would be most
appropriate in this context?
A. Comment briefly on the content,
form, and mechanics of your
partner's writing.
B. Concentrate on helping your partner
develop clear and concise topic
sentences for every paragraph.
C. Suggest improvements in the
mechanics of writing, but avoid
criticizing your partner's ideas.
D. Respond to your partner's planning
so far, and suggest ideas that he or
175
she may not have considered.
19. A news editor has reviewed a story that
he feels needs major rewriting. Which
of the following is the most important
reason why the editor should have the
reporter who wrote the story rewrite it
rather than rewriting it himself?
A. to preserve the style of the original
version
B. to make the best use of editorial
time
C. to avoid the introduction of
inaccuracies into the story
D. to minimize the need to rewrite
stories in the future
•
understand the purpose and techniques of various prewriting strategies (e.g., outlining,
webbing, note-taking).
3F
2. Which of the following methods of
note-taking from a text would be most
effective in preparing for a speech on an
assigned topic?
A. copying important sentences and
quotations exactly as written
B. listing the major topic headings
from the table of contents
C. summarizing the important points
from each chapter or section
D. writing down the chapter headings
and concluding paragraphs
14. A student asks the library media specialist
where to find library resources about
transportation. Which of the following
questions should the library media
specialist ask to most effectively
determine the student's information needs?
A. What would you like to know about
transportation?
B. Do you need the resources for a
school project?
C. Would you like a magazine or a
book about transportation?
D. How many resources are you going
to need?
1. A biology teacher asks students to complete the following graphic organizer as they do a reading
assignment on food chains.
Having students complete this graphic
organizer as they read is most likely to
promote their learning by:
A. prompting them to think
consciously about their own
thinking processes.
176
B. helping them identify key concepts
and the relationships among them.
C. highlighting for them key interdisciplinary
connections involving
the topic.
D. guiding them to recognize their
preconceptions about the topic.
6. Use the information below to answer the
question that follows.
After taking a field trip to the zoo, a
teacher leads the class in making the
semantic web shown above. As a
prewriting activity, creating this web
would be most useful for helping
students to:
A. select details they want to include.
B. recognize unnecessary information.
C. consider the interests of their
audience.
D. organize their ideas for writing
topics.
14. A first-grade teacher who is working with
a group of beginning readers gives each
student a set of word cards. On each card
is printed a word that the students already
have learned to read (e.g., he, she, sees,
loves, has, the, a, dog, cat, pail). The
teacher shows the students how to arrange
the cards to create a statement (e.g., she
sees the cat). Students then create their
own statements and read them aloud. One
goal of this activity is to promote students'
reading development by reinforcing word
recognition skills. In addition, this
activity can be expected to promote
students' writing development by:
A. helping them learn to view writing
as a useful tool for communication.
B. promoting their recognition of
similarities and differences between
written and oral language.
C. building their understanding of
basic syntactic structures.
7. Nina, a sixth grader with below-gradelevel
writing skills, is very enthusiastic
about projects that allow her to use art to
complement her written work. Concerned
that Nina will not push herself to improve
her writing if given the chance to draw,
the teacher has asked her not to include
drawings in her writing assignments.
Which of the following is the best
assessment of the teacher's strategy to
improve Nina's writing?
A. It is not helpful because it will
dampen her enthusiasm for writing
while discouraging her from
expressing herself artistically.
B. It is an important step in weaning
Nina from her dependence on direct
representation and promoting her
ability to represent ideas abstractly.
C. It is misplaced because, at Nina's
age, she should be allowed to produce
what she wants in class, while
her writing needs are addressed by a
language arts specialist.
D. It is useful because Nina needs to
recognize that her writing is deficient
and that improvement will
require focusing on writing rather
than art.
15. Which of the following statements best
defines freewriting and its use in the
writing process?
A. Freewriting involves writing
continuously for a specified amount
of time and is best used by student
writers to generate ideas for their
writing.
B. Freewriting involves writing
without the use of punctuation
and is best used by teachers to
demonstrate how punctuation helps
the reader understand a text.
C. Freewriting involves writing in
a personal diary for one's own
satisfaction and is best used by
student writers to maintain creative
fluency.
D. Freewriting involves writing on
specific topics that will not be
revised or graded and is best used
by teachers to build students'
177
D. helping develop their understanding
of the value of writing conventions
(e.g., capitalization, punctuation).
confidence in their ability to write
essays.
7. It is typically most productive for a
teacher to introduce a writers' workshop
to a class of second graders by:
A. providing a literacy box for each
child, including writing supplies,
so that students are ready to write.
B. giving all of the children an
opportunity to tell about
themselves in order to open them
to writing.
C. creating a well-organized,
attractive writing center that invites
the children to participate in
writing.
D. describing to the children how
writing can be used in different
settings for various purposes.
12. Which of the following statements made
by a teacher would likely promote the
students' most active and effective use
of the drafting and revising steps in the
writing process?
A. If you think your writing is ready
to be published, there can be no
spelling, grammar, or punctuation
errors in the final version.
B. When you state a position in your
work, you must include support for
that position in your writing.
C. If you need to find a better way to
express your ideas, there is nothing
wrong with making changes or
starting over.
D. When people read and evaluate
your writing, you are not obligated
to make any of the changes they
might suggest.
10. Following a classroom visit from a local
artist, a fourth-grade teacher works with
students to help them write individual
thank-you notes they can send to their
guest. The context of this writing
activity is effective for promoting the
student's literacy development primarily
because it gives them:
A. an opportunity to express their
opinions.
B. a task that is developmentally
appropriate.
C. a way to demonstrate their
creativity.
D. a real-world purpose for their
writing
•
construct and evaluate their own narratives
3G
5. A growing number of the students in an
elementary school are native Spanish
speakers in a bilingual program. Which
of the following would be the school
librarian's best response to this change
in the student population?
A. developing a section of books that
provide Spanish speakers with
common English phrases and
idioms
B. developing a plan for building up
the library's collection of Spanishlanguage
print and nonprint
resources
16. A ninth-grade student asks the school
librarian for help finding information on
Martha Graham. Which of the following
would be the librarian's best initial
response?
A. Show the student how to use
the online public access catalog
(OPAC) to research the topic.
B. Help the student identify an
appropriate encyclopedia volume
and other relevant reference works.
C. Show the student how to use the
browse function of the electronic
database.
178
C. initiating a program to encourage
Spanish-speaking students to bring
books from home to share with their
classmates
D. planning to spend part of the school
library budget on Spanish-language
textbooks
D. Interview the student briefly to
identify and clarify specific
information needs.
7. As part of an essay-writing assignment,
a high school student has selected a main
idea but is having difficulty figuring out
which details to include. Which of the
following prewriting strategies is likely
to be most effective in addressing this
difficulty?
A. listing
B. brainstorming with a classmate
C. freewriting
D. creating a semantic map
16. For the past week, students in
Ms. Burgess's fifth-grade class
have been writing original stories.
Ms. Burgess observes that some students
are spending their daily writing period
adding on to their stories, making them
longer but not necessarily better, and
making no revisions except occasional
corrections of misspelled words. She
wants to encourage these students to take
a broader, more exploratory approach to
revision—to review and evaluate their
work and then reshape it based on new
insights. Which of the following teaching
strategies would be most effective in
achieving this goal?
A. asking students to think about
what parts of their story are most
important and whether they have
described these parts clearly and
effectively
B. encouraging each student to place
an appropriate limit on the length of
his or her story based on the number
of characters and events the student
intends to include
C. having students brainstorm words
related to the subject of the stories
they are writing and decide which
words might be incorporated in
their work
D. suggesting that students begin
each writing period by drawing
an illustration that depicts the main
story idea they wish to convey in
their writing for that day
•
3H
construct and evaluate their own reports
5. A student is unable to find sufficient
resources for a research project in
the library media center. The library
media specialist suggests that the student
search collections of other libraries
belonging to a local network. In order to
accomplish this task the student needs to
know how to:
A. fill out an interlibrary loan request
Correct Response: D. In order to search collections
of other libraries belonging to a local
network, a student needs to know how to access
the database and how to make a request for
the information needed. By providing instruction in
these areas, the library media specialist is
broadening the student’s knowledge of information
access skills as well as meeting his or her
immediate need for additional information.
179
form.
B. use a search engine to access
information on the Internet.
C. locate the addresses of network
member libraries.
D. conduct an online search of the
network database.
6. Which of the following library media
center resources would be most helpful in
trying to locate a particular poem or short
story in an anthology?
A. an electronic database of holdings
B. literary collections shelved by
author
C. reference indices for each genre
D. a book review index
Correct Response: C. A genre index such as the
Short Story Index is most likely to be useful to
the student. Such references typically index
thousands of anthologies, often with separate
indexes for title, author, and first line.
24. A school librarian is helping a seventhgrade
science teacher plan a class activity
in which groups of students will research
a topic of interest and then create multimedia
presentations to present their
findings. During the planning process,
the teacher expresses concern that students
may focus so much attention on the design
of their products that they will lose sight
of the content. The librarian can best help
the teacher address this issue by recommending
use of which of the following
approaches?
A. Begin the project by having students
submit a proposal that includes a
description of why they want to
research their particular topic.
B. Create student groups whose
members exhibit diverse strengths
in regard to achievement, creativity,
and background knowledge.
C. Have students use a rubric that
includes content-related criteria
to develop and evaluate their own
products.
D. Require that students submit their
research findings in the form of a
written essay as well as a presentation
the three questions that follow.
A middle school librarian is beginning
an activity with a seventh-grade class.
Students will select a career, conduct
research about that career, and create a
brochure illustrating what they have
learned.
28. The librarian asks students to cite every
book or resource they looked at, even if it
was found not to be useful, as a record of
their search. Of the following, the major
benefit of this practice is to:
A. encourage students to broaden their
searches to include a variety of
information formats.
B. provide the librarian with
information on the relevance and
inclusiveness of the vocational
collection.
C. prompt students to organize their
search strategies effectively.
D. help the librarian gain insight into
students' search strategies.
6. A high school library media specialist
requires students to write down their
strategies for locating information at the
outset of a project and to critique those
same strategies upon completion of a
project. A primary advantage of this
type of activity is that it is likely to:
A. yield consistently high-quality
search results.
B. help students gain awareness of
their thinking processes.
C. encourage originality in approaches
7. Which of the following concepts would
be most helpful for students to understand
when they are selecting key words to use
in a search of the library's online catalog?
A. All electronic searches require the
user to provide key words reflecting
currently accepted terminology.
B. Key words used in the online
catalog may differ from subject
words used to find content within
a print source.
C. Online catalogs tend to use the same
180
to information related assignments.
D. develop students' critical thinking
skills of planning and evaluating.
key words as those used for Internet
searches.
D. Online catalog searches should use
key words taken from the student's
initial research question.
6. The most effective method of instructing
students in the use of biographical
reference materials would be to:
A. describe their use and provide
reinforcement with a video.
B. have students study introductory
pages and indexes of available
biographical reference materials.
C. coordinate instruction on these
sources with a research assignment
given by a classroom teacher.
D. have students use a library
skills textbook that emphasizes
biographical references.
8. Search strategies to locate information for
research projects are likely to be most
successful when students make an effort
before starting their searches to:
A. estimate the length of time needed
to complete their investigation.
B. select an appropriate format for
communicating the information they
expect to find.
C. create a list of key terms and related
ideas.
D. anticipate problems that will require
them to adjust their search
strategies.
12. Which line on the chart correctly matches a research question with a source of information that is
likely to
be helpful in answering the question?
Line
Source
1
index to periodicals
2
encyclopedia CD-ROM
3
atlas
4
Internet search engine
Research Task
How have weather patterns changed over the past one hundred
years?
What are some recent scientific explanations of a weather
phenomenon?
What are the positive and negative effects of weather patterns on
economic activity?
How credible and useful are various books on meteorology?
A. Line 1
B. Line 2
C. Line 3
D. Line 4
Correct Response: B. Encyclopedias are a useful source of general information on a variety
of topics. A current encyclopedia CD-ROM is likely to provide reliable, updated information that
reflects recent scientific research.
6. Use the information below to answer
the question that follows.
A first grade teacher is at the beginning
stage of a class research project that is
focusing on frogs. The teacher has helped
the students generate a semantic web, such
as the one shown below, in which the
students contribute what they know about
frogs.
15. Which of the following strategies would
be most effective for students to use to
formulate a research topic that is narrow
and focused?
A. learning whether others have
written about the topic
B. identifying a topic that is
interesting to them
C. ensuring that information about
the topic is available
D. posing the topic as a question
181
to be answered
Which of the following activities
represents the next step the teacher should
take in guiding the students through the
research process?
A. Ask the students to generate
questions they have about frogs, and
add those questions to the web.
B. Read informational books about
frogs, and encourage the students to
discuss with each other what they
learned from the books.
C. Ask the students to generate a list of
possible sources that might provide
information about frogs.
D. Have the students go to the school
library to locate sources of
information about frogs.
Use the information below to answer the three questions that follow.
Mr. Batista's sixth-grade class has been studying volcanoes. He designs the following activity for the
class, which includes a number of English Language Learners.
Paragraph-Building Activity
1. The teacher leads a whole-class discussion on a topic related to the science unit on volcanoes.
2. Students form heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with three or four students in each
group. The students in each group continue discussing the topic.
3. Each student writes one or two sentences about the topic on sentence strips.
4. The members of the group then decide how to put the various sentences together, editing the
sentences as necessary to form a comprehensible paragraph about the topic and correcting any
errors in grammar or spelling.
After participating in this activity, all of the students review the chapter in their science text about
volcanoes
54. After assessing the effectiveness of this
activity, Mr. Batista decides that the
next time he offers the activity he will
include an additional step. For step 5,
Mr. Batista will guide students to develop
topic sentences for the paragraphs they
generated. This modification is most
likely to enhance students' reading
proficiency by:
A. encouraging students to draw on
prior knowledge to clarify their
understanding as they read.
B. helping students distinguish
between facts and opinions as
they read.
C. encouraging students to apply
vocabulary knowledge in new
55. The paragraph-building activity designed
by Mr. Batista is likely to promote
students' reading development primarily
by helping students:
A. apply knowledge of common
text structures to improve
comprehension as they read.
B. transfer skills from oral language to
written language.
C. use a variety of word identification
strategies.
D. understand differences between
spoken and written English.
182
contexts.
D. helping students recognize main
ideas and how supporting details
relate to main ideas.
56. Which of the following best describes one
important way in which this activity is
likely to benefit English Language
Learners?
A. Analyzing and editing individual
sentences improves the reading
fluency of English Language
Learners by helping them chunk
text as they read.
B. Combining sentences into
paragraphs encourages English
Language Learners to employ a
variety of word identification
strategies.
C. Discussing and writing about a
content-area topic supports English
Language Learners' reading of
related texts by reinforcing key
vocabulary, language structures,
and schemata.
D. Arranging sentences in a
meaningful order helps English
Language Learners develop skills
for locating and retrieving information
from content-area texts.
9. When acting as the journalistic gatekeeper,
the student editorial board of a
high school newspaper would most
likely make which of the following
topics an editorial priority?
A. the school district's consideration
of pay-to-play student involvement
in all athletics
B. the appointment of a graduate from
the school to a position on the
county commission
C. reasons for the substantial increase
in the number of nonviolent crimes
committed in the area
D. a strike at a factory that makes a
brand of shoes that is popular
among young adults
183
2. One skill that the class will be learning
during the report-writing activity is note
taking. When planning the note-taking
component, the teacher should be aware
that, in terms of cognitive development,
students of this age typically find it most
difficult to:
A. create categories for organizing
varied types of information.
B. recognize repeated information
in a text.
C. identify information that is not
related to a specific topic.
D. copy information accurately from
a text.
Correct Response: A. Of the response options given, fourth-grade students are likely to find it
most difficult to create categories for organizing varied types of information. This task requires
the higher-order thinking skills of analysis (involving the ability to break information into its
component parts and examine relationships of the parts to one another and to the whole) and
synthesis (involving the ability to put parts together to form a pattern or structure that is new to
the learner). In creating their own organizational categories, students are being asked to
organize the information they have researched and synthesize it in a creative manner that
emphasizes the discovery of new patterns or structures.
Other Responses:
• Response B. Although some fourth-grade students may have difficulty recognizing repeated
information in a text, this kind of recognition task requires thinking that is less cognitively
demanding than analysis or synthesis.
• Response C. Although some fourth-grade students may need help in identifying information
extraneous to their topic, the thinking skills required (comparing, differentiating) are less
cognitively demanding than the analysis and synthesis required for students to create their
own categories as a means of organizing information.
• Response D. Although the teacher may wish to remind the class about the importance of
taking accurate notes from texts, the thinking skill required for copying information from a
text is less cognitively demanding than analysis or synthesis.
184
10. A student journalist gets an eyewitness
account of a physical altercation that
occurred following a high school tennis
match. When assessing the credibility
of the eyewitness, which of the following
questions should the student
journalist consider first?
A. What level of self-interest does the
eyewitness have in telling the
story?
B. How willing is the eyewitness to
repeat the account to authorities?
C. Does the eyewitness focus blame
for the altercation on one person?
D. Are the friends of the eyewitness
considered reliable people?
11. A reporter is gathering information for
a feature story about men who were
drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.
Which of the following would be
considered a primary source for this
particular story?
A. news stories about the
Vietnam War
B. a military recruiter
C. a Vietnam-era veteran
D. books about the antiwar movemen
26. A school librarian is talking to a student
who is conducting online research for
a report on depletion of ozone in the
atmosphere. The student has found useful
information on the Web site of an environmental
group. The Web site uses data
from scientific studies to criticize government
policies and industrial practices that
it says contribute to the problem of ozone
depletion. The Web site includes links to
some of the studies cited and to the Web
sites of other environmental groups
concerned about this issue. The librarian
can best help the student ensure that his
report will be objective by guiding him to
take which of the following steps next in
his online research?
A. Use the links to the scientific
studies to check the accuracy of
the information presented on the
environmental group's Web site.
B. Search for other online resources
that are likely to present different
perspectives on the issue.
C. Use the links to the Web sites of
other environmental groups to
compare and contrast different
groups' views on the issue.
D. Search for additional information
about the environmental group, its
membership, and its reputation.
12. When journalists plan to use interviews
to gather information for a story, which
of the following questions should they
consider first?
A. How quickly do I need to have this
information?
B. What is it that I need to learn more
about?
C. What types of questions will I need
to ask?
D. Who can give me the information
that I need?
30. Several students in the class wish to
explore science- and technology-related
careers. Which of the following would be
the best reference source for these students
as they begin their research?
A. Dictionary of Science and
Technology
B. Occupational Outlook Handbook
C. Asimov's Biographical
Encyclopedia of Science and
7. Tom is having trouble locating pertinent
information for a social studies research
project. For the past week or so, he has
spent one hour per day looking through
several sources without finding much
useful information. He has asked the
library media specialist for help in
deciding how to proceed. The library
media specialist should suggest that
Tom make which of the following
185
Technology
D. Peterson's Guide to Colleges and
Universities
adjustments to his search strategy first?
A. devoting at least another hour each
day to research
B. reassessing his original topic or
thesis
C. revising the preliminary outline for
his project
D. rereading carefully the sources he
has already examined
2. As part of a unit on pond life, fourth-grade
students are observing the behavior of
crayfish in a classroom aquarium. How
can the library media specialist best
promote the use of information access
skills in conjunction with this activity?
A. Help students find a variety of
materials about crayfish for a
display in the library media center.
B. Present a lesson on how to use the electronic
catalog and the Internet to
locate appropriate information.
C. Collaborate with the classroom
teacher to create a research project
utilizing library media resources.
D. Place appropriate resources about
crayfish on special reserve in the
library media center.
Correct Response: C. The library media specialist
can best promote the use of information
access skills by working with the classroom teacher
to identify the goals of the project, then
determine where in the project students could
benefit by using the library media center to gather
information in support of those goals. For example,
once students have observed crayfish
behavior in the classroom, they can begin to
formulate questions to be researched in the library
media center. In this way, students can utilize
information access skills as they learn the
process of scientific inquiry.
2. A teacher is interested in using technology
to expand students' understanding of
the process of scientific inquiry. Which
of the following student activities would
most effectively meet this goal?
A. using simulation software to design
and conduct investigations
B. using the Internet to participate in
virtual field trips
C. using the Internet to research recent
scientific discoveries
D. using database software to organize
scientific data
2. Correct Response: A. (SMR Code: 3.1) The
process of scientific inquiry requires students to
learn
about the world in which they live by formulating
hypotheses and designing experiments to support
or
disprove a given hypothesis. A software program
that allows students to design and conduct
simulated
investigations would help students formulate and
test hypotheses and therefore develop their
understanding
of the process of scientific inquiry.
3.4 Research Strategies (HOW DO I TEACH RESEARCH CITATIONS?)
186
•
3I
evaluate print and electronic research sources
A middle school library media specialist
has collaborated with school faculty to
develop this questionnaire. Students are
encouraged to complete the questionnaire
during research projects that involve the
use of electronic resources. Use of the
questionnaire is most likely to enhance
students' skills in which of the following
areas?
A. using information from electronic
resources to engage in systematic
problem solving
B. resolving conflicting information
drawn from different electronic
resources
C. applying efficient search strategies
to access information from
electronic resources
D. using critical thinking to evaluate
information from electronic
resources
Correct Response: D. Critical thinking involves the
objective analysis and evaluation of
phenomena based on stated criteria. This
questionnaire, developed in collaboration between
the library media specialist and school faculty,
leads students beyond just being recipients of
information to being observers and evaluators of
that information and the way it is presented.
13. The school library media specialist can
most effectively develop connections
between the school and regional, state, and
national resources by:
A. joining local chapters of
professional organizations.
B. subscribing to publications and
resources that focus on education.
C. sending reports to legislators that
show the importance of informationbased
learning.
D. using technology to access
8. Search strategies to locate information
for research projects are likely to be
most successful when students make an
effort before starting their searches to:
A. estimate the length of time needed
to complete their investigation.
B. select an appropriate format for
communicating the information
they expect to find.
C. create a list of key terms and
related ideas.
D. anticipate problems that will
187
information resources that are
otherwise unavailable.
require them to adjust their
search strategies.
17. A high school student visits the school
library to begin a research project into
the political history of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. Which of the
following research sources is likely
to be most productive?
A. scholarly historical journals
B. a database of news stories about
the Democratic Republic of the
Congo
C. recent books about Central Africa
D. the official Democratic Republic of
the Congo Web site
8. Which of the following questions would
be most helpful for students to ask when
determining whether information found
in a particular resource expresses a fact,
point of view, or opinion?
A. Who is the author's intended
audience?
B. Why or how is the author
considered an expert?
C. Are the author's sources of
information clearly documented?
D. Can the author's information be
verified in other sources?
16. Which of the following is an ethical
consideration that should be applied when
selecting effective
evidence?
A. The evidence should be recent.
B. The evidence should contain original examples.
C. The evidence should represent the author's
intent.
D. The evidence should be based on statistics.
Correct Response: C. Debaters who seek to
strengthen an argument by presenting evidence
that
does not represent the author's intent are engaging
in misrepresentation. Such misrepresentation
does an injustice to the author of the material and
commits a serious breach of debate ethics. In
general, whether evidence is recent, contains
original examples, or is based on statistics is not
an important ethical consideration.
28. A teacher is considering using a new
software application for a class activity.
Before using the application for the first
time with the class, it would be most
advisable for the teacher to:
A. describe to students what the
application will be used for to gauge
their interest.
B. try out the various features of the
application to be sure they function
properly.
C. ask other teachers to review the
application to see if they think it is
appropriate for the students.
D. rewrite the support documentation
to ensure that it can be easily
understood by the students.
7. A third-grade teacher wants students to
use the computers in his classroom to
strengthen their writing skills. Which
of the following computer applications
would be most effective for students to
use to promote their writing fluency?
A. the editing tools of a wordprocessing
program
B. the reference materials in a
CD-ROM encyclopedia
C. the drills created by a spelling
software program
D. the browser program used to search
the Internet
14. A secondary ENL teacher makes available
several electronic dictionaries for students'
use. These devices can translate words
from a student's primary language to
English and vice versa. Such devices
would be most appropriate and helpful for
students to use in which of the following
contexts?
A. identifying synonyms and antonyms
of words for vocabulary-building
activities
B. identifying the correct syllable stress
and pronunciation of words for oral
15. Several times a week, an elementary ENL
teacher works with the class to elicit and
compose an experience story based on
school news and classroom events. After
students have become familiar with this
routine and with models for constructing a
story, the teacher invites a student with
strong writing skills to facilitate writing
the story. The teacher continues to
provide suggestions and support when
needed but stays in the background as
much as possible. As time goes on, the
teacher invites other students to be the
188
communication tasks
C. identifying and correcting errors in
spelling and syntax for composition
activities
D. understanding challenging
vocabulary for advanced reading
tasks
facilitator each day. The transition of
the teacher's role in this activity from
facilitator to audience/support person is
particularly beneficial to student learning
because it:
A. gives students more freedom to
voice their own thoughts and ideas
within a structured writing task.
B. demonstrates for students a range
of acceptable writing styles and
introduces them to different genres.
C. decreases students' dependence on
the teacher and gradually promotes
their independent writing skills.
D. provides an acceptable physical
outlet in class for students who
have high energy levels.
11. A researcher often refers to documents
that are available both in printed form
and on the Internet. In which of the
following situations would it be most
helpful for the researcher to access the
electronic version of a document?
A. The text has an extensive annotated
bibliography.
B. The researcher wants to locate
specific words or phrases in the
text.
C. The text contains unfamiliar
technical jargon.
D. The researcher wants to focus on
the text's main
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 1.4) Locating
specific words or phrases in a traditional printed
text
can be extremely time consuming, even with a
good index. If the text is available on the Internet,
this task
is greatly simplified, as the researcher can easily
use an Internet search engine to locate the word or
phrase
in the text.
10. Which of the following statements best
describes the most important advantage
of posting student writing on a Web site?
A. It provides an interactive forum
in which students can judge each
other's writing.
B. Being able to present one's work
in a public medium encourages
students to work in diverse genres.
C. It allows students to assess the
quality of their own writing.
D. Being able to communicate with
a real-life audience gives students
incentives to improve their writing.
12. While conducting research on the Internet,
a student comes across a Web site containing
brief excerpts from a variety of
famous nineteenth-century speeches. The
student would like to incorporate several
of these excerpts into a research paper.
Before doing so, it is most important that
the student:
A. determine whether the author of
the Web site is an authority on the
period.
B. check the excerpts against primary
sources to ensure that they have not
been taken out of context.
C. check whether any of the Web site's
links provide additional information
relating to the speakers.
D. examine secondary sources to
establish the historical context of
the speeches.
9. Which of the following is most important to
consider when evaluating a biographical article in a
publication?
A. publication date
Correct Response: D. Because an author's
viewpoint tends to influence how one interprets the
material in biographical articles, this viewpoint must
be given careful consideration when
189
B. extent to which footnotes are used
C. writing style
D. viewpoint of the author
evaluating such work. Publication date, the extent
to which footnotes are used, and writing
style are comparatively less important to consider
when evaluating biographical articles.
10. A secondary student is writing a report on
recycling and wants to find an overview of
the kinds of information available on this
subject by using the Internet. Which of
the following types of search methods
would be most useful for the student to
use first to locate useful information?
A. Search an on-line portal.
B. Look for a specialized subject
directory focused on the topic.
C. Visit a discussion group dedicated
to the subject.
D. Look for a specialized database on
the topic.
3. A middle school teacher has one
computer in the classroom that is
connected to the Internet. Which of the
following would be the most effective
plan for student use of this computer?
A. having students use the computer
as a reward for superior
performance
B. having students use the computer
to practice basic computer skills
C. having students use the computer
to complete drill-and-practice
activities
D. having students use the computer
for research activities
3. Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 3.1) A
single computer connected to the Internet can be
used to
conduct research on almost any topic. Individual
students or small groups of students can take turns
using
the computer to find up-to-date information that can
be printed out on paper or electronically saved to a
file.
12. While examining various Web sites
relevant to her research topic, a student
observes that the sites offer divergent
points of view. What should be the library
media specialist's response to this
observation?
A. Explain that opinions vary from
person to person and this divergence
should be expected.
B. Suggest that the student check
the sources of the Web sites to
determine if any organizational
connections exist.
C. Suggest that the student seek print
resources that tend to be more
authoritative.
D. Suggest that the student choose only
one point of view to develop in her
research.
Correct Response: B. Students may not realize that
a Web site address contains clues to its
authorship. Checking for organizational
connections and finding other Web sites with
similar
points of view can reveal potential biases in the
information provided and indicate whether the
information is accurate and acceptable.
5. Which of the following activities would
be most effective in improving students'
skills in critically analyzing Internetbased
information?
A. using an electronic dictionary to
look up vocabulary words
B. evaluating news-related Web sites
for objectivity
1. A student would like to perform a search
for all of the books published in 1961 that
were written by authors whose last name
is Smith. Which of the following statements
would most efficiently provide this
information?
A. Smith AND 1961
B. Smith OR 1961
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C. using an online encyclopedia to
find information for a research
paper
D. learning to use Web-browsing
software
5. Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 3.1) Having
students evaluate news-related Web sites is an
effective way to improve their ability to critically
analyze information on the Web. Students can
examine
the objectivity of online news sources by accessing
several sites that cover the same news events and
then
comparing and contrasting the reporting of events
on those sites
C. "Smith AND 1961"
D. "Smith" OR "1961"
•
understand how to cite primary and secondary research sources
3J
9. When instructing students in the use
3. Which of the following situations could
of footnotes, endnotes, or citations for
a journalism teacher cite to students as
documentation in a research paper, the
an example of plagiarism?
most important thing to help the students
A. A teacher photocopies two chapters
understand is the need to:
from a book, gives them to students,
A. number citations consecutively and
and makes them required
list them at the end of the document.
reading.
B. indicate the information from other
B. A reviewer uses lengthy quotes
authors with parentheses.
from a book to illustrate several
points of criticism in a review of
C. document each piece of information
selected for use in the final product.
the work.
D. document every source used during
C. A student copies a paragraph from
the information gathering process.
a magazine article, inserts it into a
report, and passes it off as his own
writing.
D. A musician uses a piece of music
for a paid performance without
obtaining the permission of the
composer.
3. A biology teacher wishes to copy a
chapter from an out-of-print library
book to distribute to her students.
Which of the following is the most
appropriate response for the library
media specialist?
A. offer to help the teacher determine
whether copyright permission is
needed for copying the chapter
B. offer to copy the chapter for the
teacher, providing the copies are
destroyed after use
C. refuse to make any copies of the
chapter because of the restrictions
of copyright law
D. suggest to the teacher that she
use a commercial copy center
to reproduce the chapter
11. A high school student wants to find a list
Correct Response: A. The Librarians’ Index to the
191
of magazines and newspapers that are
available in electronic format. Which of
the following should the library media
specialist consult first?
A. Librarians' Index to the Internet
B. a catalog of educational nonprint
resources
C. a major Internet search engine
D. a comprehensive directory of Web
sites
•
3K
Internet, hosted by University of California/
Berkeley, is an excellent, comprehensive Web site
devoted to information available on the
Internet. Its resources and services are valuable to
every type of library.
use bibliographic citations in a standard format.
3.5 Non-Written Communication (HOW DO I TEACH PUBLIC SPEAKING?)
•
demonstrate understanding of interpersonal, small, and mass communications
3L
1. Use the conversation below to answer
the question that follows.
Tom: I despise biology.
Ed: Is it really the subject that you
dislike so much?
Tom: Not really. It's just that I hate
labs because I have so much
trouble getting the microscope to
work right.
Ed: Yes, that can be very frustrating.
The exchange above best shows how:
A. supportive listening can be used to
solve a problem.
B. analytical listening can be used
to clarify a miscommunication.
C. supportive listening can be used to
repair a communication failure.
D. analytical listening can be used to
determine what information is most
important.
Correct Response: B. Tom's initial statement represents an impasse in communication as it does not
correctly
represent the reason for his difficulty in biology. Ed's analytical listening and inquiry allow for the
resumption of the
conversation, leading ultimately to a more accurate identification of Tom's problem
5. At which of the following points in a
5. For which of the following reasons would
problem-solving discussion would it be
a discussion group most likely organize a
most appropriate for the discussion
symposium?
leader to make a summary statement?
A. to establish criteria for a successful
A. when interpersonal conflict
resolution to a problem
develops during discussion of
B. to reconcile differences of opinion
a problem's causes
about how to resolve a problem
B. when trying to induce group
C. to reduce the scope of a problem to
members to question the validity
manageable dimensions
of a statement about the problem
D. to provide an informed analysis of
various aspects of a problem
C. when discussion about a problem's
Correct Response: D. In a symposium, a group of causes has been sufficient for the
192
individuals deliver brief, uninterrupted addresses
about a
specified topic. The main purpose of symposiums
is not to make a decision about a problem but to
present a variety of
perspectives on different areas of a topic or
problem. A major advantage of symposiums is that
they can be arranged
to provide a systematic examination of various
aspects of a problem.
group to reach consensus
D. when the introduction of irrelevant
issues disrupts discussion of
solutions to a problem
4. Which of the following statements best
illustrates the appropriate presentation
of information by an individual in a
semi-formal group discussion among
city leaders?
A. "I learned that traffic volume has
increased 40 percent in the past
five years. This problem is a lot
more serious than I initially
imagined."
B. "A knowledgeable observer told
me that traffic volume has risen
40 percent in the last five years.
That sounds just about right to
me."
C. "Law-enforcement authorities
contend that traffic volume has
gone up 40 percent in the last five
years. They must be kidding.
Those figures can't be right."
D. "According to Department of
Transportation statistics, traffic
volume has increased 40 percent
in the past five years. Did anyone
else find data that support or
contradict those figures?"
9. The news media's primary responsibility
to its audience is to provide truthful and
accurate information in support of:
A. the public's need to know about
international affairs.
B. the connections and commonalities
that maintain national unity.
C. the public's right to know about
events of interest and importance.
D. the principles and values that
reflect community stan
15. A touring theatre company is buying
advertising time on local radio stations
in areas where they will be performing
their play in the next few weeks. The
theatre company has two different
advertisements for the play. The first
advertisement describes the play as,
"a raucous, sensuous look at the mating
game," while the second describes it as,
"a lighthearted look at the highs and
lows of falling in love." The theatre
company is most likely to decide which
advertisement to play on a particular
radio station based upon:
A. the characteristics and values of the
station's listeners.
B. the format of the radio station.
C. the overriding values of the general
population in the area.
D. the size of the listening audience.
16. In a small-group situation, which of the
following steps should the listeners take
to best ensure that a speaker's message
is understood?
A. providing the speaker with constant
nonverbal feedback
B. asking the speaker questions to
clarify meaning
C. conferring with each other to verify
their impressions
D. taking careful notes on the content
of the speaker's messa
193
1. Which statement most accurately
describes a relationship between spoken
language and written language?
A. Spoken language changes very
little when converted to written
language.
B. Mastering spoken language before
written language ensures that
individuals will communicate
more effectively in writing.
C. The complexity of ideas in written
language generally contrasts with
the straightforward presentation of
ideas in spoken language.
D. New words are generally used in
written language before they
become part of the spoken
language
7. Which of the following is a major
characteristic of radio broadcasting?
A. It does not require the use of
satellite technology.
B. It is not regulated by the federal
government.
C. It avoids the use of personalities to
attract an audience.
D. It tends to focus on specific-interest
programming.
5. The invention of satellite technology
initiated which of the following
developments in communications?
A. the global transmission of live
television broadcasts
B. the relay of microwave signals
C. the conversion of data from analog
to digital format
D. the transfer of documents via
facsimile machine
4. In interpersonal communication,
the role of the receiver is to attend
to and interpret verbal and nonverbal
cues and to:
A. be prepared to provide a response
at any time.
B. minimize the effects of screens on
the communication.
C. ensure that he or she can
understand the message.
D. provide appropriate feedback to the
speaker.
19. Commercial radio broadcasters tend to base
their programming decisions on proven formats
primarily because:
A. production costs for such formats are low.
B. advertisers are less supportive of experimental
programming.
C. the salary demands of professional writers
prohibit innovative approaches.
D. noncommercial broadcasters can produce other
formats more economically.
Correct Response: B. Because of the dependence
of commercial radio on advertising revenue,
broadcasters tend to program the proven formats
preferred by most advertisers. Although
comparative production costs may be factors in
programming decisions, experimental formats
are not necessarily more costly than traditional
formats. The salary demands of professional
writers do not usually make the costs of innovative
programming prohibitive. In general,
commercial broadcasters should be able to
produce innovative formats as economically as
their
noncommercial counterparts do.
6. The primary purpose of a panel discussion is
generally to present:
A. a series of speeches containing similar ideas.
B. a format for contrasting ideas and personalities.
C. an in-depth examination of a participant's views.
D. a vehicle for audience reaction to presentations.
Correct Response: B. Panel discussions are
generally designed to provide a format for panel
members to present contrasting viewpoints on a
particular issue. Participants do not prepare
complete speeches ahead of time and are not
required to speak in a special order or express
similar ideas. An in-depth examination of a
participant's views would be inappropriate for a
panel discussion, since participants are asked to
present brief comments and engage in informal
discussion of the topic. Although panel discussions
are often followed by questions from the
194
audience, this is not their primary purpose.
7. According to communication research, group
decision making is most effective when the style of
leadership:
A. involves little active participation by the group
leader.
B. shifts from democratic to autocratic at the
discretion of the leader.
C. adapts to address the needs of the group.
D. focuses on making decisions in the least amount
of time.
Correct Response: C. Communication research
indicates that to ensure effective group decision
making, a group leader should address the needs
of all group members. A leadership style that
includes flexibility generally allows a leader to meet
different group needs, which usually
promotes satisfaction with the decision-making
process. Group leaders should play an active
role in the decision-making process, as should all
group members. A leadership style that shifts
from democratic to autocratic at the leader's
discretion would not be appropriate for all
situations and is generally less effective in involving
all group members in the decision-making
process. Leaders should, within limits, allow for
however much time is necessary to make
effective decisions.
1. A primary task of the receiver in the
communication process is to:
A. encode the message.
B. interpret the message.
C. modify the message.
D. convey the message.
. Correct Response: B. According to
communications theory, a primary task of receivers
is to
interpret the message. Senders encode, modify,
and convey the message.
2. Which of the following is the best example of an
interpersonal communication context?
A. two or three individuals engaged in a
conversation
B. a congressional subcommittee recommending
policy decisions
C. several speakers delivering presentations at a
conference
D. a group of people participating in a round-table
discussion
Correct Response: A. Interpersonal communication
is a sharing of thoughts and information
between individuals. The context for interpersonal
communication generally involves only two
or three people. A congressional subcommittee
recommending policy decisions is characteristic
of group discussion, and speakers delivering
presentations at a conference is characteristic of
public speaking. Interpersonal communication may
occur during round-table discussions, but
this context is more characteristic of group
discussion.
4. Effective group discussion and group leadership
skills are most directly related to successful
performance in which of the following career
areas?
A. commercial art
B. labor relations
C. radio broadcasting
D. public relations
Correct Response: B. In order to negotiate an
agreement between workers and management,
individuals involved in labor relations must
frequently demonstrate effective group discussion
and group leadership skills. Commercial artists,
radio broadcasters, and public relations
personnel are, by comparison, less likely to engage
in similar forms of group facilitating.
5. In interpersonal communication, which of the
following is the most appropriate technique for
expressing emotions?
A. expressing emotions only when another person
does so first
B. expressing emotions infrequently to avoid
hurting other individuals
C. expressing emotions in unusual social contexts
to give added emphasis
Correct Response: D. In an interpersonal
communication context, the most appropriate
technique for expressing emotions is to disclose
emotions at a level consistent with the degree
of closeness in the communication relationship.
Expressing emotions only when another person
does so first or expressing emotions infrequently to
avoid hurting others would be less
195
D. expressing emotions at a level that reflects the
level of closeness
appropriate since these interactions might not allow
for the reciprocity and consistent feedback
necessary for effective interpersonal
communication. In unusual social contexts, it is
generally
more appropriate to subdue emotions than to
express them for added emphasis.
11. Which of the following radio advertisement
excerpts seeks to motivate
consumers to purchase a product
primarily by appealing to a consumer's
need to feel successful and popular
among peers?
A. Our clothing looks more expensive
than our competitors' clothing.
That's because it is. We care about
quality. We expect our customers
to as well. That's why they remain
our customers.
B. The Yarrows' young guests
finished their entire dinner, even
the vegetables. What the Yarrows
served wasn't simply a vegetable. It
was one of the eight delicious side
dishes from Howe's Foods.
C. The Polaris Fitness Machine can
elevate you to the ranks of the fit
and healthy in no time at all. With
regular use, you'll soon hear
compliments on your new youthful,
toned appearance.
D. Retirement should be about sharing
the good times. An Individual
Retirement Account, managed by
our team of financial advisors, can
provide the financial security you'll
need to truly enjoy retirement.
12. Which of the following best illustrates
the role of mass media as a vehicle of
cultural transmission?
A. After watching several episodes of
a television series, a person begins
to use a character's common
phrases in his daily speech.
B. A person who hears a newscast
about a plane crash tells two of her
friends about the crash.
C. A person comes home from a long
day at work and turns on the
television to watch his favorite
situation comedy.
D. After reviewing the day's news
items, a news director decides to
give only 15 seconds of coverage
to a political fund-raising event
1. In which of the following types of
communication does the source of
communication have little or no
immediate opportunity to evaluate the
impact of the message on an audience?
A. dyadic communication
B. small-group communication
C. public communication
D. electronic mass communication
5. During a meeting, the chairperson can
best help a committee engage in orderly
and effective decision making by:
A. ensuring that each major point to
be considered is discussed for
about the same amount of time.
B. consistently encouraging
committee members to consider
several alternative solutions for
each tentative decision they reach.
6. The Woodbury town council is meeting
to decide on recommendations for
improvements to public facilities. One
group of members wants to improve the
library facilities, but another group
believes the town should expand its
playground facilities. Which of the
following statements best illustrates
an attempt to reach a compromise
situation?
196
C. ensuring that each committee
member participates as fully and
equally as possible.
D. regularly summarizing what has
been agreed upon and seeking
group consensus on these
intermediate decisions.
A. Let's go with the expansion of
the playground facilities since
children's health is most important.
B. We should vote on the two
proposals to see which has the
most support.
C. Let's postpone discussion of the
improvements until our next
meeting.
D. We should consider buying some
new books for the library and some
new playground equipment.
3. In interpersonal communication, which
of the following aspects of the sender's
nonverbal communication generally has
the greatest influence on the impact of a
message?
A. posture and body movement
B. eyes and facial expression
C. arm and hand gestures
D. clothing and appearance
4. Which of the following is generally the
best strategy for initiating interpersonal
communication with a person whose
nonverbal cues and behavior indicate
that he or she is emotionally upset?
A. Deliberately misread the person's
feelings to allow the person to
correct your interpretation and thus
gain control of the situation.
B. Quickly assess the person's feelings
based on his or her nonverbal cues
and purposefully identify those
feelings for the person.
C. Respond to the person with body
language similar to his or her own
to show empathy before engaging
in conversation.
D. Describe your perceptions of the
person's nonverbal cues and ask
him or her to verify the accuracy of
those perceptions.
11. Small groups of students in a fourthgrade
class will be using the brainstorming
process to develop ideas for
an inquiry topic. To promote the most
productive discussions, which of the
following practices should the teacher
emphasize?
A. No one can make any changes to
another students' ideas.
B. All ideas will be accepted without
criticism or evaluation.
C. No one should offer ideas that are
irresponsible or unworkable.
D. All students will be allowed to
make at least two suggestions.
12. Billy is an eighth-grade boy who has just
returned home after playing on his soccer
team. He slams the door, stomps past his
mother, and slumps into a chair in the den.
His mother goes into the den and sees that
Billy has been crying. She asks him what
is wrong and he says, "I hate that Brad.
He cheats! He pushed me away from the
ball again. I could have gotten the goal.
He always does this to me! I don't want to
play anymore. I mean, who cares?"
Which of the following responses by
Billy's mother would be most illustrative
of reflective listening?
A. Well, I know you care about the
game, Billy. Once this blows over,
you'll want to play again.
B. You're really mad at Brad. Sounds
like a rough game.
C. I'm sure it's not that bad. You're a
great player! How about a snack?
D. It sounds like you're jealous of
Brad. You need to overcome this to
be a good team player.
197
2. A third-grade teacher plans to have students
work in temporary, heterogeneous
groups for reading projects. As the
students collaborate on an assigned
reading-related project, every member of
the group will have a role to play. Clear
behavioral and instructional guidelines
and goals will be communicated to each
group before the students begin working.
Which of the following additional steps
would best promote the effectiveness of
this approach to flexible grouping?
A. Identify activities for individual
students to engage in independently
if they finish assigned reading
before other members of the group.
B. Assign leadership responsibilities to
the students in each group who are
the most proficient readers.
C. Plan alternative activities for
students with reading difficulties
rather than requiring them to
participate in the group projects.
D. Assess students' reading skills
before, during, and after participation
in the group project.
Item 2, Objective 2, Correct Response A
Flexible heterogeneous grouping allows students
with varying levels of reading
proficiency to collaborate in small groups on
reading projects that benefit all students.
Because some students are likely to read more
quickly than others, it is useful to
include in the project independent activities that will
reduce distractions by keeping
the more proficient readers actively engaged until
the remaining group members
complete the assigned reading and are ready for
collaborative activities.
3. Students in a fourth-grade class play a
game in which two students sit in chairs
facing each other. One student can see
a bulletin board on which the teacher
displays a picture of an object. The
student must describe the object without
identifying it. Based on this description,
the partner tries to guess what the object
is. Then the partners switch places; the
teacher displays another picture, and the
process is repeated. This activity is most
likely to promote students' literacy
development by helping students:
A. distinguish main ideas from supporting
details when listening or
speaking.
B. expand their listening and speaking
vocabularies.
C. understand the importance of
precise word choice in clear oral
communication.
D. gain skill in the use of expressive
oral language.
Item 3, Objective 3, Correct Response C
The activity described promotes students' literacy
development by improving their oral
communication skills. Presented as a game, the
activity motivates students to choose
their words carefully in order to help their partners
interpret oral messages and
visualize hidden objects. Alternately serving as
speaker and listener, students use
critical listening skills to improve their own word
choice and to provide constructive
feedback for their partners.
6. The reading specialist wants to incorporate
an interactive component into
the activities involving the word-study
notebooks. Which of the following
activities would be most effective in
further promoting students' vocabulary
development?
A. Each student engages in peer editing
by correcting and revising the notebook
Item 6, Objective 7, Correct Response C
Repeated exposure to new vocabulary through
varied reading, writing, and oral
language activities promotes students'
understanding and retention of the words. The
activity described requires students to read a
sentence containing the target word, to
discuss the word's meaning, and to compose a
new sentence that uses the word.
198
entries of another member of
the group.
B. Students take turns reading aloud
selected entries from their notebooks
to the other members of
the group.
C. Each student shares a notebook
entry with another member of the
group, and they collaborate to write
a sentence using the selected word.
D. Students use a rubric to assess the
accuracy and completeness of a
partner's notebook entry.
Working with a partner also motivates students to
share and extend their
understanding of word meanings.
15. A draft research paper includes a passage
that is a direct quotation from a primary
source. When reviewing the draft, the
researcher decides to interject a phrase in
the quoted material to explain a term that
may not be familiar to modern readers.
Which of the following procedures
should the researcher use to differentiate
the inserted phrase from the quoted
material?
A. Identify the inserted phrase in the
footnote for the quoted material.
B. Use ellipses to set off the inserted
phrase from the quoted material.
C. Add a footnote immediately after
the inserted phrase.
D. Enclose the inserted phrase in
brackets.
Correct Response: D. (SMR Code: 3.5) In direct
quotations, an inserted phrase from any other
source
and for any reason is always enclosed in brackets
(e.g., "As water drips from the clepsydra [ancient
Greek
water clock], the day passes"). In this way,
brackets preserve the integrity of the quotation by
signaling
the reader that the inserted phrase is not part of the
original material.
14. Which of the following best describes why
indirect listener feedback is important to a
speaker?
A. It prevents the speaker from
accidentally offending the listener.
B. It allows the speaker to prevent
external interference from inhibiting
the reception of his or her message.
C. It helps the speaker overcome
communication anxieties.
D. It enables the speaker to calculate
the effect that his or her message is
having on the listener.
15. A high school student often experiences
listener apprehension when talking with
teachers and has difficulty understanding
and recalling what they say. When
discussing this problem with an English
teacher, the student says: "I listen really
really hard to every single thing they say,
but it's just too hard to remember it all!"
Which of the following responses by the
English teacher is likely to be most helpful
to the student in addressing this difficulty?
A. "Try to stop worrying about your
own reactions and what people think
of you. Concentrate instead on
analyzing the content and tone of
the speaker's message."
B. "Even good listeners can have
trouble paying attention. When
your mind starts to wander, make
a conscious effort to refocus on
the speaker."
C. "You may be jumping to conclusions
about what the speaker is
saying and misunderstanding the
message. Use critical-thinking
skills to analyze each point the
speaker makes."
199
D. "Sometimes a person can listen too
hard. It isn't necessary or even
possible to remember every detail of
what a person says. Concentrate on
getting the main ideas."
6. In a conversation, speakers can best
adjust their message to improve its
effectiveness by analyzing:
A. the listener's attitudes.
B. the length of time already spent on
the conversation.
C. the social context of the
conversation.
D. the listener's feedback.
13. The bandwagon approach to influencing
people's decisions or behavior is
typically characterized by:
A. the use of vague or meaningless
slogans.
B. efforts to give negative information
without proof.
C. the personal testimony of a wellknown
person.
D. appeals to the human urge to
belong to a group.
19. When reviewing students' reading
journal responses to a play, an English
teacher notices that students' various
cultural and personal experiences result
in their having different interpretations
of the text. The teacher can enhance all
students' learning most effectively in
this situation by:
A. providing the class with
professional critiques of the text
from different perspectives.
B. encouraging students to share their
interpretations of the text in a class
discussion.
C. dividing the class into discussion
groups whose members have
similar interpretations of the text.
D. responding in students' reading
journals with an explanation of the
teacher's interpretation of the text.
2. Use the conversation below to answer
the question that follows.
Tom: I despise biology.
Ed: Is it really the subject that you
dislike so much?
Tom: Not really. It's just that I hate labs
because I have so much trouble
getting the microscope to work
right.
Ed: Yes, that can be very frustrating.
The exchange above best shows how:
A. supportive listening can be used to
solve a problem.
B. analytical listening can be used to
obtain information that will enhance
understanding.
C. supportive listening can be used
to repair a breakdown in communication.
D. analytical listening can be used
to infer information that is not
expressed openly.
4. Two individuals from different cultural
backgrounds engage in informal conversation.
As one person speaks, the
other smiles but looks down and takes a
couple of steps backward. Which of the
following statements accurately describes
one important factor the speaker should
consider when assessing the listener's
response?
A. Personal distance and eye contact
reflect individual preferences that
are usually unrelated to cultural
differences.
B. In most cultures these nonverbal
behaviors indicate that the listener
disagrees with what the speaker is
saying.
C. The speaker's and listener's cultures
may not share the same norms
200
regarding personal distance and eye
contact.
D. The listener's nonverbal behaviors
most likely reflect a respectful and
deferential attitude toward the
speaker.
Correct Response: C. Personal distance and eye
contact are important elements of nonverbal
communication. Like many other aspects of
communication, these behaviors are influenced by
cultural background. People in some cultures tend
to stand close to the person to whom they
are speaking and look directly at the person, while
in other cultures people tend to maintain
greater distance and engage in less eye contact.
Personal distance and direct eye contact
thus can convey very different meanings for two
speakers from different cultural backgrounds.
1. Students in a middle school class have
been studying the battle of the Alamo.
The teacher plans a role-playing activity
to help structure whole-class discussion
about the Alamo. During the discussion,
one student will play the role of a
newspaper reporter and interview other
students who assume the roles of various
historical figures (e.g., Santa Anna, Sam
Houston, soldiers in the Mexican army).
This instructional strategy is likely to
promote students' oral language
proficiency primarily by helping the
students:
A. understand how differing points of
view affect spoken messages.
B. recognize differences between
spoken and written language.
C. learn how to adapt spoken language
for informal occasions.
D. expand their speaking and listening
vocabularies.
•
2. A fourth-grade class has been reading folk
tales from around the world. Which of the
following oral language activities would
be most effective in promoting students'
multicultural awareness and appreciation?
A. Students discuss folk tales from
various countries and then read
aloud and discuss descriptions
of the geography and cultural
characteristics of each country.
B. The teacher guides students to
discuss some features that folk tales
of various countries have in
common as well as some of the
unique features of each culture's
folk tales.
C. Students read aloud "folk tales" they
have written themselves and then
review folk tales from various
countries and decide which culture's
folk tales most closely resemble
their own.
D. The teacher helps each student
select a folk tale, present it to the
class, and answer any questions
that other students in the class may
have about the folk tale's plot or
characters.
demonstrate knowledge of speeches (narratives, persuasive pieces, research presentations,
poetry recitations, and responses to literature).
3M
9. The performance of oral interpretation has
the primary purpose of:
A. allowing an audience to view a
historical figure in a contemporary
setting.
B. providing a meaningful experience
with literature for both the performer
9. The performance of oral interpretation has
the primary purpose of:
A. allowing an audience to view a
historical figure in a contemporary
setting.
B. providing a meaningful experience
with literature for both the performer
201
and the audience.
C. illustrating the commonalities of
human nature across time and place.
D. enabling a performer to internalize
the characteristics of many types
of individuals.
Correct Response: B. In oral interpretation, the
performer functions as a medium through which a
literary work is
brought to life for the audience. When well
executed, such a presentation should provide both
performer and
audience with a meaningful literary experience.
and the audience.
C. illustrating the commonalities of
human nature across time and place.
D. enabling a performer to internalize
the characteristics of many types
of individuals.
Correct Response: B. In oral interpretation, the
performer functions as a medium through which a
literary work is
brought to life for the audience. When well
executed, such a presentation should provide both
performer and
audience with a meaningful literary experience.
10. Which of the following is a primary
function of the production concept for
a play?
A. to document the ways in which
the acting elements and staging
elements will be integrated
B. to outline the financial steps
necessary for the company to
ensure a successful run
C. to summarize the production staff's
agreements on the scheduling of
staging and technical rehearsals
D. to record the production staff's
instructions to the cast and crew
during each rehearsal
Correct Response: A. The production concept of
a play is intended to communicate to all the people
involved in
the production of the play—from the director and
costumer to the set and lighting designers—the
overall look and feel
that the play should have. This allows all involved
to work to integrate their components to contribute
to the creation
of a unified and coherent production.
1. Which of the following is the best
definition of rhetoric?
A. any form of communication that
influences thought and actions
B. the use of language to convey
knowledge
C. any linguistic theory that can be
verified by independent research
D. the cultural meanings that people
attach to communication
10. Which of the following is a primary
function of the production concept for
a play?
A. to document the ways in which
the acting elements and staging
elements will be integrated
B. to outline the financial steps
necessary for the company to
ensure a successful run
C. to summarize the production staff's
agreements on the scheduling of
staging and technical rehearsals
D. to record the production staff's
instructions to the cast and crew
during each rehearsal
Correct Response: A. The production concept of
a play is intended to communicate to all the people
involved in
the production of the play—from the director and
costumer to the set and lighting designers—the
overall look and feel
that the play should have. This allows all involved
to work to integrate their components to contribute
to the creation
of a unified and coherent production.
2. In which of the following ways does the
place of debate in a democratic society
differ most from its role in an authoritarian
society?
A. It is likely to focus on a narrower
range of political issues.
B. It is less likely to be based on
verifiable forms of evidence.
C. It is likely to involve a broader range
of opinion.
D. It is more likely to be governed by
generally accepted rules.
9. The performance of oral interpretation
has the primary purpose of:
A. allowing an audience to view a
historical figure in a contemporary
setting.
B. providing a revelatory experience
with literature for both the
10. Which of the following is a primary
function of the production concept for
a play?
A. to document the ways in which
the acting elements and staging
elements will be integrated
B. to outline the financial steps
202
performer and the audience.
C. illustrating the commonalties of
human nature across time and
place.
D. enabling a performer to internalize
the characteristics of many types
of individuals.
necessary for the company to
ensure a successful run
C. to summarize the production staff's
agreements on the scheduling of
staging and technical rehearsals
D. to record the production staff's
instructions to the cast and crew
during each rehearsal
8. Which of the following questions should
one answer first when attempting to
determine an appropriate topic for a
speech?
A. How should I structure the speech?
B. Who will be my audience?
C. What is the purpose of the speech?
D. For how long will I be speaking?
18. A journalist wants to conduct a fair and
efficient interview of a local government
official. The journalist could best
prepare for the interview by:
A. selecting simple, straightforward
questions that can be answered yes
or no.
B. avoiding exposure to background
material that might bias the
journalist's questions.
C. creating a comprehensive list of
questions but planning to deviate
from it as appropriate.
D. identifying questions whose
answers can be verified to confirm
the interviewee's truthfulness.
17. Which of the following characteristics is most
important in choosing a dramatic selection for oral
interpretation?
A. clear stage directions
B. lively dialogue
C. didactic intent
D. topical allusions
8. The primary purpose of a persuasive speech is
to:
A. influence attitudes.
B. summarize facts.
C. report information.
D. expand knowledge.
Correct Response: B. Of the characteristics listed,
lively dialogue would be most important in
choosing a dramatic work for oral interpretation. A
selection that includes lively dialogue
generally allows a performer to use a variety of
vocal techniques and gestures to suggest
characterization and hold the audience's attention.
Clear stage directions, didactic intent, and
topical allusions would be less important to
consider in choosing a dramatic selection.
Correct Response: A. Persuasive speeches
generally seek to influence audience attitudes on
particular issues. The goal of persuasive speakers
is usually to change or affect an audience's
beliefs and viewpoints so that they become more
aligned with those presented by the speaker.
Summarizing facts, reporting information, and
expanding knowledge are more characteristic of
informative speeches.
5. To best ensure the success of a persuasive
speech, which of the following steps
should be carried out before planning how
to select, organize, and present supporting
material?
A. analyzing the knowledge, attitudes,
and interests of the intended
audience
B. drafting an interesting introduction
and conclusion for the speech
C. determining which type of
203
organizational pattern to use
for the speech
D. deciding how much time to devote
to the presentation of visual aids
Correct Response: A. A speaker is most likely to be successful in persuading an audience if the speaker
has taken
steps beforehand to understand the audience he or she is trying to persuade. Analyzing an audience's
knowledge,
attitudes, and interests before developing a persuasive speech enables a speaker to focus on information
and issues
that can be expected to be meaningful and important to the audience.
13. Students in a fifth-grade class are preparing
to give oral reports on famous
people whom they have researched.
Which of the following strategies would
best help students speak effectively
before an audience of their peers?
A. writing out the report before their
presentation and memorizing it
B. writing the report on large note
cards and reading from them
C. writing key words from the report
on note cards and referring to them
as they speak
D. putting the report on an overhead
projector to help them remember
their material
16. A speaker is nervous about delivering a
presentation to a large, formal audience.
Which of the following strategies is likely
to be most effective in minimizing the
speaker's communication anxiety?
A. acknowledging the nervousness to
the audience at the outset of the
presentation
B. memorizing every word and detail
of the presentation as if it were a
stage performance
C. preparing mentally for probable
mistakes and planning ways to
recover when such errors occur
D. being careful and thorough in
preparing for the speech and
allowing plenty of time to rehearse
8. A city's mayor has recently delivered a
speech to a conference of governmental
leaders and has been asked to deliver it
again at a meeting of a local service
organization. Which of the following
changes in the speech would be most
important for the mayor to make?
A. Add anecdotes about other
speakers to encourage rapport
with listeners.
B. Incorporate visual aids that
reinforce important points.
C. Explain technical concepts and
terms on a more general level.
D. Discard material that does not have
a direct bearing on local politics.
11. Which of the following techniques
is most likely to effectively influence
an audience to accept a particular
perspective?
A. appealing to the audience's intellect
and emotions
B. evoking the audience's sense of
nostalgia
C. appealing to the audience's
aesthetic sensibilities
D. entertaining the audience while
informing them
1. To ensure that an audience will be able to
understand the information and concepts
in an informative speech, a responsible
speaker should do which of the following
while preparing the speech?
A. Investigate the background of the
audience to adapt the ideas in the
speech to existing views and beliefs.
B. Analyze the prospective audience
to determine its needs and persuadability
with regard to the topic of
the speech.
C. Determine the knowledge level and
1. Which of the following activities is likely
to be most effective in promoting the oral
communication skills of eighth-grade
students?
A. Students select passages from
historic speeches and take turns
reading the passages aloud with
appropriate expression.
B. Students learn about debating
techniques and then participate in
a class debate on an issue in which
students are interested.
C. Students participate in a Readers'
204
goals of the audience in relation to
the subject matter of the speech.
D. Provide an advance copy of the
outline or notes of the speech to a
representative of the audience for
review.
Theatre performance of a highinterest
story for young adults that
all students have read.
D. Students watch a video of a famous
speech and then write a brief essay
explaining why the speech was
effective.
Read the adapted passage below from the introduction to the keynote address delivered by Ann
Richards on July 18, 1988, at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta, Georgia; then answer the
two questions that follow.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Buenas noches, mis amigos!
. . . Twelve years ago Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, made the keynote address to this
convention, and two women in 160 years is about par for the course.
But, if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire
did. She just did it backwards and in high heels. . . .
You know, tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the eighth grade. I thought I looked
real cute in my uniform, and then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers, "Make that basket, bird legs."
And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he's going to
cut me down to size.
Because where I grew up there wasn't much tolerance for self importance—people who put on airs. I
was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to
Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.
Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors
together. Those were real people with real problems. And they had real dreams about getting out of the
Depression.
2. Which of the following statements best
characterizes the style and purpose of this
portion of the keynote address?
A. The speaker contrasts a frivolous
joke about women with a painful
personal memory to focus the
audience on serious concerns.
B. The speaker employs pointed irony
and sarcasm to undermine the
arguments of her critics.
C. The speaker uses wry jokes and
anecdotes to entertain the audience
and engage their interest in a serious
theme.
D. The speaker uses personal anecdotes
to elicit listeners' sympathy for
underprivileged families.
Correct Response: C. The speaker wryly jokes
about the number of women who have
given keynote addresses, about Ginger Rogers's
dancing skill, and about the speaker's own
embarrassing personal memory. These statements
encourage the audience to relate to the
speaker as one of them and to receive her political
message with good will.
10. In an academic debate, the affirmative
introduces evidence that the negative
recognizes does not apply to the issue at
hand. Which of the following rules of
evidence should members of the negative
be most concerned with at this point?
A. Evidence must be verifiable and
consistent with other known evidence
concerning the topic.
B. The opposition may ask for
clarification of any evidence
presented in case construction during
cross-examination.
C. Weak evidence that is not refuted by
the opposition may be considered
adequate and acceptable.
D. Advocates of a position need only to
persuade the judges that they have a
preponderance of evidence.
7. To best ensure the success of a
persuasive speech, which of the
following steps should be carried
out before planning how to select,
organize, and present supporting
material?
8. In delivering a speech, a speaker plans
to emphasize the main ideas of the
speech primarily by summarizing
information, returning to previous
points, and showing causal relationships
among main ideas. Which element of
205
A. analyzing the knowledge, attitudes,
and interests of the intended
audience
B. drafting an interesting introduction
and conclusion for the speech
C. determining which type of
organizational pattern to use
for the speech
D. deciding how much time to devote
to the presentation of visual aids
speech delivery is most likely to help
accomplish this goal?
A. use of rhetorical questions
B. use of transitions
C. use of repetitive gestures
D. use of metaphors
9. When gathering and preparing evidence
from printed sources for argumentation
purposes, which of the following
questions is generally most important to
consider?
A. Is the evidence from the most
recent sources available on the
issue to be debated?
B. Are the sources sufficient to allow
me to present a greater amount of
evidence than my opponent?
C. Is the evidence directly relevant to
the debate issue and from reliable,
unbiased sources?
D. Does my evidence present opinions
from leading experts on the issue to
be debated?
10. Oral interpretation differs from other
forms of oral communication because it
involves:
A. persuading an audience through
evidence and reasoning.
B. dramatizing a piece of literature for
an audience.
C. presenting one side of an issue
through a set of arguments.
D. analyzing a problem with a group
of three or more people.
•
analyze speech in terms of presentation components (e.g., volume, pace), pronunciation
fluency, and identify the integration of nonverbal components (e.g., gesture) with verbal
elements (e.g., volume).
3N
Read the adapted passage below from the introduction to the keynote address delivered by Ann
Richards on July 18, 1988, at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta, Georgia; then answer the
two questions that follow.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Buenas noches, mis amigos!
. . . Twelve years ago Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, made the keynote address to this
convention, and two women in 160 years is about par for the course.
But, if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire
did. She just did it backwards and in high heels. . . .
You know, tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the eighth grade. I thought I looked
real cute in my uniform, and then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers, "Make that basket, bird legs."
And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he's going to
cut me down to size.
Because where I grew up there wasn't much tolerance for self importance—people who put on airs. I
was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to
Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.
Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors
together. Those were real people with real problems. And they had real dreams about getting out of the
Depression.
3. Richards's use of an informal, "folksy"
delivery style is an effective speaking
strategy for:
A. contrasting the social and economic
conditions of the 1980s with those
of the Depression.
2. Which of the following is a major
benefit for an elected official who
adheres to a code of ethics for public
speaking?
A. The official's speeches are more
likely to be reproduced in the mass
206
B. reinforcing the theme of "real
people with real problems" that is
being introduced in the speech.
C. persuading the audience of her
qualifications and suitability as a
keynote speaker.
D. modeling respect and regard for the
multicultural audience that she is
addressing.
Correct Response: B. The speaker's informal,
"folksy" delivery includes the use of simple
diction and sentence structure, colloquial language
("You know . . . I looked real cute"), idioms
(" . . . he's going to cut me down to size"), personal
anecdotes (" . . . when I played basketball
in the eighth grade"), humorous quotations (e.g.,
"Make that basket, bird legs"), and proverbial
phrasing ("real people with real problems"). These
stylistic elements reinforce the thematic
focus on the grassroots power of community spirit
to overcome economic challenges
9. A high school English teacher considers
ways to help students use metacognitive
strategies to improve their reading comprehension.
Which of the following
activities would be most effective for
this purpose?
A. Students take detailed notes on a
complex informational text after
reading it.
B. Students read a persuasive essay and
a news story on the same topic, and
then write a paragraph comparing
and contrasting the two texts.
C. Students write questions and remarks
in the margins of a photocopied essay
as they read.
D. Students skim a text to identify
unfamiliar vocabulary and then look
up the words in a dictionary before
rereading the text.
media.
B. Other officials will be encouraged
to adopt the same code of ethics.
C. Over time, the official will
establish credibility with
audiences.
D. Audiences will gradually find the
official's messages more appealing.
11. To determine whether a statement in
a speech is an opinion rather than a factual
statement, a listener should do which of
the following?
A. Consider whether he or she agrees
with the speaker's message.
B. Evaluate the credibility of the
speaker's supporting evidence.
C. Evaluate the potential of conflict of
interest between the speaker and his
or her topic.
D. Monitor the speech for hyperbole
and exaggeration.
20. While reading an assigned novel, each
student in a ninth grade English class
compiles a scrapbook that a central
character from the novel might have kept.
The items in the scrapbook may include
significant items that are mentioned in the
novel as well as other items that are not
specifically mentioned but are in keeping
with the character. Which of the following
extensions of this activity would best
promote students' skill in interpreting and
analyzing characters in fiction texts?
A. Students present a portion of their
scrapbooks to the class and explain
what the items reveal about the
character.
B. Students vote on which scrapbook
best reflects the designated character
10. Which of the following activities for high
school students would best promote their
understanding of the relationship between
main ideas and supporting details in a
nonfiction text they have read?
A. Students collaborate in small groups
to take notes on the text and then
present their findings orally.
B. Students work with partners to
identify what else they would like
to learn about the subject.
C. Students collaborate in a small group
to write a brief paragraph summarizing
the text.
D. Students work with partners to create
an outline of information contained
in the text.
207
from the novel.
C. Students compile another scrapbook
for a secondary character in the
novel and write a paragraph
comparing the two scrapbooks.
D. Students make changes in their
scrapbooks based on feedback from
the teacher and from other students
in the class.
3. When using gestures to help emphasize
a point during a speech presented to an
unfamiliar audience, it is most important
for the speaker to understand that
gestures:
A. may be interpreted differently
depending on an individual's
cultural background.
B. are usually comprehended quickly
and easily and may sometimes
substitute for verbal language.
C. must be repeated frequently to
ensure that the audience
understands their purpose.
D. should be used sparingly to prevent
the audience from relying too
heavily on nonverbal language.
13. To best ensure an audience will be able
to understand the information and
concepts in an informative speech, a
responsible speaker will do which of the
following while preparing a speech?
A. Investigate the background of the
audience to adapt the ideas in the
speech to existing views and
beliefs.
B. Analyze the prospective audience
to determine its needs and persuadability
with regard to the topic of
the speech.
C. Determine the knowledge level and
goals of the audience in relation to
the subject matter of the speech.
D. Provide an advance copy of the
outline or notes of the speech to a
representative of the audience for
review.
7. The symbolism of a visual image from one
culture may be ambiguous or may not be
apparent to an individual from a different
culture. Which of the following statements
best explains this observation?
A. The way a person visually scans an
image is dependent on the characteristics
of his or her written
language.
B. The physical sensing of visual
elements, such as shapes and tones,
is influenced by cultural factors.
C. The interpretation of a symbol is the
result of a highly individualized
construction of meaning by the
viewer.
D. The connection between a symbol
and what it represents is learned.
9. In general, it is recommended that
speakers responding to audience questions
adopt a deductive technique that
moves from the general to the particular.
In which of the following situations
would a speaker be best advised to
abandon this approach and adopt an
inductive technique that moves from
the particular to the general?
A. when responding to questions from
an indifferent audience that seems
uninterested in what the speaker has
to say
B. when responding to questions from
a hostile audience that opposes the
speaker's position
C. when responding to questions from
an attentive audience that is
interested in what the speaker has
to say
D. when responding to questions from
a friendly audience that supports the
speaker's position
3. Which type of nonverbal communication would
most likely indicate territoriality?
A. pacing around a room while waiting for an
appointment
.
Correct Response: D. According to the principles of
proxemics, territoriality is characterized by
the way in which people use physical space to
208
B. turning one's back toward an individual who is
speaking
C. touching a person when speaking to him or her
D. leaving personal objects in a specific place
communicate messages. By leaving their
personal objects in a given place, individuals are in
a sense staking out a claim to that area. The
actions described in the other responses
communicate messages that are not generally
associated with territoriality.
10. Which of the following tasks is usually the first
step in the speech preparation process?
A. selecting an organizational scheme
B. determining the purpose of the speech
C. researching a topic
D. organizing data for presentati
.
Correct Response: B. It is usually necessary to
determine the purpose of a speech before an
appropriate organizational scheme can be
selected. One should also know the purpose of a
speech before conducting any required research or
organizing data for presentation.
11. In a topical speech, which type of supporting
evidence would be most appropriate to substantiate
trends in birth rates in the United States?
A. statistics
B. narratives
C. examples
D. generalizations
Correct Response: A. Of the responses listed,
statistics would be the best source of supporting
evidence for establishing birth rate trends because
statistics would provide a solid, factual basis
for developing main ideas. By comparison,
narratives, examples, and generalizations would be
less satisfactory for substantiating such trends.
12. The primary advantage of using an
extemporaneous speech presentation is the
speaker's ability to:
A. present several major topics in one presentation.
B. change the purpose of the speech to suit the
audience's expectations.
C. adapt the delivery of the speech to the
audience's needs.
D. present the speech exactly as it was rehearsed.
Correct Response: C. The major advantage of
using an extemporaneous speech presentation is
its flexibility, a benefit that enables a speaker to
adapt a delivery to the audience's needs. An
effective speech of any kind generally involves
developing one major topic; presenting several
major topics in an extemporaneous presentation is
neither desirable nor advantageous. After
beginning an address, it is difficult to change the
purpose of a speech. By definition, a speech
delivered exactly as it was rehearsed is not an
extemporaneous speech.
14. Read the quotation below; then answer the
question that follows. "It's common knowledge that
all
cars equipped with steel-belted radial tires run a
lower risk of blowouts on the highway. Since
Ginny's car is equipped with steel-belted radials,
she runs a lower risk of a blowout on the highway."
Which of the following types of reasoning is applied
in this quotation?
A. inductive
B. effect-to-cause
C. deductive
D. analog
15. In debate, the second affirmative constructive
speaker can effectively extend first affirmative
constructive arguments by:
A. selecting an alternative case approach.
B. finding new evidence.
C. determining the type of proposition.
D. offering additional proof.
Correct Response: C. Deductive reasoning begins
with a generalization, from which a more
specific conclusion is drawn. By contrast, inductive
reasoning is a process by which particular
facts are integrated to form general conclusions.
Both effect-to-cause reasoning and analogy are
forms of inductive reasoning.
Correct Response: D. Offering additional proof is a
standard technique used in debate to extend
an argument. The second affirmative constructive
speaker should generally be prepared to offer
additional proof for case arguments related to
factors such as topicality, causality, and
significance in order to re-establish affirmative
contentions. Debaters rarely seek new evidence
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during the course of a debate. Selecting an
alternative case approach and determining the type
of proposition are not appropriate means for
extending an argument during the second
affirmative constructive speech.
1. Recounting a story before an audience
is most likely to enhance the speaker's
listening skills by demonstrating:
A. the way in which audience
responses encourage a speaker
and improve communication.
B. the importance of creating in one's
own imagination the subjective
detail of the stories one hears.
C. the way in which effective
presentation of detail holds the
audience's attention.
D. the importance of empathy and
respect for diverse experiences
and uncommon points of view.
2. Listeners make assumptions about
speakers based on both verbal and
nonverbal cues. A listener is most likely
to rely on verbal cues in assessing which
of the following speaker characteristics?
A. knowledge and experience
B. honesty and sincerity
C. empathy and responsiveness
D. power and influence
3. According to most communication
paradigms, encoding occurs when a
sender selects:
A. the verbal and nonverbal signals
that will express a message most
meaningfully to a receiver.
B. the vocabulary, gestures, tone, and
speech rate that most accurately
represent a message.
C. the nonverbal signals that are most
appropriate to a message, context,
and receiver of the message.
D. the mode of delivery that will
transmit a message most quickly
and efficiently to a receiver.
7. Which of the following best describes
the main purpose of the parliamentary
procedures adopted to govern legislative
debate in student congresses?
A. to ensure recognition of those
speakers best prepared to discuss
the bill under consideration
B. to prevent speakers from
interpreting a bill in ways that
conflict with the author's intentions
C. to guarantee majority rule while
respecting the rights of speakers
representing the minority
D. to promote consensus by limiting
the extent to which one speaker can
challenge the position of another
Correct Response: C. Two major purposes of
legislative debate are to ensure that majority
decisions dictate group
action and to provide for a full and free discussion
of all propositions. Parliamentary rules that
guarantee majority rule
while respecting minority rights are designed to
achieve both of these aims
12. A professor comes to class wearing
a toga to present a lecture about
politics in ancient Rome. This
presentation strategy is most likely
to be effective for:
A. dramatizing the subject matter.
B. establishing a connection with the
audience.
C. getting the attention of the
audience.
D. making the subject matter easy to
understand.
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2. Which of the following are purposes of
the breath control exercises used by actors
and oral interpreters?
I. to develop the ability to breathe
easily through the nose rather than
the mouth
II. to promote use of breathing from the
diaphragm
III. to ensure that inhalation and
exhalation periods are of equal
length
IV. to match exhalation periods to needs
for sustained vocal tone
A. I and II only
B. I and III only
C. II and IV only
D. III and IV only
Correct Response: C. Through its interaction with other muscles, the diaphragm plays a key role in the
breathing
process. Making conscious use of this large, dome-shaped muscle to fill the lungs with air helps produce
a forceful
voice when needed. It is also important that actors and oral interpreters be able to control exhalation in
order to
support vocal tone.
•
demonstrate an understanding of the potential impact on non-written presentations of images,
sound, graphics, illustrations, and maps and other features from electronic and print media.
3O
13. A major criterion when evaluating a speech is
whether or not the speaker has elicited:
A. an emotional response in the audience.
B. a feeling of satisfaction in the audience.
C. the intended reaction in the audience.
D. varied reactions among members of the
audience.
16. To ensure the success of middle-school
ENL students who will enter mainstream
science classes next year, an ENL teacher
plans to meet with the science teachers to
discuss ways that they might work
together to accomplish this goal. Which
of the following would be the most
appropriate first step for the ENL teacher
to propose?
A. Present a series of workshops to the
science teachers on strategies for
promoting ENL students' cognitiveacademic
language proficiency.
B. Designate times when the ENL and
science teachers would observe one
Correct Response: C. Because different types of
speeches are intended to evoke different kinds
of responses from audiences, a major criterion
when evaluating a speech is whether or not it
has elicited the reaction that the speaker intended.
For example, an emotional response may not
be the desired reaction to an informative address,
while an inspirational speech that leaves an
audience feeling satisfied may also have fallen
short of its intended goal. Eliciting varied
reactions among audience members would be
appropriate as a basis for evaluation only if such
a response was the intention of the speaker.
33. Which of the following recommendations
would be most appropriate for the teacher
to make when advising students about
visual aids for their oral presentations?
A. Avoid visual distractions by limiting
visual aids to the opening and
closing sections of your oral
presentation.
B. Minimize the use of text in visual
aids and use concrete, precise
wording to facilitate readability.
C. Maintain visual continuity by using
no more than two different colors in
the visual aids.
D. Make sure to introduce a different
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another's classes, and then schedule
a group meeting to discuss their
observations.
C. Request and review copies of the
learning objectives, books, and other
relevant science materials with
which the students will be working.
D. Provide the science teachers with a
list detailing the academic and
behavioral characteristics of the
ENL students who will be taking
science classes next year.
visual aid for each new idea in your
oral presentation.
10. Students in a sixth-grade class have been
working on independent research projects.
They have collected data and are about to
begin working on their multimedia
presentations. Which of the following
steps would be most appropriate for the
students to take first?
A. writing out a detailed script of the
presentation
B. developing a storyboard or other
plan for presenting the information
C. collecting a variety of photographs,
video clips, and other visual aids
D. creating charts and graphs to clarify
the main ideas of the presentation
Item 10, Objective 13, Correct Response B
The multiple options and tasks involved in
preparing a multimedia research
presentation can be overwhelming for students. As
a first step, students should
develop a storyboard or other plan for presenting
their research findings. This
approach helps students focus their thoughts and
organize their materials so that the
remaining tasks proceed in a logical and
manageable fashion.
3. According to the Texas Essential
Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) English
Language Arts curriculum, ESL students
in grades four through eight are expected
to "tell important events and ideas gleaned
from video segments, graphic art, or
technology presentations." Students
in a sixth-grade ESL class are studying
astronomy. Which of the following
activities related to the unit would address
this TEKS objective most effectively?
A. After the class discusses a reading
about the origins of the universe,
the teacher helps students design
a PowerPoint presentation to assist
them in teaching another class about
the topic.
B. After examining diagrams, descriptions,
and photographs of the
planets, students create a short oral
presentation on a planet of their
choice.
C. Students use string and foam balls
to create a three-dimensional
representation of the solar system,
and then they hang it from the
ceiling.
D. The teacher gives students a list
of questions about a specific star
or planet and asks them to locate
educational Web sites in which
10. The symbolism of a visual image
from one culture may be ambiguous
or may not be apparent to an individual
from a different culture. Which of the
following statements best explains this
observation?
A. The way a person visually
scans an image is dependent
on the characteristics of his
or her written language.
B. The physical perception of visual
elements, such as shapes and tones,
is influenced by cultural factors.
C. The interpretation of a symbol
is the result of a highly individualized
construction of meaning
by the viewer.
D. The connection between a symbol
and what it represents is learned.
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they might find the answers.
16. Presentation software would be most
effective for presenting information in
which of the following contexts?
A. sharing a personal anecdote
B. making points during a debate
C. explaining the steps in a process
D. orally interpreting a literary text
18. Which of the following types of
software is most likely to be useful in
creating a printed media product that
contains both text and graphics?
A. hypermedia software
B. desktop publishing software
C. data management software
D. word-processing software
8. A significant benefit of having students
use hypermedia tools to create documents
is that hypermedia tools:
A. provide a fixed framework for
presenting information in a linear
sequence.
B. help students connect newly learned
information to prior knowledge.
C. allow the user to organize, display,
and interact with information in a
variety of ways.
D. provide students with thorough
instructions for navigating through
linked information.
19. A middle school teacher designs an
activity in which students watch a twentyminute
film with the sound turned off.
Periodically, the teacher stops the film,
and students discuss what they have seen.
This instructional activity is most likely to
promote students' critical-viewing skills in
which of the following ways?
A. focusing students' attention on
differences between visual messages
and oral communication
B. helping students identify common
film cliches by focusing attention on
key images in short film segments
C. focusing students' attention on the
relationship between visual imagery
and narration in film
D. helping students interpret and
evaluate visual images in film by
focusing attention on visual details
18. An eighth-grade teacher plans the following activities in connection with a field trip to view a
photojournalism exhibit at a local museum.
• Before the trip, students study how elements of design and photographic techniques
express ideas and communicate meaning.
• The teacher gives students a list of questions to read and consider as they view the
exhibit.
• After the trip, students work in small groups to write answers to the questions.
• In a whole-class discussion, students share their reactions to the exhibit and their groups'
answers to the questions.
Which of the following additional
activities would best help the teacher
informally assess students' understanding
of the way visual images and elements of
design create meaning?
A. Students work in small groups to
prepare their own exhibits by using
photographs from newspapers and
magazines to tell a story.
B. Each student researches one
photojournalist featured at the
exhibit and presents a brief report
on his or her work in the field.
C. Students write an essay about the
photojournalism exhibit at the
museum, analyzing particular
photographs they liked.
D. Each student writes a simulated
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magazine article and creates a
drawing or illustration to
accompany the article.
18. Criteria used to judge the effectiveness of
gesture in oral interpretation should include the
performer's ability to:
A. suggest and emphasize an idea.
B. exaggerate standard mannerisms.
C. distract attention from the verbal message.
D. imitate other performers' techniques.
Correct Response: A. The clarity and facility with
which an idea is either suggested or
emphasized is one of the most important criteria for
assessing a performer's ability to use
gesture in oral interpretation. The use of gesture to
exaggerate standard mannerisms, distract
attention from the verbal message, or imitate other
performers' techniques usually is not an
indication of an effective performance.
11. Which of the following statements about
the design of a magazine advertisement
is most accurate?
A. Either the product or the company
logo should appear at the true
center of the allocated space.
B. An advertisement that is visually
balanced will appeal most to the
least adventurous consumers.
C. Art used in an advertisement
should represent an array of moods
to appeal to diverse consumers.
D. White space used effectively will
attract the reader's eye to the
product being advertised.
6. Which of the following statements is the
best example of argument by analogy?
A. The housing market is stagnant,
unemployment is increasing, and
most workers are earning less
today than they did a year ago.
Can anyone doubt that we are
headed for a recession?
B. If the Federal Reserve Board
adopted policies that encouraged
banks to lower interest rates,
everyone would benefit from the
resulting increase in home and auto
sales.
C. Nearly half of all people surveyed
in recent opinion polls report that
they feel less economically secure
than they did two years ago. This
is clear evidence that current
economic policies are not working.
D. The U.S. economy today shows
many of the same signs of
instability that it exhibited during
the late 1920s. We can expect
another Great Depression if current
trends continue.
8. Listeners can best evaluate the objectivity
of a radio news program by asking which
of the following questions?
A. Do newscasters use unnecessarily
complex terms to explain issues?
B. Do newscasters cover the most
important stories at the beginning
of the broadcast?
C. Do newscasters give equal attention
to different viewpoints?
D. Do newscasters provide relevant
background information on major
stories?
Correct Response: C. By representing opposing
viewpoints, a news program may avoid
representations that are
exclusively biased to a particular viewpoint and
thereby aspire to objectivity.
8. Tallchief and Jennings, an established
securities firm with a reputation for
prudent investment practices, has hired
a radio station to air a series of its
commercials. The station could best
create the proper mood for the commercials
by adopting a pace that is:
A. varied and lively.
B. vigorous.
C. slow and deliberate.
D. easygoing.
214
3. Which of the following is a primary
consideration when choosing the font size
to be used in a multimedia presentation?
A. the quantity of information that
needs to be contained in a particular
slide
B. the average age of the intended
audience
C. the total length of the presentation
D. the typical setting in which the
presentation will be given
Correct Response: D. When determining font size,
factors such as audience size and the
physical characteristics of the room need to be
given primary consideration. This ensures that
any text included is large enough for anyone to
read when they view the presentation.
13. A student wants to use music downloaded
from the Internet in connection with a
classroom multimedia presentation. In
order to ensure compliance with federal
copyright law and the Fair Use Guidelines
for Educational Multimedia, a school
library media specialist should:
A. allow the student to incorporate
the music into a single-use school
presentation and keep a student
portfolio copy.
B. allow the student to copy the music
onto a floppy disk and return it
to the library to be erased after a
single use.
C. suggest that a teacher run the
presentation directly off the
computer so that a copy of the
music will not be needed.
D. offer to obtain a compact disc of
the music via interlibrary loan and
return the compact disc after only
a single use.
Correct Response: A. The Fair Use Guidelines for
Educational Multimedia, incorporated into
federal copyright law, allow educational institutions
and libraries limited copying privileges not
available to other kinds of institutions. Single-use
downloads and a portfolio copy are legal if
the student is receiving a grade for the
presentation.
•
know the effects on perceptions of speaker performance, with attention to the dangers of
stereotyping and bias.
3P
9. Which of the following criticalthinking
skills is likely to be most
helpful to an individual who is
listening to a persuasive speech?
A. formulating a counterargument to
each of the main ideas
B. identifying contradictions and
fallacies of reasoning
C. evaluating the level of the speaker's
vocabulary and syntax
D. comparing the speech to other
speeches heard previously
13. A political speaker is scheduled to give
a speech to an audience of constituents.
To prepare for the speech, the speaker
studies the demographic profile of the
audience so that generalizations made in
the speech can be designed to appeal to
specific segments of the audience. When
analyzing and using data in this way, it is
most important for the speaker to:
A. plan to spend an equal amount of
time speaking to each segment of
the audience.
B. inform the audience that demographic
data has been used in the
preparation of the speech.
C. ensure that any generalizations used
in the speech are not stereotypical in
nature.
215
D. provide full source citations for any
demographic data used in the
preparation of the speech.
Read the excerpt below from Patrick Henry's speech of March 23, 1775, to a meeting of his fellow
Virginians; then answer the two questions that follow.
I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what
there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with
which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?
Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove
a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious
reception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken
our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown
ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not
deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation—the last arguments to which
kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to
submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in
this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?
No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind
and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been for so long forging.
12. Which of the following is the main claim
being advanced in the excerpt?
A. Traitors are undermining the
colonists' cause.
B. The conduct of the British reflects
their hostile intent.
C. Memory is short and has a
tendency to deceive.
D. The British military is overwhelming
in its strength.
Correct Response: B. (SMR Code: 1.4) Patrick
Henry's main purpose in this passage is to expose
the
actual designs of the British as opposed to their
stated intentions. Henry suggests that actions, not
words,
are the best indicators of intent. Therefore he asks
his listeners to look critically at the British's
"insidious
smile" and "gracious reception," which mask the
hostile intent evident in their warlike conduct.
3. Cultural stereotypes are most likely to
influence interpersonal communication
between people of different cultures by:
A. increasing the level of individual
self-disclosure.
B. limiting the effectiveness of
nonverbal communication.
C. enhancing understanding by
increasing cultural awareness.
D. introducing confusion because of
misconceptions about individuals.
4. A teacher would like to assess students'
skills in using a graphics program to
create products. In this situation, one
advantage in using an informal assessment
process rather than a formal assessment
process is that the informal process would
allow the teacher to:
A. evaluate the students' products
against a set of objective criteria.
B. involve the students in the learning
and evaluation process.
C. compare the students' performances
with those of their grade-level peers.
D. measure what the students have
learned when their products are
finished.
Use the excerpt below from an 1873 speech by Susan B. Anthony to answer the two questions
that
follow.
[1] Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you tonight, under indictment for the alleged crime
of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be
my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but,
instead, simply exercised my citizen's right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the
National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny. . . .
[2] [According to the Fourteenth Amendment,] "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
216
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any state deprive any person of life,
liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws."
[3] The only question left to be settled now, is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our
opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens,
and no state has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their
privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and
laws of the several states, is to-day null and void . . . .
3. Which of the following best describes the
speaker's fundamental claim in the excerpt
above?
A. that the speaker is not guilty of the
crime of which she is accused
B. that women are citizens of the United
States
C. that all laws discriminating against
women are null and void
D. that the Constitution gives women
the right to vote
4. The speaker's observations in the excerpt
above best illustrate the use of which of
the following persuasive appeals?
A. reasoning by analogy
B. causal reasoning
C. reasoning by example
D. syllogistic reasoning
Read the excerpt below from a speech by Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in
1787; then answer the two questions that follow.
[1] I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall
never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being oblig'd, by
better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I
once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I
am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men
indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that
wherever others differ from them it is so far error. . . . But tho' many private persons think almost
as highly of their own infallibility, as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain
French lady, who in a little dispute with her sister, said, I don't know how it happens, Sister, but I
meet with nobody but myself that's always in the right. . . .
[2] In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I
think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be
a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well
administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism as other forms have done
before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being
incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other convention we can obtain, may be able to
make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of
their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions,
their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. . . .
[3] On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the Convention, who
may still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own
infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.
5. Which of the following best describes the
speaker's main purpose in the excerpt
above?
A. to analyze the strengths and
weaknesses of the Constitution
B. to persuade members of the
convention to discard their
preconceptions
C. to identify areas where the
Constitution needs further
amendment
D. to explain why he believes the
Constitution is acceptable
6. Which of the following best describes the
speaker's main reason for beginning his
remarks with the statement that he does
not entirely approve of the draft
Constitution?
A. The speaker pretends he is an
opponent of the Constitution so that
his endorsement of it will come as a
dramatic surprise to his listeners.
B. The speaker expresses his own
reservations at the outset to insulate
himself from criticism should the
action he proposes prove unwise.
217
C. The speaker assumes that no one is
satisfied with the Constitution as a
means of identifying with his
listeners.
D. The speaker establishes his own
objectivity before attempting to
persuade others of a recommended
course of action
3. One can best provide constructive
feedback about another person's insensitivity
by adopting a combination of
which of the following approaches?
I. focusing attention on the person's
past conduct rather than the present
situation
II. mentioning other people who feel
the same way about the person
III. raising the subject at a time when
the person is likely to be receptive
to the feedback
IV. discussing the person's conduct in
descriptive rather than evaluative
terms
A. I and III only
B. I and IV only
C. II and III only
D. III and IV only
Correct Response: D. Since feedback that may be intended as constructive may be perceived under
certain
circumstances as critical or confrontational, it is important to provide such feedback at a moment when
the person is
not likely to feel defensive. Describing a person's conduct gives that person the opportunity to view his or
her conduct
as others might and thus reflect upon the behavior in more sensitive terms. Evaluating the person's
behavior, on the
other hand, can easily be experienced by that person as critical or confrontational, and therefore
frequently gives rise
to a defensive response.
4. Which of the following strategies would
best enable a speaker to reduce the
animosity of an audience that is strongly
opposed to the main argument of the
speaker's address?
A. refuting likely counterarguments at
the beginning of the address
B. asking members of the audience to
submit written questions
C. trying to establish common ground
at the beginning of the address
D. citing well-known authorities to
support one's point of view
Correct Response: C. By seeking and explicitly articulating common ground, the speaker may somewhat
disarm
possible objection, or at least limit its scope. When the speaker's message is placed in the context of
certain shared
beliefs or positions, its controversial content may be seen in a broader, more widely accepted context.
This approach
is less likely to produce an emotional response on the part of the audience and therefore allows the
218
audience to
consider the message in a more balanced, reflective fashion.
219