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Common Core Standards Test Bank
Grade 11-12 Reading: Literature
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Grade 11-12 Reading: Literature Test
Bank
“The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear
understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers
and parents know what they need to do to help them. The
standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world,
reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for
success in college and careers. With American students fully
prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to
compete successfully in the global economy.”
-www.corestandards.org
As more and more states adopt the common core standards, teachers need materials to help them
understand what’s changing for their grade and subject. Teachers also need quick ways to expose their
students to the standards.
This test bank includes 27 questions per standard released for the grade. In the immediately following
pages, you will find the actual standards as the table of contents. Please find the test bank questions
organized by standard beginning on Page 1. By purchasing this product, you have purchased full rights
to copy and paste from this document into any other document for student examination or testing.
Also, please feel free to print and/or copy this information as needed for your classrooms.
Don’t be stressed about the upcoming transition to the common core standards. These test bank
questions will clarify your specific standards and provide an opportunity for your students to be exposed
to them throughout the year.
Grade 11-12 Reading: Literature CCSS
Standards
Key Ideas and Details
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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of
what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining
where the text leaves matters uncertain.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2 Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and
analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on
one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to
develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is
ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
Craft and Structure
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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in
the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word
choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is
particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure
specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a
comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its
aesthetic impact.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.6 Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires
distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm,
irony, or understatement).
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.7 Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g.,
recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version
interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an
American dramatist.)
(RL.11-12.8 not applicable to literature)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9 Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts
from the same period treat similar themes or topics.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.10
By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems,
in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high
end of the range.
By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems,
at the high end of the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.
Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank
Grade 11-12 Reading: Literature
Story: “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
Knowing that Mrs Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as
gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name
leading the list of ‘killed.’ He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram,
and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its
significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of
grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down
by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new
spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares.
The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows
were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one
above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob
came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its
dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But
now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of
blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know;
it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her
through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two
white slender hands would have been.
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over
and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’ The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it
went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed
and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that
had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter
moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and
spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would
be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have
a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act
seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the
unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as
the strongest impulse of her being!
‘Free! Body and soul free!’ she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission.
‘Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For
heaven’s sake open the door.’
‘Go away. I am not making myself ill.’ No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open
window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of
days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday
she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in
her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and
together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travelstained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident,
and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’
quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank
CCSS.RL.11-12.1

According to the text, is Mrs. Mallard happy to receive the news that her husband has died? Which
answer below is supported by textual evidence?
a. Yes; Mrs. Mallard expresses her desire to start a relationship with Mr. Benchley.
b. She is not “happy” her husband has died, but after the initial shock wears off, she imagines a
greater freedom in her life.
c. The text is not clear about how she feels.
d. No, she is not happy; she contemplates suicide.
Answer: b

What does Mrs. Mallard observe outside her window after learning of her husband’s death?
a. A desolate winter day.
b. Autumn leaves drifting to the ground.
c. Children playing in a sandbox.
d. New spring life.
Answer: d

What is Mrs. Mallard looking forward to in the coming years without her husband?
a. Days of her own without anyone to answer to.
b. Vacations in Rome with her lover.
c. Not having to interact with her mother-in-law.
d. None of the above
Answer: a
CCSS.RL.11-12.2

Of the choices below, which is the best summary of the theme or central idea of this excerpt?
a. Female self-discovery and identity
b. Marriage is hard but worth enduring.
c. Grief can cause fatal illness.
d. Women living in the 19th century avoided divorce.
Answer: a

Which statement correctly summarizes the text?
a. Mrs. Mallard is in love with two men; when she cannot be with her lover she takes her own life.
b. Mrs. Mallard envisions a new life of freedom when she believes her husband has been killed.
c. Mrs. Mallard contemplates divorce, much to the chagrin of her sister.
d. Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition that worsens when she hears of her husband’s death.
Answer: b
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank

Why might the central theme of “The Story of an Hour” be considered scandalous in 1895, when it
was first published?
a. The undercurrent of subversive sexuality in the text.
b. The callous attitude toward murder implied in the text.
c. The story deals with a female protagonist who feels liberated by the news of her husband’s
death.
d. Mrs. Mallard’s reluctance to have children with her husband.
Answer: c
CCSS.RL.11-12.3

Who tells Mrs. Mallard that her husband has died?
a. Josephine, Mrs. Mallard’s sister.
b. Emmeline, the servant.
c. Harriet, Mrs. Mallard’s cousin.
d. A telegram arrives, and Mrs. Mallard reads it herself.
Answer: a

How does Mrs. Mallard view her love for her husband?
a. She didn’t love him.
b. She considered him the great love of her life.
c. She loved him “sometimes”.
d. The text is not clear about how Mrs. Mallard felt about her husband.
Answer: c

What happens at the end of “The Story of an Hour”?
a. Mrs. Mallard’s husband returns from the dead and shocks her.
b. Josephine reveals she has played a practical joke on Mrs. Mallard.
c. Mrs. Mallard decides to start a new life as a single woman.
d. Mrs. Mallard dies.
Answer: d
CCSS.RL.11-12.4

When Mrs. Mallard exclaims “‘Free! Body and soul free!’” what does she mean?
a. Her husband has been freed by being able to leave his place of employment.
b. The death of her husband offers a metaphorical release from the imprisonment of her life.
c. She will find freedom through death.
d. That she will no longer be an invalid when her husband arrives.
Answer: b
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank

What does “joy that kills” mean in the last sentence?
a. It means that Mrs. Mallard has been killed by the joy of seeing her husband alive again.
b. It means that Mrs. Mallard has killed her husband with kindness.
c. It means that Mrs. Mallard’s husband is going to kill her for having an affair.
d. It is an ironic statement. Mrs. Mallard is shocked at her husband’s sudden reappearance given
her recent fantasies of being free of her marriage.
Answer: d
CCSS.RL.11-12.5

How does the underlined sentence contribute to the overall development of the theme of the story?
a. It tells the reader that the story is not concerned with questions of morality concerning Mrs.
Mallard’s attitude toward her husband’s death.
b. It reveals Mrs. Mallard’s guilt.
c. It tells the reader that Mrs. Mallard is callous.
d. It reveals Josephine’s moral character.
Answer: a

What does the following sentence imply: “What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face
of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her
being!”?
a. Mrs. Mallard doesn’t love her husband.
b. Mrs. Mallard’s husband is abusive.
c. That the theme of the story is “love conquers all.”
d. Mrs. Mallard values her metaphysical freedom over romantic love.
Answer: d

“She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving
to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.” What
is “this thing”?
a. A specter in the darkness.
b. Her husband, having come back from the dead.
c. The realization that she will enjoy a new sense of freedom with her husband out of her life.
d. Josephine’s annoying laughter.
Answer: c
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank
CCSS.RL.11-12.6

How would you define the point of view of “The Story of an Hour”?
a. First-person
b. Third-person limited
c. Second-person
d. Third-person omniscient
Answer: b

If “The Story of an Hour” were written in first person narration, who would be telling the story?
a. Josephine
b. The author
c. Mrs. Mallard
d. An omniscient narrator
Answer: c

If “The Story of an Hour” were written in third person omniscient narration, we would be privy to
the following character’s thoughts:
a. Mrs. Mallard and Josephine
b. All of the characters
c. Mrs. Mallard only
d. The narrator’s thoughts only
Answer: b
CCSS.RL.11-12.7

In your opinion, why might Chopin have titled her story “The Story of an Hour”?
a. The events of the story span an hour.
b. It took Chopin an hour to write her story.
c. The central symbol in the story is an hourglass.
d. To express that time is fleeting.
Answer: a

In your opinion, if “The Story of an Hour” were written in 2013, would it have the same impact as it
did in 1895?
a. It would be more scandalous than it seemed in 1895.
b. It would have less of an impact, because today it isn’t deemed improper for women to be
independent.
c. Yes, but Mrs. Mallard probably wouldn’t die at the end.
d. Yes, it would be equally subversive.
Answer: b
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Common Core State Standards
Grade 11-12 English Language Arts: Reading Literature Test Bank

If “The Story of an Hour” were dramatized, would it make a better play or film, and why?
a. It would make a better play, because it’s the perfect length for a play.
b. It would make a better film because the story could be embellished more.
c. It would make a better film, because a lot of the story is interior, and this translates better to
film.
d. It would make a better play, because no one watches period films anymore.
Answer: c
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