Page 1 of 5
Mount Auburn International Academy
SABIS®
School Network
English
Level K / Grade 9
EOY Revision Guide
READING COMPREHENSION
 This Final Exam will combine some of the formats used in the Reading Comprehension Periodic
Exams and English AMS Exams. These formats include: multiple choice, true or false, what
happened first or sequencing, fill in the blanks, short answers, long answers, describing or
matching characters, reading a passage from the story, and answering the questions about it.
LITERATURE:
Poetry unit
 Review the following poems:
 Robert Frost—“Two Tramps in Mud Time”
 Longfellow— “The Wreck of the Hesperus”
 Rudyard Kipling— “Danny Deever”
 Gwendolyn Brooks— “The Sonnet-Ballad”
 Dorothy Parker— “One Perfect Rose”
 Edgar Allan Poe— “Eldorado”
 Lucille Clifton— “miss rosie”
 Emily Dickinson— “The Wind-tapped like a tired Man”
 John Updike— “Ex Baseball Player”

Be familiar with the following terms:
o poetry
o rhythm
o meter (feet, etc. )
o rhyme (scheme – end - internal masculine – feminine – exact –
approximate / slant / sight / eye)
o assonance
o alliteration
o consonance
Novel Unit: A Separate Peace
Concepts
You will need to apply the following concepts.
o Analyze plot and setting
o Chronological order
o Conflict: internal and external
o Making inference from evidence
SABIS® Proprietary
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
lyric
dramatic
narrative (ballad [folk / literature]; epic;
metrical romance)
tone
figurative language (simile – metaphor –
personification)
Characterization: direct and indirect
Recognizing symbols
Point of View
Theme
Review the following:
Narrator
· Gene Forrester narrates the story as he revisits his high school campus and recalls events that
happened fifteen years earlier.
Point of view
· The narrator speaks in the first person, describing events as he perceived them at the time of their
occurrence, though occasionally with the augmented knowledge of hindsight (sometimes it is difficult
to distinguish between the perspective of the younger Gene and the older Gene). Although he
apparently recounts external events with honesty and thoroughness, Gene is an unreliable narrator in
that he withholds his own thoughts and emotions regarding certain crucial scenes, such as Finny’s fall
and the boys’ makeshift trial of Gene.
Tone
· Occasionally nostalgic but largely brooding and melancholy; often regretful
Tense
· Past tense; the narrator refers to the recent past (“not long ago”) before launching into a flashback
on the more remote past of fifteen years earlier. The book then ends with a return to the recent past.
Setting (time)
· The story begins in 1958 but quickly flashes back to the years 1942–43
Setting (place)
· The Devon School, an exclusive New England academy
Protagonist
· Gene
Major Conflict
· Gene feels both love and hate for his best friend, Finny, worshipping and resenting Finny’s athletic
and moral superiorities.
Rising Action
· Gene’s envy of Finny grows; Gene realizes that Finny doesn’t return his resentment; Gene becomes
jealous of Finny’s seeming incapacity to be envious; Gene feels that Finny is a morally superior
person; Finny suggests that the boys climb a tree together.
Climax
· Gene jounces the limb of the tree, making Finny fall and shatter his leg
Falling action
· Gene feels guilty about Finny’s fall; he and Finny become even more intimate, developing a
codependency; the boys put Gene on “trial” for the accident; Finny falls down the stairs and breaks his
leg again; Finny dies during the operation on his leg.
Themes
· Codependency’s threat to identity; the creation of inner enemies
Motifs
· Transformation; athletics
Symbols
· World War II; the summer and winter sessions at Devon; Finny’s fall
Foreshadowing
· Prior to his flashback, the older Gene makes reference to a “death by violence” and to fears that he
had at school, which are associated with a flight of marble steps and a tree. These remarks
foreshadow Gene’s revelation of Finny’s two accidents: the falling from the tree and the falling down
the steps.
Page 3 of 5
UNSEEN COMPREHENSION
 You will be given several passages to read and then you will answer questions about each
passage.
 You cannot study for this exam.
 You will need to read the passages and answer the questions independently.
VOCABULARY: See attached list
 This Final Exam will combine some of the formats used in the Vocabulary Periodic Exams.
These formats include: synonyms (words that mean the same), antonyms (words that mean
the opposite), matching, true or false, writing sentences, writing definitions, fill in the blanks,
completing sentences, words defined incorrectly, words used incorrectly in sentences, and
parts of speech.
GRAMMAR:
Unit 1: Nouns & Adjectives
 count and noncount nouns
 use of the article with noncount nouns
 determiners with noncount nounts
Unit 2: Verbs; infinitives and tenses
 formation of present participle
 use of present progressive
 use of past progressive
 use of future progressive
 formation of past participle
 use of present perfect tense
 use of perfect tense (formation and meaning)
 use of the infinitive
Unit 3: Verbs: Tenses, Mood, and Voice
 use of perfect progressive tenses
 use of the subjunctive mood
Unit 4: Adverbs & Adjectives
 types of adverbs: place, manner, time, degree, focus, purpose
 position and order of adverbs
Unit 5: Prepositions & Phrases
 adverbials
Unit 6: Aspect of Nouns: Abstract, Collective, Plural
 plural of two nouns used together
 gerunds
Unit 7: Pronouns: Personal, Indefinite, Relative
 relative pronouns
Unit 8: Verbs: Action, Helping, Modals, Linking, Conditional
 conditionals (zero, first, second, & third)
Unit 9: Constructing Sentences
 coordinating: and, but, or, so, yet
 subordinating: because, although, when, unless, whether, while, until, after, before, once
SABIS® Proprietary
Page 4 of 5
 correlative: wither…or, both… and, neither…nor
Unit 10: Deconstructing and Linking Sentences
 compound subject and singular verb
 predicate noun or noun phrase
 predicate adjective
 direct object
 adverbial clauses
 linking devices
Unit 11: General Punctuation
 capital letters (official bodies, historical events & periods, holidays, wars & battles)
 use of colon with quotations marks, business letters, separating hours and minutes, separating
main title and subtitle
Unit 12: Speech and Reported Speech
 quotation marks with speech tag
 quotation marks with words and phrases with special meaning
Unit 13: Error Correction
 misplaced modifiers
 faulty parallelism
 agreement: collective noun with plural verbs
WRITING:
Be able to write an argument essay. You will use a few minutes at the end of the test to neatly make
revisions and corrections. You will be graded on writing traits for:
 Ideas and Content
 Organization
 Voice
 Word Choice
 Sentence Fluency
 Mechanics
 Presentation (including revisions and corrections)
SABIS® Proprietary
Page 5 of 5
VOCABULARY: A Separate Peace
Chapters 1-4
*tacit
vibrantly
*capacious
*contentious
*droll
*prodigious
*rhetorically
*anarchy
*solace
*vulnerable
*stale
*salient
*protrude
*sarcastically
inveigle
*groveling
numbly
*consternation
un-emphatic
*galling
*reverberant
*inanimate
*matriarchal
*deign
*intelligible
amble
*vibrant
*eloquence
*commendable
*spacious
teeter
*inane
prow
*pun
*conniver
*compliance
inured
*maneuverability
*insidious
*words tested
SABIS® Proprietary
*inebriating
suppleness
*expulsion
*conventional
spew
*encroaching
*monologue
mordantly
enmity
effulgence
*latent
undulation
Chapters 5-10
*detonate
*delirious
*ludicrous
*erratic
*contempt
*discern
vagaries
*culminate
aesthete
sultriness
*vindicated
idiosyncratic
*exaltation
*immersions
*encompassing
turbid
*sinecure
nonentity
*dispensation
impinge
*insinuate
*solicited
encumbrance
ambiguously
sanctity
*discernible
*sobriety
*reticent
*whimsical
aphorism
*poignancy
*sustenance
patriarchal
multifariously
*cacophony
*accolade
invulnerability
*conjure
*preeminently
*austerity
*foreboding
*querulous
imperceptibly
Chapters 11-13
*surmise
guileful
incongruity
*decrepit
*impervious
*parody
*assimilate
*preposterous
*infantile
cohorts
torpidly
*timbre
*infraction
*languid
*precariously
*reprieve
cogitation
portliness
*disconcerting
*qualms
*parry