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Praxis Middle School Language Arts

Subjects : praxis, english
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A story in which people (or things or actions) represent an idea or a generalization about life. Usually have a strong lesson or moral.






2. A figure of speech in which a comparison is implied but not stated - such as 'This winter is a bear.'






3. A person - place - thing - or event used to represent something else - such as the white flag that represents surrender.






4. Two or more words in sequence that form a syntactic unit that is less than a complete sentence.






5. Language widely considered crude - disgusting - and oftentimes offensive.






6. The narrator shares the thoughts and feelings of all the characters.






7. A group of words containing a subject and a predicate and forming part of a compound or complex sentence.






8. A short poem - often written by an anonymous author - comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited.






9. A method by which trained readers evaluate a piece of writing for its overall quality. There is no focus on one aspect of the writing.






10. The specialized language of a particular group or culture. Ex. in the field of education...rubric - tuning protocol - and deskilling.






11. Opposing elements or characters in a plot.






12. A long narrative poem detailing a hero's deeds. Examples include The Aenied by Vergil - The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer - Beowulf - Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - and Hiawath






13. The use of a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or expected meaning. There are three types....Dramatic - Verbal - Situation.






14. The flaw that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero; this term comes from the Greek word hybris - which means 'excessive pride.'






15. The use of words to create pictures in the reader's mind.






16. Also known as a run - on line in poetry - _____ occurs when one line ends and continues onto the next line to complete meaning. For example the first line in Thoreau's poem 'My life has been the poem I would have writ -' and the second line completes






17. A short story or folktale that contains a moral - which may be expressed explicitly at the end as a maxim. Examples include The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse - The Tortoise and the Hare - and The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.






18. A variation of a language used by people who live in a particular geographical area.






19. Verse that contains an irregular metrical pattern and line length; also known as vers libre.






20. Meter that is composed of feet that are short - short - long or unaccented - unaccented - accented - usually used in light or whimsical poetry - such as limerick.






21. A pair of lines of poetic verse written in iambic pentameter.






22. The time and place in which the action of a story takes place.






23. A narrative form - such as an epic - legend - myth - song - poem - or fable - that has been retold within a culture for generations. Examples include The People Couldn't Fly retold by Virginia Hamilton and And Green Grass Grew All Around by Alvin Sch






24. A turn from the general audience to address a specific group of persons (or a personified abstraction) who is present of absent. For example - in a recent performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet - Hamlet turned to the audience and spoke directly to one w






25. The study of the sounds of language and their physical properties.






26. The act or an example of substituting a mild - indirect - or vague term for one considered harsh - blunt - or offensive.






27. The story is told by someone outside the story.






28. A comparison of two unlike things - usually including the word like or as.






29. The analysis of how sounds function in a language or dialect.






30. A comparison of objects or ideas that appear to be different but are alike in some important way.






31. A short poem about personal feelings and emotions.






32. A word which describes or gives more information about a noun or pronoun. Ex. The lazy dog sat on the rug - the word lazy is an ____ which gives more information about the noun dog.






33. A person or being in a narrative






34. Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse.






35. Rhyming of the ends of lines of verse.






36. A narrative technique in which the main story is composed primarily for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories - each of which is a story within a story. Examples include Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - Ovid's Metamorphoses - and Em






37. A variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area.






38. A word which names a person - place or thing. Ex. boy - river - friend - Mexico - triangle - day - school - truth - university - idea - John F. Kennedy - movie






39. A stanza made up of two rhyming lines.






40. The main character or hero of a written work.






41. Fiction that is intended to frighten - unsettle - or scare the reader. Often overlaps with fantasy and science fiction. Examples include Stephen King's The Shining - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - and Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.






42. A brief fictional prose narrative. Examples include Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery -' Washington Irving's 'Rip van Winkle' D.H. Lawrence's 'The Horse Dealer's Daughter -' Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Hound of the Baskervilles -' and Dorothy Parker's 'Big Bl






43. Narrative fiction that involves gods and heroes or has a theme that expresses a culture's ideology. Examples of Greek ______ include Zeus and the Olympians and The Trojan War. Roman ______ include Hercules - Apollo - and Venus.






44. A division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains...Couplet: Two - lines - Triplet: Three - lines - Quatrain: Four - lines - Quintet: Five - lines - Sestet: Six- lines - Septet: Seven - lines - Octave: Eight - lines.






45. A person who opposes or competes with the main character (protagonist); often the villain in the story.






46. Distinctive features of a person's speech and speech patterns.






47. The study of the orgin of words






48. Simple - compound (conjunctions) - complex (subordination) - compound - complex (conjunctions and subordination).






49. A kind of adjective which is always used with and gives some information about a noun. There are only two _____ a and the.






50. Old - fashioned words that are no longer used in common speech - such as thee - thy - and thou.