Test your basic knowledge |

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 suspenseful story that deals with a puzzling crime. Examples include Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Murder in Rue Morgue' and Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood.






2. Persuasive writing.






3. U '






4. Narrative fiction that is set in some earlier time and often contains historically authentic people - places - or events






5. 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






6. An expression that has been used so often that it loses its expressive power






7. The time and place in which a story occurs.






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






9. A type of Japanese poem that is written in 17 syllables with three lines of five - seven - and five syllables - respectively. Expresses a single thought.






10. A word which can be used instead of a noun. Ex instead of saying John is a student - the ____ he can be used in place of the noun John and the sentence becomes He is a student.






11. Informal language used by a particular group of people among themselves.






12. A genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot - theme - and/or setting. Examples include J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia - and William Morris' The Well at the World's E






13. Language that shows disrespect for others or something sacred.






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






15. A document organized in paragraph form that can be long or short and can be in the form of a letter - dialogue - or discussion. Examples include Politics and the English Language by George Orwell - The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson - and Mo






16. A person or thing working against the hero of a literary work (the protagonist).






17. A philosophy that values human freedom and personal responsibility. A few well known _______ writers are Jean - Paul Satre - Soren Kierkegaard ('the father of _______') - Albert Camus - Freidrich Nietzche - Franz Kafka - and Simone de Beauvoir.






18. Specialized language used in a particular field or content area






19. Literature that makes fun of social conventions or conditions - usually to evoke change.






20. The role of context in the interpretation of meaning.






21. A poem that is a mournful lament for the dead. Examples include William Shakespeare's 'Eligy' from Cymbeline - Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Requiem -' and Alfred Lord Tennysone's 'In Memoriam.'






22. A stanza made up of two rhyming lines.






23. How the author uses words - phrases - and sentences to form ideas.






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






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






26. A wise saying - usually short and written.






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






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






29. The narrator shares the thoughts and feelings of one (or a few) character(s).






30. U U '






31. A story about a person's life written by another person.






32. Literature - often drama - ending in a catastrophic event for the protagonist(s) after he or she faces several problems or conflicts.






33. The structure of a work of literature; the sequence of events.






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






35. The study of the structure of sentences.






36. A literacy device in which the author jumps back in time in the chronology of narrative.






37. A word that gives more information about a noun or pronoun. Ex. Sue runs very fast - very describes the ____ fast and gives information about how fast Sue runs.






38. Rhyming of the ends of lines of verse.






39. The overall feeling created by an author's use of words.






40. The study of the meaning in language.






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






42. The repetition of a line or phrase of a poem at regular intervals - particularly at the end of each stanza.






43. A word that connects other words or groups of words. Ex. In the sentence Bob and Dan are friends - the _____ 'and' connects two nouns and in the sentence.






44. Repetition of the final consonant sound in words containing different vowels






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






46. The writer says one thing and means another






47. The perspective from which the story is told - four choices: first person; 3rd person (dramatic - objective); 3rd person omniscient; 3rd person limited omniscient.






48. A category of literature defined by its style - form - and content.






49. 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.






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