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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. An author's choice of words based on their clearness - conciseness - effectiveness - and authenticity.






2. 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.






3. A person or being in a narrative






4. The telling of a story.






5. A metrical ______ is defined as one stressed syllable and a number of unstressed syllables (from zero to as many as four). Stressed syllables are indicated by the ? symbol. Unstressed syllables are indicated by the ? symbol. There are four possible t






6. 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






7. 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






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






9. Language that is intended to be evasive or to conceal. Ex. 'downsized' actually means fired or loss of job.






10. The narrator records the actions from his or her point of view - unaware of any of the other characters' thoughts or feelings. Also known as the objective view.






11. A stanza made up of two rhyming lines.






12. 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.






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






14. A novel comprised of idealized events far removed from everyday life. This genre includes the subgenres of gothic ____ and medieval ____. Examples include Mary Shelly's Frankenstein - William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida - and King Horn (anonym






15. The study of the structure of sentences.






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






17. A narrative about human actions that is perceived by both the teller and the listeners to have taken place within human history and that possesses certain qualities that give the tale the appearance of truth or reality. Washington Irvin's The Legend






18. A word which shows relationships among other words in the sentence. The relationships include direction - place - time - cause - manner and amount Ex. In the sentence He came by bus - 'by' is a _____ which shows manner.






19. An extended fictional prose narrative.






20. A word which shows action or state of being. Ex. In the sentence The dog bit the man - bit is the ____.






21. 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.






22. The outcome or resolution of plot in a story.






23. Expressions that are usually accepted in informal situations or regions - such as 'wicked awesome.'






24. A brief story that illustrates or makes a point.






25. 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






26. A person's account of his or hew own life.






27. A reference to a familiar person - place - thing - or event






28. A fourteen - line poem - usually written in iambic pentameter - with a varied rhyme scheme. Two main types are Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or English). A Petrarchan opens with an octave that states a proposition and ends with a ses






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






30. A break in the rhythm of language - particularly a natural pause in a in a line of verse - maked in prosody by a double vertical line ( || ). Ex. Arma virumque cano - || Troiae qui primus ab oris .






31. A short narrative - usually between 50 and 100 pages long. Examples include George Orwell's Animal Farm and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.






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






33. A literary device in which animals - ideas - and things are represented as having human traits.






34. The study of the orgin of words






35. A humorous verse form of five anapestic (Composed of feet that are short - short - long or unaccented - unaccented - accented) lines with rhyme scheme of aabba.






36. 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.






37. 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.






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






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






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






41. Opposing elements or characters in a plot.






42. Rhyming of the ends of lines of verse.






43. The feeling a text evokes in the reader - such as sadness - tranquility - or elation.






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






45. Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse.






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






47. 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.






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






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






50. A verb form that usually ends in - ing or - ed.