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






2. The study of the meaning in language.






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






4. A method an author uses to let readers know more about the characters and their personal traits.






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






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






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






8. 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.






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






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






11. 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






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






13. 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






14. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






21. 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






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






23. 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






24. The set of associations implied by a word in addition to its literal meaning.






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






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






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






28. Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse.






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






30. A story in which people (or things or actions) represent an idea or a generalization about life. Usually have a strong lesson or moral.






31. A novel set in the western U.S. featuring the experiences of cowboys and frontiersmen. Examples include Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage and Trail Driver - Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove - Conrad Richter's The Sea of Grass - Fran Striker's The Lo






32. 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.






33. The regular or random occurrence of sound in poetry.






34. 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






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






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






37. 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.






38. A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect - as in I could sleep for a year or this book weighs a ton.






39. A wise saying - usually short and written.






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






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






42. 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.






43. 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.






44. 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.






45. 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.






46. A text or performance that imitates and mocks an author or work.






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






48. A stanza made up of two rhyming lines.






49. A narrative that is made up of fantastic characters and creatures - such as witches - goblins - and fairies - and usually begins with the phrase 'Once upon a time...' Examples include Rapunzel - Cinderella - Sleeping Beauty - and Little Red Riding Ho






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