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






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






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






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






5. 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






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






7. 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






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






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






10. The perspective from which a story is told.






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






12. 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






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. 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.






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






16. Persuasive writing.






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






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






19. The study of the orgin of words






20. 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.






21. 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






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






23. The main section of a long poem.






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






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






26. 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






27. 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.






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






29. 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






30. A phrase that consists of two contradictory terms






31. The use of sound words to suggest meaning - as in buzz - click - or vroom.






32. A literary technique in which the author gives hints or clues about what is to come at some point later in the story.






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






34. 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.






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






36. The writer says one thing and means another






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






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






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






40. The repetition of initial consonant sounds in words - such a 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.'






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






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






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






44. 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.






45. 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.






46. 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.






47. 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






48. The story is told from the point of view of one character.






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






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