E T S Praxis Series

Middle School English Language Arts (0049)

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The sample questions that follow illustrate the kinds of questions in the test. They are not, however, representative of the entire scope of the test in either content or difficulty.

Directions:  Each of the questions or statements below is followed by four suggested answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case.

  1. _____ is a narrative that takes abstract ideas of behavior — good or bad, wise or foolish — and attempts to make them concrete and striking. The chief actor in these stories is usually an animal or inanimate object that behaves like a human and engages in a single significant act intended to teach a moral lesson.

    Which of the following will correctly complete the passage above?

    1. A myth
    2. A fable
    3. An epic
    4. A legend

Questions 2-4 refers to the following poem.

 
There is no frigate like a book
 
To take us lands away,
 
Nor any coursers like a page
 
Of prancing poetry.
(Line)
(5) 
This traverse may the poorest take
 
Without oppress of toll;
 
How frugal is the chariot
 
That bears a human soul!

Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951 © 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

  1. Which of the following is the best restatement of lines 5–6?

    1. Travel exposes an individual to new experiences.
    2. Reading is an adventure that costs nothing.
    3. Chariots are an inexpensive means of travel.
    4. Poetry, in comparison with fiction, lacks seriousness.

  2. In the poem, books and reading are described in terms related to

    1. laborious activities
    2. wealth and poverty
    3. geographical regions
    4. modes of transportation

  3. The word "prancing" (line 4) is used to

    1. link the images of "frigate" (line 1) and "chariot" (line 7)
    2. underline the contrast between "book" (line 1) and "page" (line 3)
    3. reinforce the image of horses, or "coursers" (line 3)
    4. introduce an image that will dominate the last four lines of the poem

  4. If atoms are the letters of the chemical language, then molecules are the words. But in order to put the chemical letters together to form chemical words, we have to know something about the rules of chemical spelling.

    In the passage above, a discussion of atoms is introduced by

    1. an analogy
    2. an aphorism
    3. an example
    4. a hypothesis

  5. They set two rats in cages side by side, and one was furtive, timid, and small, and the other was glossy, bold, and big.

    The sentence above is an example of a

    1. simple sentence
    2. compound sentence
    3. complex sentence
    4. compound-complex sentence

  6. My sister and I always loved sledding down the hill behind our house.

    The underlined word in the sentence above is an example of

    1. a conjunction
    2. a participle
    3. a gerund
    4. an adverb

Questions 8-9 refers to the following passage.

Unlike some writers who talk of language use with wailing and gnashing of teeth (see Edwin Newman's petulant discussions of language misuse or any of Jacques Barzun's tirades on contemporary English), George Orwell recognized the complexity of the interrelationship between thinking and language and avoided the simplistic thinking that argues that if we "correct" people's use of English, we will somehow have solved the "problem" of the "decline" of the English language.

  1. The author puts the words "correct," "problem," and "decline" in quotation marks primarily in order to suggest that

    1. they are examples of words that are misused in the English language
    2. the complex interrelationship between thinking and language has affected the way in which people try to correct one another's speech
    3. the problem of the decline of the English language is too severe to be solved merely by correcting people's speech
    4. they reflect a limited perspective and should not be accepted uncritically

  2. The author's tone in describing Newman and Barzun can best be described as

    1. dismissive
    2. bitter
    3. defensive
    4. spiteful

  3. Freewriting, brainstorming, clustering, and idea mapping are most important during which stage of the writing process?

    1. Prewriting
    2. Drafting
    3. Revising
    4. Proofreading