Answering Multiple-Choice Questions
High-stakes assessments often include multiple-choice questions, which can be graded by machine. Questions may ask about thesis and support, inference and argument, definition and connotation, punctuation and usage, or anything in between. Follow these guidelines to score your best on multiple-choice questions:
- Read questions first. Then you know what to watch for.
- Note question order. Often the first question asks about the first line. Usually questions follow the order of the passage.
- Treat each passage separately. You usually answer a bank of multiple-choice questions for each passage before being prompted to write about a set of passages together.
- Be patient with short passages. They may take as long or longer to analyze than long passages.
- Pay attention to footnotes. If there is a footnote, often there will be a question about it.
- Analyze ideas and organization. Questions often focus on specific ideas and how they contribute to the whole passage. Think of what each idea accomplishes—summing, supporting, contrasting, questioning, and so on.
- Analyze voice. Questions may ask about the writer's tone (feeling about the topic) or formality (relationship with the audience).
- Analyze word choice and sentence fluency. Questions may focus on the writer's sentence style or on figures of speech.
- Answer easy questions first. Eliminate obviously wrong answers.
Answering Multiple-Choice Questions About a Text
Often, high-stakes assessments will present you with a text, asking you to read it and analyze it by responding to multiple-choice questions.
Respond to questions about an article.
Carefully read the excerpt and then answer the questions that follow.
Listen to "Excerpt from "The American Scholar"
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Excerpt from "The American Scholar"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
2 Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be. But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.
3 Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation,—the act of thought,—is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
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Which of the following literary techniques is featured most heavily in the first paragraph?
A. nobility
B. repeated phrasing
B. repeated phrasing
C. rhyme
D. satire
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What does the phrase, "brooded thereon" in the second sentence mean?
A. pondered
A. pondered
B. grew depressed
C. ignored
D. hatched out
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How could you best phrase the transitional thought between the first and second paragraphs?
A. The best minds speak truth.
B. Truth is life reflected upon.
C. Poetry is truer than life.
D. The depth of reflection determines the quality of utterance.
D. The depth of reflection determines the quality of utterance.
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How does Emerson view the human masses?
A. As resistant to change
A. As resistant to change
B. As the final arbiters of knowledge
C. As "Man Thinking"
D. As devoted to truth
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Near the end of the third paragraph, the word "dogma" is contrasted with which of the following?
A. individual talent
B. sensory observations
C. personal principles
C. personal principles
D. book learning
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What is the best statement of the overall theme of this passage?
A. Books preserve knowledge for later generations.
B. Every generation needs to write new books.
B. Every generation needs to write new books.
C. Books are imperfect vehicles for knowledge.
D. Books should be banned.
Answering Multiple-Choice Questions About Conventions
On some high-stakes assessments, you will read a flawed example followed by questions asking you to find and fix errors. Carefully read the key passage (often underlined) and options for revising or editing it. Select the option that corrects the error and makes the passage read most smoothly.
Respond to questions about conventions.
Carefully read each question and possible response before selecting your answer. If the underlined section is already correct, select NO CHANGE.
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In the sentence above, the best punctuation for the underlined section is
A. Theia provided her notes to Jason and Erin, helped Lydia study for the exam.
B. Theia provided her notes to Jason, and Erin helped Lydia study for the exam.
B. Theia provided her notes to Jason, and Erin helped Lydia study for the exam.
C. Theia provided: her notes to Jason, and Erin helped: Lydia study for the exam.
D. NO CHANGE
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The correct punctuation for the sentence above is
A. The police officer asked me, "Do you know how fast you were going?"
A. The police officer asked me, "Do you know how fast you were going?"
B. The police officer asked me, "Do you know how fast you were going"?
C. The police officer asked me: "Do you know how fast you were going?".
D. NO CHANGE
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In the sentence above, which of the underlined words is spelled incorrectly?
A. advocated
B. tuition
C. universaties
C. universaties
D. NO CHANGE
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In the sentence above, the correct spelling of the underlined noun is
A. attornies-at-law
B. attorneys'-at-law
C. attorneys-at-laws
D. NO CHANGE
D. NO CHANGE
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Which option below best corrects the pronoun-antecedent agreement error in the sentence above?
A. Everyone must bring his own
B. Everyone must bring her own
C. All students must bring their own
C. All students must bring their own
D. NO CHANGE
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Which revision best corrects the error in the sentence above?
A. The crowd leaped around with boundless energy while watching the rapid-fire comedian.
B. Leaping around with boundless energy, the rapid-fire comedian entertained the crowd.
B. Leaping around with boundless energy, the rapid-fire comedian entertained the crowd.
C. The rapid-fire comedian watched the crowd leaping around with boundless energy.
D. NO CHANGE
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What revision would correct the error in the underlined selection above?
A. Without a second thought, I stepped up to help the fallen man.
A. Without a second thought, I stepped up to help the fallen man.
B. Without a second thought I stepped up to: help the fallen man.
C. Without a second thought: I stepped up to help the fallen man.
D. NO CHANGE
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Which revision corrects the punctuation of the underlined sentence above?
A. My father bewildered by his new voice-recognition personal assistant, has begun to wonder if his house is haunted.
B. My father, bewildered by his new voice-recognition personal assistant, has begun to wonder if his house is haunted.
B. My father, bewildered by his new voice-recognition personal assistant, has begun to wonder if his house is haunted.
C. My father bewildered, by his new voice-recognition personal assistant, has begun to wonder if his house is haunted.
D. NO CHANGE
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Which revision corrects the error in the sentence above?
A. The senator's speech was much more argumentative.
B. The senator's speech was much less persuasive.
C. The senator's speech was much more persuasive than her colleague's speech.
C. The senator's speech was much more persuasive than her colleague's speech.
D. NO CHANGE
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Which revision most improves the underlined sentences above?
A. The minivan is old and it has no air conditioning and the fender is taped on.
B. The minivan is old, without air conditioning and with a taped-on fender.
B. The minivan is old, without air conditioning and with a taped-on fender.
C. The minivan is old it has no air conditioning the fender is taped on.
D. NO CHANGE