AP English Language

STEP 5
Build Your Test-Taking Confidence

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I have carefully reviewed the explanations of the answers, and I think I need to work on the following types of questions:

Section I

Total Time—1 hour

Carefully read the following passages and answer the questions that follow.

Questions 1–10 are based on the following passage excerpted from Charles Dickens’s Pictures from Italy.

1. The purpose of the passage is to

A. condemn the squalor of Florence

B. entice visitors to Florence

C. praise the Grand Duke

D. present the dichotomy existing in Florence

E. reveal the author’s worldliness

2. The primary rhetorical strategy used by the author is

A. narration

B. description

C. analysis

D. process

E. argument

3. In developing his purpose, the author uses all of the following rhetorical devices except:

A. spatial organization

B. metaphor and simile

C. comparison and contrast

D. imagery

E. chronological order

4. Which of the following lines contains an example of paradox?

A. line 17

B. lines 18–19

C. lines 4–5

D. lines 26–27

E. line 29

5. The most probable function of the selected detail which focuses on the murder of the young girl by the old man (20–22) is

A. to emphasize the brutality of the citizens

B. to establish a tone of pathos

C. to criticize the city’s government

D. to warn visitors about the dangers of the city

E. to emphasize the contrasts evident in the city

6. The abrupt shift caused by a lack of transition between paragraphs 1 and 2 serves to do all of the following except:

A. reemphasize the unexpected nature of murder

B. reinforce the idea that there is no connection between the two paragraphs

C. reinforce the element of contrast

D. reinforce the author’s style

E. immediately whisk the reader to a place of safety away from the murder scene

7. What can be inferred from the following details taken from the passage

— “small distrustful windows” (4)

— “walls of great thickness” (5)

— “enormous overhanging battlements” (8)

— “secret passage” (29)

A. Florence was not architecturally sound.

B. Florence was designed to protect its artwork.

C. Florence had experienced both warfare and intrigue.

D. Florence was unsuited for habitation.

E. Florence was preparing for war.

8. Lines 11–22 contain examples of which of the following rhetorical device?

A. antithetical images

B. anecdotal evidence

C. parallel structure

D. denotation

E. inversion

9. If one were building a house of horrors, which of the following would be best suitable as a model or inspiration?

A. Piazza of the Grand Duke (6–7)

B. Fountain of Neptune (7)

C. Palazzo Vecchio (8)

D. Ponte Vecchio (23)

E. Gallery of the Grand Duke (28)

10. Which of the following terms has most probably undergone a shift in meaning from Dickens’s time to its current usage?

A. “stately” (12)

B. “squalid” (18)

C. “enchanting” (24)

D. “jealous” (29)

E. “obstacle” (30)

Questions 11–20 are based on the following passage from Margaret Atwood’s “Origins of Stories.”

11. One reason Atwood gives for the presence of stories in children’s lives is

A. scandalous gossip

B. family secrets

C. supernatural influences

D. listening

E. radio and television

12. The close association between the reader and the author is immediately established by

A. a first person, plural point of view

B. placing the reader into a family situation

C. using accessible diction and syntax

D. being emotional

E. appealing to the child in the reader

13. The last sentence of paragraph 2, “From all these scraps …” to “forbidden knowledge,” contains all of the following except:

A. parallel structure

B. a periodic sentence

C. prepositional phrases

D. a compound-complex sentence

E. an ellipsis

14. The phrase “forbidden knowledge” in the last sentence of the second paragraph can best be categorized as

A. a paradox

B. a biblical allusion

C. hyperbole

D. antithesis

E. understatement

15. According to the author, the writer is like a child because

A. “We are likely to accept these stories being of the same level of reality as the kitchen stories” [paragraph 4]

B. “… we are taught to regard one kind of story as real …” [paragraph 4, next to last line]

C. “We remained tale-bearers” [paragraph 3]

D. “We will have old husbands’ tales” [paragraph 5]

E. “… the kinds of stories that are told to children have been called nursery tales …” [paragraph 5]

16. A careful reading of the last two paragraphs of the excerpt can lead the reader to infer that

A. society does not value the storyteller

B. women should be the storytellers

C. storytelling should be left to children

D. men can never be storytellers

E. the author is a mother herself

17. The predominant tone of the passage is best stated as

A. scathingly bitter

B. sweetly effusive

C. reverently detailed

D. wistfully observant

E. aggressively judgmental

18. The author makes use of which of the following rhetorical strategies?

A. narration and description

B. exposition and persuasion

C. process and analysis

D. anecdote and argument

E. cause and effect

19. A shift in the focus of the passage occurs with which of the following?

A. “If we’re lucky” [paragraph 4]

B. “Perhaps this is what writers are …” [paragraph 3]

C. “Traditionally, …” [paragraph 5]

D. “Perhaps this reflects the extent to which North American children have been deprived of the grandfathers …” [paragraph 5]

E. “But as things are, language, including the language of the earliest-learned stories …” [paragraph 5]

20. The primary purpose of the passage is to

A. plead for men to tell more stories

B. criticize censorship

C. idealize children

D. analyze storytelling

E. look at the sources of storytelling

Questions 21-32 are based on the passage taken from an article by E. J. Graff titled “What Makes a Family?” that appears in What is Marriage For? published by Beacon Press, Boston, in 1999.

21. The thesis of the entire passage can be found in line(s)

A. 1–2

B. 9–10

C. 22

D. 27–29

E. 33–36

22. The purpose of the first paragraph is to

A. criticize historians

B. define family

C. prove the author’s scholarly intent

D. ease the reader into a scholarly topic

E. establish the time frame of the passage

23. Footnote 4 is an example of a(n)

A. primary source

B. secondary source

C. assumption of the reader’s background

D. author’s aside

E. link to other sources

24. The opening sentence of the passage is an example of a(n)

A. cautionary tale

B. analogy

C. paradox

D. ad hoc argument

E. interrogative

25. The primary rhetorical technique employed by the author to develop this passage is

A. cause and effect

B. narration

C. description

D. process

E. definition

26. The tone of the passage can most accurately be described as

A. sarcastic and vituperative

B. conversational and scholarly

C. formal and pedantic

D. erudite and exhortative

E. humorous and detached

27. According to the passage, today’s modern family most resembles that found in

A. Rome in the time of the emperors

B. Bologna in the thirteenth century

C. Pre-eighteenth-century western Europe

D. Great Britain between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries

E. Pre-modern northern Europe

28. Lines 32–33 (“historians … universally”) can be read as a reinforcement of a concept expressed in lines

A. 2–5

B. 9–10

C. 22–24

D. 27–29

E. 41–44

29. Footnote 6 does all of the following, except:

A. provide primary sources for further calculations and estimates

B. reinforce the concept of the amorphous nature of the term family

C. demonstrate the breadth of the author’s research

D. point to references that the reader can access for further study

E. disclaim any lapses or inadequacies in the author’s discussion of the subject

30. The author’s anticipation of readers’ questions is demonstrated by her use of

A. diction

B. rhetorical questions

C. direct quotations

D. parentheticals

E. ellipsis

31. An ambiguous piece of information is found in which of the following footnotes?

A. 2

B. 5

C. 6

D. 7

E. 8

32. Which of the following was not critical in the evolution of the historical definition of family?

A. common living quarters

B. proprietary rights

C. inheritance

D. economic needs

E. sanguinity

Questions 33–43 are based on the following passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa society, at Cambridge University, August 31, 1837, entitled “The American Scholar.”

33. In context, the word “oracle” in line 25 can best be interpreted to mean the

A. visionary writer

B. inventive writer

C. popular writer of a time

D. intuitive writer

E. writer as critic

34. In line 17, the word “diet” refers to

A. “Broth of shoes” [paragraph 2, sentence 2]

B. “Boiled grass” [paragraph 2, sentence 2]

C. “Any knowledge” [paragraph 2, sentence 2]

D. “Any love” [paragraph 2, sentence 1]

E. “Printed page” [paragraph 2, sentence 3]

35. The speaker characterizes the great writers as being able to

A. surprise the reader

B. present universal truths

C. create harmony in their writing

D. be philosophical

E. write about nature

36. The speaker’s attitude toward great writers in the fourth sentence of paragraph 1 (lines 5–8) might best be described as

A. skeptical

B. confused

C. accusative

D. validated

E. patronizing

37. The speaker’s tone in the passage can best be described as

A. pretentious

B. analytical

C. satirical

D. ambiguous

E. servile

38. All of the following lines use figurative language except:

A. “It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote and the same reads.”

B. “… and some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact observed in insects …”

C. “We boil grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge.”

D. “I would only say that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well.”

E. “Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.”

39. After reading the passage, the reader can infer that the author desires to

A. praise the work of current writers

B. change the curriculum of the college

C. change college administration

D. warn against relying on academic appearances

E. criticize the cost of college

40. The pronoun “this” in the last sentence of the passage refers to

A. “But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create …”

B. “History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading.”

C. “Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing.”

D. “Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance …”

E. “When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.”

41. According to the speaker, the characteristics of the discerning reader include all of the following except:

A. brings himself to the work

B. makes connections with the past

C. discards irrelevancies

D. approaches difficult readings willingly

E. aspires to be a writer

42. Paragraphs 1 and 2 develop their ideas by means of

I. metaphor and simile

II. allusion

III. paradox

A. I

B. II

C. III

D. I and II

E. I, II, and III

43. The purpose of the third paragraph is to

A. defend the role of reading

B. praise history and science

C. delineate the qualities of an ideal college

D. inspire student scholars

E. honor college instructors

Questions 44–54 are based on the following excerpt from Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer.

44. Within the passage, the long, sinuous sentences emphasize the

A. narrator’s sense of anticipation

B. objectivity of nature

C. insecurity of the narrator

D. passive nature of the journey

E. fearful tone of the passage

45. In the next to last sentence of the passage (lines 21–24), “devious curves” most likely is used to reinforce

A. the unpredictability of the water

B. the hidden nature of the stream

C. the concept of the complexity of what lies beneath the surface of the story

D. the mystery of nature

E. all of the above

46. The passage as a whole can best described as

A. an interior monologue

B. a melodramatic episode

C. an evocation of place

D. a historical narrative

E. an allegory

47. The first sentence of the passage helps to establish tone by means of

A. structure that reflects the strangeness of the experience described

B. parallel structure that contrasts with the chaos of the situation

C. alliteration to heighten the imagery

D. irony to create a sense of satire

E. hyperbole that exaggerates the danger of the situation

48. Which of the following ideas can be supported based on the third sentence (lines 9–12) beginning with “And when I …”?

A. The speaker enjoys watching boats sailing on the horizon.

B. The speaker wants to revel in the beauty and grace of nature.

C. The speaker responds to the symmetry and balance of nature.

D. The speaker realizes how vulnerable man is in the universe.

E. The speaker is fearful of the earth and sea.

49. All of the following contribute to the feeling of solitude except:

A. “… the impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort …”

B. “a group of barren islets”

C. “the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda”

D. “the monotonous sweep of the horizon”

E. “ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses”

50. The passage is organized primarily by means of

A. spatial description

B. definition

C. chronological order

D. order of importance

E. parallelism

51. In the third to last sentence of the passage (lines 18–21) beginning with “Here and there …,” the figure of speech used to describe “the windings of the great river” is

A. personification

B. simile

C. apostrophe

D. antithesis

E. symbol

52. The writer emphasizes his solitude by using all of the following rhetorical techniques except:

A. heavy descriptive emphasis placed on setting

B. overt statement of the absence of other people

C. tracking the departure of the tugboat

D. diction that emphasizes desertion and neglect

E. contrasting the present situation with previous times

53. A characteristic of the author’s style is

A. succession of allusions

B. the use of emotional language

C. terse sentence structure

D. vividness of contrasting images

E. shifts in points of view

54. The tone of the passage can best be described as

A. cynical

B. reflective

C. sarcastic

D. elegiac

E. apathetic

END OF SECTION I

Section II

Total Time—2 hours

Question 1

(Suggested time 40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total score for Section II.)

Carefully read Chief Seattle’s oration to Governor Isaac I. Stevens, who had just returned from Washington, D.C., with orders to buy Indian lands and create reservations. In a well-written essay, identify Chief Seattle’s purpose and analyze the rhetorical strategies he uses to convey his purpose. Consider such items as figurative language, organization, diction, and tone.

Question 2

Suggested Writing Time: 40 minutes

A new word has entered the American vocabulary: affluenza. A 1997 PBS documentary titled Affluenza introduced this new term and defined it: “ n. 1. The bloated, sluggish, and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste, and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth.”

Since then, scholars, journalists, political leaders, artists, and even comedians have made America’s ever-increasing consumption the subject of dire warnings, academic studies, social commentary, campaign promises, and late-night TV jokes.

Carefully read the following sources (including any introductory information). Then, in an essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources, take a position that supports, opposes, or qualifies the claim that Americans are never satisfied. They are constantly wanting new things and are never content with what they have. There is a superabundance of “stuff,” and Americans have lost their sense of meaning. As Sheryl Crow’s 2002 lyrics state, “it’s not having what you want. It’s wanting what you’ve got.”

Make certain that you take a position and that the essay centers on your argument. Use the sources to support your reasoning; avoid simply summarizing the sources. You may refer to the sources by their letters (Source A, Source B, etc.) or by the identifiers in the parentheses below.

Source A (Aristotle’s Ethics)

Source B (The Declaration of Independence)

Source C (John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism)

Source D (Cartoon by Jim Sizemore)

Source E (Jessie H. O’Neill’s The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence) Source F (Lewis Lapham’s Money and Class in America)

Source G (“Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie)

Source A

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Certainly the future is obscure to us, while happiness, we claim, is an end and something in every way final…. If so, we shall call happy those among living men in whom these conditions are, and are to be fulfilled.

Happiness is desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. But honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves, but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient.

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

To judge from the lives that men lead, most men seem to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure: which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. The mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.

With regard to what happiness is (men) differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth, or honor. They differ, however, from one another—and often even the same man identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor.

Source B

The Declaration of Independence From the opening paragraph of The Declaration of Independence.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights: that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed …

Source C

Utilitarianism, written by John Stuart Mill, an eighteenth-century British philosopher, in 1863. Available at http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 entitled “What Utilitarianism Is.”

… The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure….

… no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties [humans] requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of the inferior type [animals]: but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence…. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness—that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior—confounds two very different ideas, of happiness and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than the fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

Source D

Cartoon by Jim Sizemore

Available at http://www.cartoonstock.com/blowup.asp?imageref=jsi0087&artist=Sizemore,+Jim&topic=consumerism.

This cartoon appeared in a recent issue of The New Yorker.

Source E

O’Neill, Jesse H. The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence, The Affluenza Project: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1997.

The following is adapted from passages in Jesse H. O’Neill’s book and from the mission statement of The Affluenza Project founded by O’Neill. Available at http://www.affluenza.com.

The malaise that currently grips our country comes not from the fact that we don’t have enough wealth, but from a terrifying knowledge that has begun to enter our consciousness that we have based our entire lives, our entire culture and way of being on the belief that “just a little bit more” will finally buy happiness.

Although many people in our culture are beginning to question the assumptions of the American Dream, we still live in a time of compulsive and wasteful consumerism.

Statistics to consider:

• Per capita consumption in the United States has increased 45 percent in the past twenty years.

• During the same period, quality of life as measured by the index of social health has decreased by roughly the same percentage.

• The average working woman plays with her children forty minutes a week— and shops six hours.

• Ninety-three percent of teenage girls list shopping as their favorite pastime.

Source F

Lapham, Lewis. Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on Our Civil Religion, Grove Press: New York, 1988.

The following is a passage from Mr. Lapham’s text.

I think it fair to say that the current ardor of the American faith in money easily surpasses the degrees of intensity achieved by other societies in other times and places. Money means so many things to us—spiritual as well as temporal—that we are at a loss to know how to hold its majesty at bay….

Henry Adams in his autobiography remarks that although the Americans weren’t much good as materialists they had been “so deflected by the pursuit of money” that they could turn “in no other direction.” The natural distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from the innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den. Men remain free to rise or fall in the world, and if they fail it must be because they willed it so. The visible signs of wealth testify to an inward state of grace, and without at least some of these talismans posted in one’s house or on one’s person an American loses all hope of demonstrating to himself the theorem of his happiness. Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isn’t the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul.

Against the faith in money, other men in other times and places have raised up countervailing faiths in family, honor, religion, intellect and social class. The merchant princes of medieval Europe would have looked upon the American devotion as sterile stupidity; the ancient Greek would have regarded it as a form of insanity. Even now, in the last decades of a century commonly defined as American, a good many societies both in Europe and Asia manage to balance the desire for wealth against the other claims of the human spirit. An Englishman of modest means can remain more or less content with the distinction of an aristocratic name or the consolation of a flourishing garden; the Germans show to obscure university professors the deference accorded by Americans only to celebrity; the Soviets honor the holding of political power; in France a rich man is a rich man, to whom everybody grants the substantial powers that his riches command but to whom nobody grants the respect due to a member of the National Academy. But in the United States a rich man is perceived as being necessarily both good and wise, which is an absurdity that would be seen as such not only by a Frenchman but also by a Russian. Not that the Americans are greedier than the French, or less intellectual than the Germans, or more venal than the Russians, but to what other tribunal can an anxious and supposedly egalitarian people submit their definitions of the good, the true and the beautiful if not to the judgment of the bottom line?

Source G

“Wealth” written by Andrew Carnegie1 published in North American Review, CCCXCI, June 1889. Available at http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/carnegie.htm.

The following is excerpted from the article by Andrew Carnegie.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are today where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization.

This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Maecenas.2 The “good old times” were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as today. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both—not the least so to him who serves—and would sweep away civilization with it. But whether the change be for good or ill, it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is waste of time to criticize the inevitable.

1 Late nineteenth-century American capitalist and philanthropist

2 Patron of the arts in ancient Rome

Question 3

In his essay “The Wilderness Idea,” Wallace Stegner states the following.

Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment.

Write a well-constructed essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies Stegner’s statement using your own knowledge, experience, observation, or reading.

END OF SECTION II