MTEL General Curriculum Practice Exam - Question List

Read the passage below from the story of Pecos Bill (1966); then answer the questions that follow.
What Bill planned to do was leap from his horse and grab the cyclone by the neck. But as he came near and saw how high the top of the whirling tower was, he knew he would have to do something better than that. Just as he . . . came close enough to the cyclone to feel its hot breath, a knife of lightning streaked down into the ground. It struck there, quivering, just long enough for Bill to reach out and grab it. As the lightning bolt whipped back up into the sky, Bill held on. When he was as high as the top of the cyclone, he jumped and landed astraddle its black, spinning shoulders.
By then, everyone in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma was watching. They saw Bill grab hold of that cyclone's shoulders and haul them back. They saw him wrap his legs around the cyclone's belly and squeeze so hard the cyclone started to pant. Then Bill got out his lasso and slung it around the cyclone's neck. He pulled it tighter and tighter until the cyclone started to choke, spitting out rocks and dust. All the rain that was mixed up in it started to fall.
The story of Pecos Bill, like those of John Henry and Paul Bunyan, represents which of the following literary genres?

Read the passage below from the story of Pecos Bill (1966); then answer the questions that follow.
What Bill planned to do was leap from his horse and grab the cyclone by the neck. But as he came near and saw how high the top of the whirling tower was, he knew he would have to do something better than that. Just as he . . . came close enough to the cyclone to feel its hot breath, a knife of lightning streaked down into the ground. It struck there, quivering, just long enough for Bill to reach out and grab it. As the lightning bolt whipped back up into the sky, Bill held on. When he was as high as the top of the cyclone, he jumped and landed astraddle its black, spinning shoulders.
By then, everyone in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma was watching. They saw Bill grab hold of that cyclone's shoulders and haul them back. They saw him wrap his legs around the cyclone's belly and squeeze so hard the cyclone started to pant. Then Bill got out his lasso and slung it around the cyclone's neck. He pulled it tighter and tighter until the cyclone started to choke, spitting out rocks and dust. All the rain that was mixed up in it started to fall.
These paragraphs include examples of which of the following literary devices?

Read the poem below, "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth" (1773) by Phillis Wheatley; then answer the question that follows.
 

Should you, my lord, while you pursue my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood, 

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate 

Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: 

What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? 

Steel'd was the soul and by no misery mov'd 
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd. 

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

By constructing her poem as an exchange with a specific person, the poet represents freedom and slavery as:

Read the excerpt below from "The Raven" (1845), a poem by Edgar Allan Poe; then answer the question that follows.
 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 

" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— 

Only this and nothing more."
In this passage, the repetition of similar word sounds creates a mood of: