MTEL English (61)

1. Question 1 · Reading and Language

   That time of year thou mayst in me behold

   When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

   Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

   Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

   In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

   Which by and by black night doth take away,

   Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

   In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

   Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

   This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

   In line 4, the phrase "Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang" is best described as
   • A.a metaphor likening leafless branches to the empty, decaying choir stalls of a church
   • B.an apostrophe that addresses the vanished birds as though they could still hear the speaker
   • C.a synecdoche in which the choir stands for the whole congregation of mourners
   • D.a personification that gives the boughs the human power to sing and to grieve
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: A. a metaphor likening leafless branches to the empty, decaying choir stalls of a church

   The boughs are implicitly identified with ruined choir stalls where singers (the birds) once sang, so the phrase is a metaphor likening leafless branches to the empty, decaying choir stalls of a church; many readers also hear an echo of the ruined monasteries of Reformation England. The speaker never addresses the birds, which rules out "an apostrophe," and the boughs are not given human capacities, so "a personification" misreads the figure.

2. Question 2 · Reading and Language

   I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed.... That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom.

   The primary target of the satire in this passage is
   • A.an economic reasoning that treats the Irish poor as commodities to be consumed
   • B.the excesses of French cooking that had become fashionable among English gentry
   • C.the American colonists, whose customs the English regarded as savage and crude
   • D.the cruelty of Irish parents who neglected their children during years of famine
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: A. an economic reasoning that treats the Irish poor as commodities to be consumed

   Swift's calm projector applies the language of breeding stock and market sale to Irish infants, exposing an economic reasoning that treats the Irish poor as commodities to be consumed by English landlords and "persons of quality." The passage pities rather than blames the parents, and the culinary terms such as "fricassee" serve the Juvenalian irony instead of being its target.

3. Question 3 · Reading and Language

   The English word pairs cow/beef, swine/pork, and sheep/mutton most directly reflect which historical situation?
   • A.Viking settlers in the Danelaw introduced Norse names for meats, while English names survived for the living animals.
   • B.After the Norman Conquest, English laborers tended the animals while French-speaking elites ate the meat.
   • C.The early Germanic tribes used separate words for sacrificial and everyday animals, which later became meat terms.
   • D.Renaissance writers coined Latin-based terms for meat to give English cooking the prestige of classical culture.
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: B. After the Norman Conquest, English laborers tended the animals while French-speaking elites ate the meat.

   "Beef," "pork," and "mutton" come from Old French words for the animals, while "cow," "swine," and "sheep" are native English. The pattern is the standard example of how the Norman Conquest layered French vocabulary over English along lines of social class. The Norse explanation is wrong because Norse borrowings were everyday words such as "sky" and "egg," not these meat terms.

4. Question 4 · Rhetoric and Composition

   A student wrote the following draft of an argumentative letter to the district school committee.

   (1) Starting the high school day at 7:15 a.m. works against the way adolescents' bodies function. (2) Research on circadian rhythms shows that teenagers' sleep cycles shift later during puberty, making it difficult for them to fall asleep before eleven at night. (3) When high schools in one Minnesota district moved their start time to 8:30 a.m., attendance and grades both improved. (4) Our district should therefore delay the high school start until at least 8:30 a.m. (5) Honestly, anyone who disagrees just doesn't care about kids. (6) A later start would also reduce the number of drowsy teenage drivers on the road each morning. (7) Adopting this change would show that our district bases its decisions on evidence rather than habit.

   Which sentence most undermines the writer's credibility and should be revised or removed?
   • A.Sentence 2, because it relies on scientific terms the audience may not know
   • B.Sentence 5, because it dismisses opponents with an ad hominem attack
   • C.Sentence 3, because it draws on evidence from outside the writer's own district
   • D.Sentence 7, because it introduces an appeal to shared values in the conclusion
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: B. Sentence 5, because it dismisses opponents with an ad hominem attack

   Sentence 5 attacks the motives of anyone who disagrees instead of engaging their reasons, an ad hominem move that damages the writer's ethos with a committee that may include skeptics. Evidence "from outside the writer's own district" is relevant comparative evidence, and an appeal to shared values in the closing sentence is a legitimate concluding strategy.

5. Question 5 · Rhetoric and Composition

   A student is researching the working conditions of young women in the Lowell textile mills during the mid-nineteenth century. Which source would be a PRIMARY source for this project?
   • A.A recent scholarly monograph analyzing labor activism among New England textile workers
   • B.An encyclopedia entry summarizing the rise of the textile industry in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
   • C.A documentary film in which historians discuss the early stages of American industrialization
   • D.Letters that mill operatives wrote to their families describing their shifts and boardinghouse rules
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: D. Letters that mill operatives wrote to their families describing their shifts and boardinghouse rules

   Letters written by the operatives themselves are firsthand accounts created during the period under study, so they are primary sources. The scholarly monograph and the documentary interpret the past from a later vantage point and are secondary sources, and the encyclopedia entry is a tertiary summary.

6. Question 6 · Reading and Language

   We passed the school where children played,

   (Emily Dickinson, text of the first printed edition)

   The stanza form of the excerpt, whose lines alternate roughly between four and three stresses, draws most directly on
   • A.the blank verse of Elizabethan drama, broken into short lines to suggest hesitation
   • B.the common meter of Protestant hymns, which Dickinson often loosened with slant rhyme
   • C.the terza rima of Dante, with interlocking rhymes that link each stanza to the one that follows
   • D.the Sapphic stanza of classical lyric, with a short closing line in each quatrain
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: B. the common meter of Protestant hymns, which Dickinson often loosened with slant rhyme

   Dickinson grew up singing hymns in alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines, so her quatrains draw on the common meter of Protestant hymns, which Dickinson often loosened with slant rhyme ("away" and "civility," for instance). The lines are neither pentameter nor unrhymed, so "blank verse" fails, and the stanzas do not chain rhymes as "terza rima" does.

7. Question 7 · Reading and Language

   Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock treats a quarrel over a lock of hair snipped from a young woman's head with the machinery of Homer and Virgil: a card game becomes a battle, and sylphs serve as attendant spirits. The poem is best classified as
   • A.a mock-epic, applying grand heroic conventions to a trivial social incident
   • B.a pastoral elegy, mourning lost innocence in an idealized rural setting
   • C.a verse romance, celebrating chivalric love in the manner of Spenser
   • D.a georgic, offering practical instruction in an elevated didactic style
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: A. a mock-epic, applying grand heroic conventions to a trivial social incident

   Pope's heroic couplets inflate a society quarrel with arming scenes, supernatural machinery, and a game of ombre fought like a battle, making the poem a mock-epic, applying grand heroic conventions to a trivial social incident. It is set in fashionable London rather than the countryside, so "a pastoral elegy" misses its subject, and it satirizes rather than celebrates courtship.

8. Question 8 · Reading and Language

   Which word entered English through back-formation?
   • A.burgle
   • B.smog
   • C.scuba
   • D.flu
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: A. burgle

   "Burgle" was formed by removing what speakers took to be an agentive suffix from "burglar," the reverse of ordinary derivation, which is the definition of back-formation. "Smog" is a blend of "smoke" and "fog," "scuba" is an acronym, and "flu" is a clipping of "influenza."

9. Question 9 · Rhetoric and Composition

   A student wrote the following draft of an argumentative essay.

   (1) Every high school student in our district should be required to complete a semester of personal finance before graduating. (2) Many graduates leave school without knowing how to read a pay stub, build a budget, or compare loan offers. (3) A national survey of young adults found that fewer than one-third could correctly answer basic questions about interest and inflation. (4) Some teachers worry that a new requirement would crowd out electives such as art and music. (5) The course could replace one semester of study hall, leaving every elective intact. (6) My older brother, for instance, plays guitar in a band that performs at local coffee shops. (7) Students who learn these skills early are less likely to accumulate high-interest debt in their twenties.

   Which sentence should be deleted because it disrupts the logical progression of the argument?
   • A.Sentence 6, because its anecdote does not support any claim in the essay
   • B.Sentence 4, because raising an objection weakens the writer's position
   • C.Sentence 3, because survey data cannot support a claim about policy
   • D.Sentence 7, because it makes a prediction rather than stating a fact
   Show answer and explanation

   Answer: A. Sentence 6, because its anecdote does not support any claim in the essay

   Sentence 6 is introduced with "for instance" but offers an example about a brother's band that supports neither the requirement nor the response to the objection about electives. Sentence 4 should stay because acknowledging a counterclaim strengthens an argument, and survey data about financial knowledge is relevant evidence for a policy claim.

10. Question 10 · Rhetoric and Composition

    For which research project would the currency of sources be MOST critical?
    • A.An analysis of how Elizabethan audiences responded to the conventions of revenge tragedy
    • B.An argument about current recommended treatments for concussions in adolescent athletes
    • C.A rhetorical study of the parallel structure in Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
    • D.A history of the founding of the first free public library in the city of Boston
    Show answer and explanation

    Answer: B. An argument about current recommended treatments for concussions in adolescent athletes

    Medical recommendations change as new research appears, so outdated sources on concussion treatment could give dangerously wrong information. For the projects on Elizabethan audiences, Lincoln's address, and the history of a library, older scholarship and primary documents can remain fully valid.

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