Praxis ELA 5038
Praxis ELA 5038 is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
Praxis ELA 5038 is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
10 sample questions for the Praxis ELA 5038, with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.
Sections covered on the exam: Literature:Poetry, Literature:Drama, Literature:Prosefiction, Literature:Authorsandperiods, Literature:Readinginstruction, Informationaltexts, Rhetoricandargument, Medialiteracy, Grammarandusage, Sentencestructure, Vocabularyandwordmeaning, Referencematerials, Language Use and Vocabulary, Languageacquisitionanddiverselearners, Modesofwriting, Task,Purpose,Andaudience, Revisingforclarityandcoherence, Researchandcitation, Speakingandpresentation, Writinginstruction, Writing, Speaking, and Listening.
Question 1 · Literature:Poetry
Passage · Questions 1–2 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. —John Keats, from "To Autumn" In the context of the stanza, the phrases "Close bosom- friend" and "Conspiring with him" primarily serve to
Answer: B. personify autumn and the sun as intimate partners whose shared, deliberate labor brings the year's growth to fullness
"Bosom-friend" and "Conspiring" give autumn human intimacy and intention, casting it and the sun as collaborators who plan together how to "load and bless" the landscape with fruit. Although "conspiring" can connote plotting against someone, here the plot is benevolent, as every following verb (bless, fill, swell, plump) makes clear. Mourning for summer is absent from this stanza, and the language is sensuous rather than scientific.
Question 2 · Literature:Authorsandperiods
A preface to a collection of poems argues that poets should choose incidents from "common life," describe them in "a selection of language really used by men," and recognize that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." This manifesto is most closely associated with which literary movement?
Answer: B. English Romanticism, which rejected elevated artificial diction in favor of emotion, ordinary speech, and humble subjects
The quoted phrases come from William Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a founding statement of English Romanticism that rejected the ornate "poetic diction" of the preceding age. Neoclassicism is the style the Preface reacts against. Transcendentalism shares Romanticism's reverence for nature, which makes it tempting, but it is a later American movement, and the Preface is a British document concerned mainly with poetic language. Aestheticism's emphasis on art for its own sake is the opposite of Wordsworth's focus on common life.
Question 3 · Grammarandusage
In which sentence is the pronoun case used correctly?
Answer: A. Ms. Tran is the candidate who I believe will win the election.
In the sentence about Ms. Tran, I believe is an interrupting clause, and the pronoun serves as the subject of will win, so the subjective who is correct. The same logic makes whom wrong in the sentence about the anonymous note, since the pronoun is the subject of had written. In the scholarship sentence, the pronoun is the subject of submits, so whoever is required even though the whole clause follows the preposition to; and I should be me as an object of to.
Question 4 · Languageacquisitionanddiverselearners
In a biology class with many Spanish-speaking English learners, the textbook chapter includes the words evaporation, solar, rapid, and abundant. Which instructional approach best capitalizes on the students' linguistic resources?
Answer: B. Explicitly teaching students to recognize cognates (such as evaporación, solar, rápido, and abundante) while also pointing out false cognates that can mislead them
Many academic English words, especially those of Latin origin, have Spanish cognates, and explicit cognate instruction lets students transfer existing knowledge while guarding against false cognates such as embarazada. Discouraging use of the first language wastes a powerful resource that research supports drawing on. Memorizing definitions in isolation and removing academic vocabulary both limit students' access to the language of the discipline.
Question 5 · Researchandcitation
A student's research question is "How does the age of a home's plumbing affect lead levels in its tap water in our city?" Which piece of information would be most relevant to this question?
Answer: B. The city water utility's report comparing lead test results from homes built before and after lead service lines were banned
The utility report directly links plumbing age to measured lead levels in local tap water, which is exactly what the question asks. The lead-paint article is tempting because it mentions lead and older homes, but it concerns a different source of exposure; the Roman history and the bottled-water survey do not address the question at all.
Question 6 · Literature:Poetry
Passage · Questions 101–104 William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us" The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. Which statement best describes how the poem's form supports its argument?
Answer: A. As a Petrarchan sonnet, it uses its octave to diagnose a loss of feeling caused by worldly preoccupation, then turns in the ninth line, after "It moves us not," to the speaker's exclamatory wish for another way of seeing.
The poem rhymes abbaabba cdcdcd, the Petrarchan pattern, and its argument follows that division: the octave laments that "we" are "out of tune" with nature, and the sestet, beginning with the abrupt break in line 9, pivots to the speaker's wish. There is no closing couplet, so the Shakespearean reading fails, and the reading that places the pagan wish in the octave reverses the order in which the ideas appear.
Question 7 · Literature:Readinginstruction
A ninth-grade teacher notices that most students decode a challenging short story fluently, yet their written responses show they miss main ideas and rarely notice when their understanding breaks down. Which instructional approach is most strongly supported by reading research for addressing this need?
Answer: D. Reciprocal teaching, in which the teacher models predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing aloud and then gradually releases these roles to small student groups discussing the text
Reciprocal teaching explicitly teaches and practices comprehension-monitoring strategies through modeling and gradual release, which targets the students' actual difficulty with meaning rather than decoding. Round-robin reading focuses on oral accuracy the students already have and is not supported as a comprehension practice, while a vocabulary quiz or a film substitute leaves the strategy gap unaddressed.
Question 8 · Grammarandusage
Student Draft (1) In the story's final scene, the narrator returns to her grandmother's farm. (2) She discovered that the orchard has been sold to a developer. (3) Standing at the fence, she remembers the summers she spent there as a child. Which revision to sentence 2 best corrects an inappropriate shift in verb tense?
Answer: C. Change "discovered" to "discovers"
The writer narrates the story's events in the present tense (returns, remembers), following the convention of the literary present, so the past-tense discovered is the shift that must be corrected. With discovers, the present perfect has been sold correctly marks an action completed before the discovery. The other revisions all keep sentence 2 in a past tense, so it would remain out of step with the present-tense sentences 1 and 3; the past perfect had discovered would also wrongly imply that the discovery came before the return.
Question 9 · Languageacquisitionanddiverselearners
Amira, a newcomer English learner with strong schooling in Arabic, joins an eighth-grade science class during a unit on density. Which practice best provides comprehensible input for her?
Answer: C. Demonstrating the concept with realia and hands-on sinking-and-floating trials, pairing spoken explanations with labeled visuals and gestures, and checking understanding frequently
Comprehensible input is language the learner can understand, usually because context, visuals, demonstrations, and gestures make the meaning clear even when some words are unfamiliar, so hands-on demonstrations with visuals and checks for understanding fit the principle. Speaking louder or slower without contextual support does not make abstract content meaningful. Looking up long word lists in isolation overwhelms the learner, and withholding content instruction denies her grade-level learning that she can access with support.
Question 10 · Researchandcitation
A student researching how residents of a small town responded to a proposed wind farm wants to include a primary source. Which source would qualify?
Answer: D. A transcript of the town hall meeting at which residents testified about the proposal
A transcript of residents' own testimony is a firsthand record created during the event under study, which makes it a primary source for this question. The magazine article is tempting because it discusses the debate, but it summarizes and interprets others' views, making it secondary; the encyclopedia entry and textbook chapter are also secondary or tertiary.
TTP Prep has 200 Praxis ELA 5038 practice questions with explanations, timed and mock-exam modes, 154 flashcards, interactive lessons, a printable cheat sheet and a readiness score. Start free, no card needed.
More free questions: browse every exam.