40 questions. Try each one, then open the answer to check yourself and read the explanation.
The whole business in the excerpt above refers to
Answer: B (career choice)
The 'business' that is so frustrating is James's insistence on choosing careers for his children instead of letting Aaron and Maanan follow their talents.
In J. C. de Graft's Sons and Daughters, the central conflict in the play is
Answer: C (generational)
The conflict is between the father, James, and his children over their careers: old against young, i.e. generational.
In J. C. de Graft's Sons and Daughters, the change in fortune is achieved in the play when
Answer: A (James agrees that Aaron and Maanan should study what they want)
The play is resolved happily when James finally gives in and lets Aaron and Maanan study the courses they want.
The statement above is in reference to the speaker's
Answer: B (imminent death)
Friar Laurence says his 'short date of breath' (the little life left to an old man) is shorter than a long story, so he refers to his approaching death.
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo's death becomes inevitable because
Answer: A (Friar Lawrence's letter is not delivered)
Friar John cannot deliver the letter telling Romeo that Juliet's death is faked, so Romeo hears only that she is dead and goes to her tomb to die.
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the multiple deaths in the play serve as a punishment for
Answer: B (treating others with hatred)
At the end the Prince tells the two fathers that heaven has punished their hatred by killing their children: 'See what a scourge is laid upon your hate.'
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the major reason for Juliet's grief is
Answer: C (the banishment of her lover)
Juliet says the one word 'banished' is worse than the death of ten thousand Tybalts: Romeo's banishment is her greatest sorrow.
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the chorus in the prologue of the play is essentially meant to
Answer: A (foreshadow the play)
The Chorus tells us from the start that two 'star-crossed lovers' will take their lives and end their parents' feud, so it foreshadows what will happen.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother metaphorizes a
Answer: A (totalitarian authority)
Big Brother, who is always watching, is the face of the Party's total control over every part of people's lives.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell attempts to
Answer: C (condemn the disgusting hypocrisy of all communist systems)
The Party claims to serve the people while it lies, spies and tortures; Orwell is attacking the hypocrisy of totalitarian communist rule.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith begins his rebellion against the power of the state by
Answer: B (keeping a private diary)
Winston's first act of rebellion is starting a secret diary in which he writes 'DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER'.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Truth is concerned with
Answer: A (news, entertainment, education and fine arts)
Orwell describes the Ministry of Truth as dealing with news, entertainment, education and the fine arts, which it uses to rewrite the truth.
In Ferdinand Oyono's The Old Man and the Medal, the events following the ceremony confirm Meka's
Answer: A (disillusion with the whites)
After the ceremony Meka is arrested and beaten by the same whites who honoured him, and he realises how little they respect him.
In the statement above, The night rat doesn't tell what happened to him in the dark! refers to
Answer: C (people's unwillingness to talk about how whitemen treat them)
The proverb means that people keep quiet about what was done to them in secret; here, Africans do not speak about how the whites treat them.
In Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, Nnaife's conscription into the army is portrayed as part of
Answer: B (British oppression)
Nnaife is taken by force to fight in Britain's war, which Emecheta shows as one of the ways colonial rule oppressed ordinary Nigerians.
In Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, the attitude of Nnu Ego when she was told that her Chi would not give her a child is one of
Answer: B (despair)
For Nnu Ego, a woman's worth lay in having children, so being told her chi would deny her a child plunged her into despair.
The lines above from Acqah's In the Navel of the Soul depict
Answer: A (contradiction)
The experts disagree, while the test says 'Negative': the lines show opinions that contradict each other.
In Kunene's A Heritage of Liberation, freedom is to be achieved through the efforts of
Answer: D (successive generations.)
Kunene sees the struggle for freedom as a heritage passed on from one generation to the next until it is won.
Launko's End of the War suggests that war brings about
Answer: C (multifaceted problems)
The poem shows that even after the fighting ends, war leaves behind many kinds of problems.
Marvel's To His Coy Mistress is written mainly in
Answer: C (heroic couplets)
The poem is written in rhyming couplets throughout (strictly, four-beat couplets), the nearest of the options to heroic couplets.
The language used in Eliot's The Journey of the Magi is generally
Answer: C (simple)
The poem is told by one of the wise men in plain, conversational words, even though its ideas are deep.
An interlude is a brief
Answer: A (presentation in the interval of a dramatic performance)
An interlude is a short piece of entertainment performed between the parts of a play.
An epic is a heroic story which includes
Answer: C (myth)
Epics tell of heroes and are full of myth: gods, supernatural beings and legendary deeds.
Farce can be described as a dramatic piece marked by
Answer: B (comic and exaggerated actions)
Farce is comedy built on wildly exaggerated situations, horseplay and absurd action.
A long story narrating a series of complicated events is called a
Answer: A (saga)
A saga is a long narrative of many connected adventures, often across generations of a family.
Oxymoron is the use of two contrasting words that are
Answer: C (placed side by side)
An oxymoron puts two opposite words right next to each other, as in 'bitter sweet' or 'living death'.
A line or a group of lines repeated in the course of a poem is called
Answer: B (refrain)
A refrain is a line or lines that come back at intervals in a poem or song, usually at the end of each stanza.
Limerick is a light verse which consists of five lines that are
Answer: A (anapestic)
A limerick's five lines rhyme AABBA and move in anapests (two light beats then a stressed one).
A short narrative or lyrical poem intended to be sung is a
Answer: B (lay)
A lay (lai) is a short narrative or lyric poem meant to be sung, as in the medieval lays of the minstrels.
A figurative device in which a statement is made and then withdrawn is referred to as
Answer: A (metanoia)
Metanoia is when a speaker says something and then corrects or takes it back, e.g. 'She is pretty, no, beautiful.'
A literary work which imitates another in a distorted form is called
Answer: D (burlesque.)
A burlesque mocks a serious work by imitating it in an exaggerated or distorted way.
The speaker here contends that
Answer: D (the latent brutality in man finds expression in war.)
The speaker argues that the brutality is already hidden inside a person, and war and a uniform simply let it come out.
The subject matter of the passage is
Answer: A (earthquake)
The earth 'moved, suddenly', houses crumbled and mountains heaved: this describes an earthquake.
The image depicted is one of
Answer: A (destruction)
Crumbling houses, heaving mountains and the loss of 'the work of million years' all paint a picture of destruction.
The tone of the poem above is
Answer: A (satiric)
Cullen pokes fun at the lady's belief that in heaven her class will sleep late while black 'cherubs' do the chores, exposing her racism through mockery.
From the extract above, the poet suggests that
Answer: D (strive makes life worth living.)
Spice gives food its taste; calling striving 'life's spice' means that effort and struggle are what make life worth living.
The subject of the poem above is
Answer: C (the son)
The poem is about 'an unlucky creation', the child born to a street walker and a lying father: the son (the bastard of the title).
The dominant rhetorical device in the excerpt above is
Answer: B (alliteration)
The 's' sound is repeated at the start of many words: 'sweet smile', 'snarl', 'spite of sneer', 'sing', 'save a snared', 'stream of strife'. That is alliteration.
The expression The child is the father of the man in the poem above is an example of
Answer: A (paradox)
A child cannot literally father a man, yet the line is true: the person we are as children shapes the adult we become. A seeming contradiction that is true is a paradox.
The technique employed in narrating the excerpt above is
Answer: B (stream of consciousness)
The passage follows the character's thoughts as they come, in short broken phrases, which is the stream-of-consciousness technique.