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Chetti World Lit Benchmark 2

Last updated about 5 years ago
30 questions

World Literature Benchmark 2

Assessment 2020-2021

100 pts.

Day 1 (Selected Responses - 3 point each/2 Constructed Responses - 5 points each)
Directions: Read the excerpt and answer questions 1 through 5.
PASSAGE 1:
Excerpt from Bag of Bones by Dunya Mikhail
1 What good luck!
She has found his bones.
The skull is also in the bag
the bag in her hand
5 like all other bags
in all other trembling hands.
His bones, like thousands of bones
in the mass graveyard,
his skull, not like any other skull.
10 Two eyes or holes
with which he listened to music
that told his own story,
a nose
that never knew clean air,
15 a mouth, open like a chasm,
was not like that when he kissed her
there, quietly,
not in this place
noisy with skulls and bones and dust
20 dug up with questions:
What does it mean to die all this death
in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?
What does it mean to meet your loved ones now
with all of these hollow places?
25 To give back to your mother
on the occasion of death
a handful of bones
she had given to you
on the occasion of birth?
30 To depart without death or birth certificates
because the dictator does not give receipts
when he takes your life?
The dictator has a heart, too,
a balloon that never pops.
35 He has a skull, too, a huge one
not like any other skull.
It solved by itself a math problem
That multiplied the one death by millions
to equal homeland
40 The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.
He has an audience, too,
an audience that claps
until the bones begin to rattle—
the bones in bags,
45 the full bag finally in her hand,
unlike her disappointed neighbor
who has not yet found her own.

Dunya Mikhail (b. 1965) is an Iraqi American poet who was born and raised in Iraq. As a journalist and poet in Baghdad, her writing was considered “subversive” by former dictator Saddam Hussein. Mikhail was placed on Hussein’s enemies list and fled to the United States in 1996 following threats and harassment from the government. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, many mass graves were found, believed to be from Hussein’s 20 years in power.
3

What is the effect of the speaker’s use of the phrase “What good luck!” (Line 1) in this poem?
RL4 - DOK2

3

To what is the speaker describing in the line “She found his bones....like thousands of bones (lines 2-7)? RL4 - DOK2

3

Directions: This question has two parts. Answer Part A, and then answer Part B.
Part A
Which statement best describes the theme of the poem? RL2 - DOK2

3

PART B
Which quote from the poem best supports the answer in Part A?
RL1 - DOK2

3

The focus of the poem shifts at line 30. How does this shift contribute to the meaning of the poem?
RL5 - DOK2

Directions: Read the excerpt and answer questions 6 through 8.
PASSAGE 2:
Chapter I (excerpt 1) from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
I Am Born
1 Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. 2 In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night. 3 I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
3

How does this sentence (at the start of the third paragraph) help to convey a central idea of the passage?
"I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result."
RL2 - DOK2

3

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
This opening sentence creates a sense of _______ in the reader.
RL4 - DOK2

3

8. The meaning of sage as used in “and by some sage women in the neighbourhood" (paragraph 2) is BEST defined as: RL4 - DOK2

Directions: Read the excerpt and answer questions 9 through 18 .
PASSAGE 3:
Excerpt “The Danger of a Single Story”
by Chimamanda Adichie
  1. I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children's books.
  2. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books.
  3. ....I loved those American and British books I read.... They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are.
  4. It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is “nkali.” It's a noun that loosely translates to “to be greater than another.” Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.
  5. ...Stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.
  6. ...I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language... She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove.
  7. Stories matter... stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity...when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
3

This question has two parts. Answer Part A, and then answer Part B.
Part A
Which of the following identifies the central idea of the text?
RI2 - DOK2

3

PART B
Which section from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
RI1 - DOK3

3

What is the meaning of “stereotypes” in paragraph 5?
RI4 - DOK2

3

How did reading books by African writers affect Adichie?
RI5 - DOK2

3

This question has two parts. Answer Part A, and then answer Part B.
Part A
Which of the following describes the author’s purpose in the text?
RI6 - DOK3

3

PART B
Which detail from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
RI1 - DOK2

3

What is the most common single story of Africa??
RI2 - DOK2

3

What is the effect of rejecting the single story?
RI2 - DOK3

3

What role does power play in constructing a single story?
RI2 - DOK2

8

Constructed Response : In the context of the text, how does prejudice emerge? How do single stories contribute to the construction of prejudice? How can this be combatted? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer. RI3, L2, W4 - DOK3 (2 points)

Directions: Read the excerpt and answer questions 21 through 22 and a constructed response.
PASSAGE 4:
Margaret Atwood
1 Margaret Atwood Canadian writer Margaret Eleanor Atwood is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and nonfiction, but she is best known for her novels. They hold her readers spellbound, leaving them with much to ponder afterward. Her work has been published in more than forty languages.
2 Her father’s work frequently took him and his family into the Canadian woodlands for prolonged periods. He was an entomologist, a researcher of insects, and it was imperative they all go where the insects were. As a result, Margaret did not attend school regularly until eighth grade.
3 The youngster spent her quiet, isolated days reading. Her favorites were Grimm’s Fairy Tales, paperback mysteries, and comic books. By six years of age, she was writing stories of her own, and by her sixteenth year, she had decided that she wanted to write for a living. By then, she was attending college in Toronto, and her poems and stories were appearing regularly in her college’s respected literary journal, Acta Victoriana.
4 In 1961, she graduated with honors, receiving her bachelor of arts degree in English. That same year, she privately published Double Persephone, a collection of her poetry, for which she won the prestigious E. J. Pratt Medal in Poetry. The following year, she was awarded a master’s degree from Harvard University.
5 While teaching college in 1968, she married Jim Polk, and in the following year, she published her first novel. Its critical success encouraged her to leave teaching and become a full-time writer. Her sixth novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, won her the United Kingdom’s Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best science-fiction novel of 1987. It remains her most famous work and was adapted as a film in 1990. It was also the basis of an opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders and lyricist Paul Bentley in 2000.
6 The novel, film, and opera are set in a dystopian near-future where the United States government has become a repressive aristocracy and pollution has made most of the population unable to have children. Atwood’s poetic prose and complex exploration of feminist themes made her book an international best seller.
7 She does not consider The Handmaid’s Tale to be science fiction, however. She prefers the term “speculative fiction,” explaining that “for me, the science-fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can’t yet do. Speculative fiction means a work that employs means already at hand and that takes place on planet Earth.”
8 Now in her seventies, Atwood remains an active writer, lecturer, and environmental activist.
3

Read the sentences from the first paragraph.
Which word is closest in meaning to spellbound as it is used in the first paragraph?
L4A - DOK1

3

How does the author of the passage develop the idea that Atwood’s choice of career was impacted by her father’s work?
RI3 - DOK2

8

Constructed Response - RI3 - DOK3
Constructed-Response: The author provides information about Atwood’s early literary interests and Atwood’s definition of “speculative fiction.” Explain how Atwood’s early reading connects to her later writing. Use details from the passage to support your answer. Write your answer on the lines on your answer document.

3

22. How will the author’s tone throughout this informational text, MOST LIKELY affect readers?
RI4 - DOK2

3

23. What is the meaning of “imperative” in paragraph 2?
RI4 - DOK2

3

24. What is the meaning of “dystopia” in paragraph 6?
RI4 - DOK2

3

According to the article, what do many of Atwood's novels and poems have in common?
RI3 - DOK2

Non-Passage Domain Questions
Directions: Read the language questions carefully to answer items 26 through 30.
3

Read the dictionary entry.

compound n. 1. a combination of two or more ingredients or parts 2. a substance formed by the chemical union of two or more elements 3. a word that consists either of two or more elements that are independent words 4. a building or buildings set off by an enclosed barrier

Now read the sentences below.

In science we are learning about certain compounds that are essential to life, like water. Each water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Which definition from the dictionary entry matches the meaning of compounds as it is used in the sentences?
L4c - DOK2

3

Which of the following sentences is grammatically and mechanically correct:
L1 - DOK2

3

Read the sentence.

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and typically explored such themes as the limitations of social class and societal expectations.

Which revision BEST improves the syntax of the sentence?
L3a - DOK2

3

Choose the sentence that is punctuated correctly.
LC2 - DOK2

3

Which sentence uses hyphenation correctly?
L2a - DOK2