112 English
Mrs. S. Wills
Exam Review—January 2015
Exam Format:
 Multiple Choice
 Conventions / Grammar
 Short Answer
 Sight Reading (poem / short story)
 Essay
Grammar:
 Parts of speech: noun (concrete, proper, abstract, collective), verb, auxiliary verb, preposition,
adverb, adjective (descriptive, possessive), pronouns (subject, object, possessive, reflexive,
interrogative, relative, demonstrative, indefinite), antecedents.
 Sentence structure: beginning capitalization, end punctuation, subject-verb agreement, avoidance
of fragments, run-ons, comma splices and rambling sentences, double negatives.
 Commonly Confused Words: accept/except, there/their/they’re, alright /all right, among/between,
who/which/that, fewer/less, already/all ready, its/it’s, than/then, would of / would’ve,
who’s/whose, affect/effect, where/were/we’re/wear, proceed/precede, a lot…
 Anything else?
Short Story Terms:
 Basic plot structure: introduction, motivating incident, rising action, climax, denouement,
conclusion.
 Be able to discuss: protagonist, antagonist, flat and round characters, verbal irony, dramatic irony,
situational irony, foreshadowing, conflict, theme, atmosphere/ mood, tone, setting, allusion
(Biblical, classical, historical, literary), in media res, point of view, flashback, cliffhanger, anticlimax, stream of consciousness, repetition, symbolism
 Anything else?
Poetry:
 Be able to identify: imagery, simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration,
repetition, oxymoron, apostrophe, hyperbole.
 Re-read poems studied this semester.
 Anything else?
Re-read the short stories and related notes/questions:
 “The Lady, or the Tiger?” by Stockton (hand out)
 “Twins” by Eric Wright (Echoes 11 pp.213-217)
 “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
[http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Amontillado.pdf]
 “The Moose and the Sparrow” by Hugh Garner (hand out)
 “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber [http://www.fraumuenster.ch/wpcontent/uploads/2013/09/The-Secret-Life-of-Walter-Mitty.pdf]
 Note the similarities among various characters.
Essay
 You will be given two essay topics and must write one essay on the exam. You should prepare by
reviewing the short stories listed below. You will not be allowed to take notes in with you. Essay
length is expected to be 1.5 to 2 pages single-spaced.
 Topic 1: “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Moose and the Sparrow”
o Compare & contrast the characters Montresor and Cecil: revenge, methodology
(how), motivation (why).

Topic 2: “The Lady, or the Tiger” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
o Discuss the effectiveness of the use of ‘anti-climax’ and ‘cliff-hanger’ devices in
story endings: effect on reader.