Name _____________________________ Class _________________ Date __________________
Unit 6: Collection 17
Selection Test
READING AND LITERATURE
Straw into Gold Sandra Cisneros
COMPREHENSION Circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following
items.
1. Why had Cisneros never made a corn tortilla before she lived in France?
A) She disliked corn tortillas and always ate bread and lentils instead.
B) Her sisters had always done the cooking as she was growing up.
C) Her well-to-do family had always employed a cook.
D) Her mother’s family was from a different part of Mexico than her father’s
family.
2. Why does Cisneros compare the challenge of making tortillas to writing a critical
essay for her MFA exam?
A) Many people helped her make tortillas and helped her write her essay.
B) She could make tortillas and write essays intuitively.
C) She did not know the processes required to make tortillas or to write an essay.
D) She learned how to make tortillas and how to write a critical essay after she
left home.
3. When Cisneros feels nostalgia for home, she imagines—
A) her grandparent’s home in Mexico
B) a house on Mango Street in Chicago
C) an artists’ colony in Aix-en-Provence
D) San Antonio, Texas, near the Alamo
4. Cisneros’s attitude toward her parents’ efforts to raise her and her brothers can best
be described as—
A) admiring
B) resentful
C) bitter
D) cynical
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Unit 6: Collection 17, Selection Test continued
5. What is the main idea of this essay?
A) The author’s experiences shaped her personality and writing.
B) Traveling throughout the world has not changed the author.
C) The author is a gifted writer to whom everything has come easily.
D) Texas and Mexico are geographically and culturally similar.
VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT On the line provided, write the vocabulary word
that best completes each sentence.
prestigious
intuitively
flourished
ventured
taboo
6. When Cisneros was a child, it was ____________________, or forbidden, for
unmarried women to live on their own.
7. Cisneros, however, knew ____________________ without conscious reasoning that
she had to move out.
8. She took great risks when she ____________________ all the way to Europe.
9. Cisneros ____________________ and prospered in her new life.
10. Her writing was a great success, and she won many ____________________
awards.
VOCABULARY SKILL Match the word origin on the left with the vocabulary
word on the right.
_____ 11. French, nostalgie, severe homesickness
_____ 12. French, nomade, wandering in search of
pasture
A) nomadic
B) intuitively
C) subsisting
D) nostalgia
_____ 13. Latin, florere, flower
E) flourished
_____ 14. Latin, subsistere, to support
_____ 15. Latin, intuitus, to look at
LITERARY FOCUS Circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following
items.
16. An allusion is best described as—
A) a comparison of two unlike objects
B) writing that contains conflict
C) an event or character that stands in for another event or character
D) a reference to a component of culture
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Unit 6: Collection 17, Selection Test continued
17. The title of this essay is an allusion to the fairy tale—
A) “The Little Mermaid”
B) “Rumpelstiltskin”
C) “Snow White”
D) “Cinderella”
18. What does the gold in the title represent?
A) The literature Cisneros produced
B) Cisneros’s mother’s gardening skills
C) Cisneros’s cooking ability
D) Cisneros’s school record
READING FOCUS Circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following
items.
19. Cisneros most likely became a writer because—
A) she earned excellent grades in her literature classes
B) her father and mother encouraged her to be an artist
C) she wanted to write stories about the people she knew and the places she had
been.
D) she wanted her readers to know what it was like to grow up in poverty
20. Looking back at her childhood, Cisneros believes that she was—
A) a serious, competitive student
B) very athletic
C) a rumpled, skinny, awkward girl
D) a popular, sociable girl
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CONSTRUCTED RESPONSE (5 POINTS)
21. In “Straw into Gold,” Cisneros mentions many things she draws upon as subjects
for her writing. What do these things have in common? Why do you think she
chooses these things over others? On a separate sheet of paper, write a paragraph
that explains your answer. Support your ideas with details from the selection.
HINT: The beginning of your paragraph should restate the questions. A possible start
might be – “Cisneros draws upon many things as subjects for her writing. Some of
these subjects are.......”
Be sure to answer why she might choose those subjects. Explain why by using specific
examples. Copy examples word-for-word from the passage and use quotation
marks. Then say how those examples explain your answer.
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