Freebie - Ace the State Test

 Hello teachers!  Never fear, your daily question is just a downwards scroll away, but I wanted to give you a chance to grab the Last Minute EOC Tips presentation.  You can get it by going to https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Extreme-English-Teacher and grabbing the Free Download (should see it at the top right, but if not, just scroll the products until you see it).  I hope it helps!  If it does, please consider leaving a review.

Say What You Will, but the Guy Did Love His Mother

Read the passage from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

“A blight on the fresh crops, and the rich pastures, cattle sicken and die, and the women die in labor, children stillborn, and the plague, the fiery god of fever hurls down on the city, his lightning slashing through us- raging plague in all its vengeance, devastating the house of Cadmus!”

What word could replace blight in the passage?

A. Prosperity
B. Disease
C. Blessing
D. Purity










Scroll down for the answer.

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b. is the correct answer - Disease….in the passage everything is negative and dying; therefore, you should look for the one word that has a negative connotation. (A connotation is how you FEEL about a word, not necessarily what it means.)

Thanks Lydia and Kris from Ms. Stamey's class!  You know what else is a blight?  State's basketball program, but you guys probably already knew that since you seem really smart.

We Should All Love Our Mothers

In the play, “Oedipus Rex,” the king is visited by an elderly Messenger from a distant land with important news.

Oedipus- “Never, I will never go near my parents.”
Messenger- “My boy, it is clear, you don’t know what you’re doing.”


Why does the Messenger refer to Oedipus as “my boy?”

A. The messenger knows that Oedipus is male
B. Oedipus is actually a child
C. The messenger thinks that Oedipus is naïve like a child
D. The messenger knows that Oedipus is a Momma’s boy

Scroll down for the answer.

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Answer- C- Based upon how familiar the Messenger seems to be with the king, the Messenger holds knowledge that the king does not have.


A is irrelevant. B. Typically non-royals do not address Kings in a condescending or familiar manner, unless they have just cause to do so.
D is simply wrong. On multiple levels. Forgive me.



Thanks to Jaxon, Daniel, and Daniel, three guys who love their mothers (not like Oedipus, though...  Ewww!)

Rebellions Are Built on Hope

 Read the poem below by Emily Dickinson - 

"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --

What is the literary term that drives the meaning of this poem?

a. metaphor

b. simile

c. repetition

d. allusion

Scroll down for the answer.

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a. is correct.  We do not have what the complete comparison is, but we should be able to figure out that Hope is being compared to a bird.

Who Do We Ask for Help When We Don't Know Which Way to Go? Say Map!

Read the following passage from All Quiet on the Western Front:

"We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial- I believe we are lost."

What theme is being represented in this passage?


a) comradeship
b) dehumanization
c) loss of innocence
d) oneness of man




Scroll down for the answer.

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a) is wrong because this has nothing to do with anyone being anyone's comrade
b) is the best wrong answer. Even though they have changed, they are still human and are acting like humans, just older humans
c) is correct because they are children that now experienced old men who have lost all innocence from the young child that they are
d) is wrong because no one is being one or acting as one. This has nothing to do with this sentence.



Thanks to Jessie from Ms. Stamey's class for this well written question.  Loss of innocence is a common theme in stories that involve younger characters, so if a passage on the EOC involves someone's childhood, look for it as a theme.  Stay gold, Jessie - and do it for Johnny!

(O.K., bad Outsiders allusion, but it is in keeping with the loss of innocence theme...)

She sells seashells, too.

​Read the following:


Wallace walked wearily while wondering where Wendal was.


What literary device does this sentence rely on?


A. Simile
B. Alliteration
C. Hyperbole
D. Personification

Scroll down for the answer.

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The correct Answer is B.


Thanks to Ezra for this excellent and egregiously terribly twisty tongue teaser. If you want more tongue twisters, try this site: http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/50-tongue-twisters-improve-pronunciation/

Sun on the Daisssssies (Bonus points if you get the allusion)

Look at the statement below:

The sun kissed the flowers
Before the clouds closed its eye.

This is an example of:

a. personification
b. allusion
c. hyperbole
d. irony












Scroll down for the answer.















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a. is the correct answer.  Personification means to give something not human some human characteristics.  Here the sun is kissing, which, being a ball of firey gases, it cannot do.


The allusion in the title is to Gollum in chapter five of The Hobbit.  They left it out of the movie.  :(



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