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English 20-1

English 20-1 · Worksheets

Mixed review · Devices and poetry

Ten questions of mixed difficulty, covering Devices and language, Poetry. Print it, or work through it on screen — the answer key starts on its own page.

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Mixed review · Devices and poetry

English 20-1 · maddyhelps.com

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Circle the best answer for each question. Show your work in the space provided.

  1. A writer who uses a series of short, blunt sentences most likely intends to

    1. a) create urgency or abruptness
    2. b) slow the passage down
    3. c) suggest luxury
    4. d) signal a change of narrator

  2. Free verse is poetry that

    1. a) never uses imagery
    2. b) must be written in one stanza
    3. c) has no line breaks
    4. d) has no regular metre or rhyme scheme

  3. Hyperbole is

    1. a) deliberate exaggeration for effect
    2. b) the repetition of consonant sounds
    3. c) deliberate understatement
    4. d) a comparison using like

  4. Approaching an unseen poem, the most productive first step is

    1. a) reading it through for literal sense before looking for devices
    2. b) identifying the rhyme scheme
    3. c) deciding on a theme immediately
    4. d) listing every device you can name

  5. The volta, or turn, of a poem is

    1. a) the title
    2. b) the point where the thought or feeling shifts direction
    3. c) the first rhyme
    4. d) the final line

  6. A simile compares two things

    1. a) without using like or as
    2. b) by giving human qualities to an object
    3. c) through exaggeration
    4. d) using like or as

  7. In writing about a poem, the strongest paragraphs usually

    1. a) paraphrase the poem stanza by stanza
    2. b) compare the poem to the writer's own experience
    3. c) list all the techniques in order of appearance
    4. d) connect a specific technique to a specific effect on meaning

  8. A sonnet is a poem of

    1. a) twelve lines
    2. b) any length, if it rhymes
    3. c) sixteen lines
    4. d) fourteen lines

  9. A stanza in a poem is

    1. a) a grouped set of lines, separated by a space
    2. b) a rhyming pair
    3. c) a single line
    4. d) the poem's main idea

  10. A poet who breaks an established metrical pattern in one line is most likely

    1. a) ending the poem
    2. b) changing the rhyme scheme
    3. c) making a mistake
    4. d) drawing attention to that line

Answer key · Mixed review · Devices and poetry

English 20-1 · maddyhelps.com

  1. a) create urgency or abruptness — Syntax carries tone as surely as diction does. Long accumulating clauses do the opposite, and a shift between the two mid-passage is nearly always deliberate.
  2. d) has no regular metre or rhyme scheme — Free does not mean unshaped. Line breaks, rhythm, repetition and white space are all still in play, and they are what an analysis should work with.
  3. a) deliberate exaggeration for effect — Its opposite, understatement, is often used for irony or restraint. Both are about the distance between what is said and what is meant.
  4. a) reading it through for literal sense before looking for devices — Devices explain how a poem does what it does, which means you first need to know what it does. An analysis built on a misread literal sense collapses however many terms it contains.
  5. b) the point where the thought or feeling shifts direction — In a Petrarchan sonnet it usually arrives at line nine and in a Shakespearean one at the couplet, but any poem can have one. Locating it gives you the poem's structure almost for free.
  6. d) using like or as — A metaphor makes the same comparison without the connective, which is why it tends to feel more assertive: her voice was gravel claims more than her voice was like gravel.
  7. d) connect a specific technique to a specific effect on meaning — A device catalogue shows recognition; a paraphrase shows comprehension. The marks are in the link — this technique, in this place, does this to the meaning.
  8. d) fourteen lines — Shakespearean sonnets run three quatrains and a couplet; Petrarchan ones run an octave and a sestet. Both turn at some point, and finding the turn is usually the way in.
  9. a) a grouped set of lines, separated by a space — Stanzas do for a poem roughly what paragraphs do for prose — they group and separate. Where the breaks fall is a choice, so a change in stanza length is worth noticing.
  10. d) drawing attention to that line — Departure only registers against a pattern. Once a rhythm is established, disrupting it is one of the loudest things a poet can do quietly.