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ELA 8

English Language Arts 8 · Worksheets

Year-end challenge

Ten questions of mixed difficulty, covering Character and plot, Reading closely, Sentences and conventions, Viewpoint and media, Writing and revising. Print it, or work through it on screen — the answer key starts on its own page.

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Year-end challenge

English Language Arts 8 · maddyhelps.com

Name
Date
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Circle the best answer for each question. Use the space to note the evidence or reasoning that decided it.

  1. Read: “The gym smelled of popcorn. Parents squeezed into the bleachers holding up their phones, and the Grade 8 band sat in rows of folding chairs, adjusting their music stands one last time.” What is most likely about to happen?

    1. a) the parents are getting ready to leave
    2. b) a basketball game is about to begin
    3. c) the band is about to play a concert
    4. d) the band is about to start a practice

  2. Read: “I was not being rude. I only said that anyone could have painted Kyla's picture, which is true, because it's just a lake. I don't know why she packed up and left the art room so fast. Some people cannot take honest feedback.” What does the reader understand that the narrator does not?

    1. a) The narrator's comment hurt Kyla, and that is why she left.
    2. b) The narrator is an expert whose advice should be trusted.
    3. c) Kyla's painting really was too simple to be any good.
    4. d) Kyla left early because the art class had ended.

  3. A writer wants a list in the middle of a sentence to stand out. Which sentence punctuates it correctly?

    1. a) Everything we needed, tent, stove, sleeping bags, fit in the canoe.
    2. b) Everything we needed — tent, stove, sleeping bags — fit in the canoe.
    3. c) Everything we needed — tent — stove — sleeping bags fit in the canoe.
    4. d) Everything we needed — tent, stove, sleeping bags, fit in the canoe.

  4. A tourism ad for a lake shows a tight close-up of a family laughing on a small, clean beach. Just outside the frame are a crowded parking lot and a row of garbage bins. What does the tight framing allow the ad to do?

    1. a) give viewers a fair picture of the entire lake
    2. b) prove that the whole lake is clean and quiet
    3. c) make the beach look bigger than it really is
    4. d) show only what the ad's makers want viewers to see

  5. Read: “For ten years, Aunt Rosa's tomatoes had won first prize at the fair. This year she did not enter, and she told everyone she had been too busy. When her neighbour Mrs. Lind, who had never won anything, held up the blue ribbon, Rosa clapped the loudest. That evening, Rosa gave away a basket of the biggest tomatoes anyone had seen all summer.” Which inference is best supported?

    1. a) Rosa stayed out of the contest so her neighbour could win.
    2. b) Rosa's tomato plants did poorly this year and could not win.
    3. c) Rosa was too busy this year to enter the fair, as she said.
    4. d) Rosa is jealous that Mrs. Lind finally won the blue ribbon.

  6. Read: “Mateo's family moves from Edmonton to a farm, and Mateo hates it: no friends nearby, slow internet and chores before sunrise. He spends weeks planning how to talk his parents into moving back. One night a calf is born in a snowstorm, and Mateo stays up with his dad to keep it alive. In the morning, he asks if he can name it.” What does the ending show about the main conflict?

    1. a) Mateo is starting to accept his new life on the farm.
    2. b) The snowstorm is the main problem the family must solve.
    3. c) Mateo has decided he wants to become a veterinarian.
    4. d) Mateo's parents have agreed to move back to the city.

  7. A student retells a story in the first person from the point of view of the family dog. Which sentence breaks that point of view?

    1. a) I smelled salt on Maya's cheeks, so I pushed my nose under her hand.
    2. b) Maya dropped her backpack by the door and did not throw my ball.
    3. c) I knew Maya was thinking about her old friends back in Halifax.
    4. d) When her mom called her for supper, Maya did not even look up.

  8. Which sentence has a verb tense error?

    1. a) Yesterday Omar finishes his essay and handed it in.
    2. b) Tomorrow we will leave before the sun comes up.
    3. c) Ms. Tran told us that the Earth orbits the Sun.
    4. d) I have lived in Lethbridge since I was six.

  9. Read: “Hana smiled and told her brother the soup was delicious. She had no idea that he had dropped the salt shaker into the pot, and he had no intention of telling her.” What shows that the narrator can see into more than one character's mind?

    1. a) It tells what Hana does not know and what her brother plans.
    2. b) It describes Hana smiling as she talks to her brother.
    3. c) It reports what Hana tells her brother about the soup.
    4. d) It calls the characters “she” and “he” instead of “I.”

  10. Version 1: “I dropped the tray, and the whole cafeteria went quiet. My face burned.” Version 2: “Sam dropped the tray, and the whole cafeteria went quiet. Across the room, his sister hoped nobody would remember they were related.” What can Version 2 include that Version 1, told by Sam, cannot?

    1. a) the moment Sam drops the lunch tray
    2. b) how embarrassed Sam feels about it
    3. c) the sound of the cafeteria going quiet
    4. d) what another character is thinking

Answer key · Year-end challenge

English Language Arts 8 · maddyhelps.com

  1. c) the band is about to play a concert — Parents crowding in with phones ready and a band making last adjustments point to a performance. The gym and the bleachers suggest a basketball game, but nothing in the passage mentions players, and the band is the group getting ready.
  2. a) The narrator's comment hurt Kyla, and that is why she left. — A first-person narrator can be wrong about what is happening. The narrator reports Kyla leaving right after the comment but never connects the two; the reader can. Agreeing that the painting was too simple means trusting a narrator whose own words show the bias.
  3. b) Everything we needed — tent, stove, sleeping bags — fit in the canoe. — Dashes that interrupt a sentence come in pairs, one before the list and one after, like brackets. Leaving off the closing dash is the usual slip, and commas alone blur the list into the sentence, because the list has commas of its own.
  4. d) show only what the ad's makers want viewers to see — Framing decides what is in the picture and what is left out, so a tight shot can hide the parking lot without showing anything false. The family and the beach are real, but a close-up cannot prove anything about the rest of the lake.
  5. a) Rosa stayed out of the contest so her neighbour could win. — The basket shows she had prize-worthy tomatoes, and clapping the loudest for a neighbour who had never won shows she is glad about the result. “Too busy” is only what she told everyone; taking a character's stated reason at face value, when her actions say otherwise, is the usual mistake.
  6. a) Mateo is starting to accept his new life on the farm. — Asking to name the calf shows he now cares about something on the farm, so his struggle against the move is starting to ease. The snowstorm is the most dramatic event, but it is the turning point that changes Mateo, not the conflict the story has been about.
  7. c) I knew Maya was thinking about her old friends back in Halifax. — A dog narrator can report what it sees, hears and smells, but it cannot know what Maya is thinking. The salt on her cheeks is the clever sentence: it shows she has been crying using only what a dog could notice, so it keeps the point of view.
  8. a) Yesterday Omar finishes his essay and handed it in. — “Yesterday” puts the essay in the past, so “finishes” should be “finished” to match “handed.” The other sentences mix tenses correctly: a fact that is always true stays in the present, “have lived” reaches from the past up to now, and after “before” English uses the present to talk about the future.
  9. a) It tells what Hana does not know and what her brother plans. — “She” and “he” show only that the narrator is outside the story, in the third person. Knowing what Hana does not know, and what her brother intends to do, means this narrator can see into both of their minds.
  10. d) what another character is thinking — A first-person narrator knows only his own thoughts, so Sam could see his sister look away but could not know what she hoped. The quiet cafeteria and the dropped tray are in both versions, and Sam's embarrassment is actually closer in Version 1, where the reader feels his face burn.