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ELA 8

English Language Arts 8 · Worksheets

Character, conflict and plot

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

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Character, conflict and plot

English Language Arts 8 · maddyhelps.com

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

  1. Story 1: A girl who is afraid of deep water signs up for swimming lessons so she can go to the lake with her cousins. Story 2: A boy who stutters joins the debate club and speaks in the final round. What do the two main characters have in common?

    1. a) Both are trying to win a competition at their school.
    2. b) Both spend the story trying to make new friends.
    3. c) Both choose to face something that is hard for them.
    4. d) Both have been told to change by their parents.

  2. Read: “All weekend, a blizzard kept Leon's family snowed in at the cabin. All weekend, Leon tried to find the right moment to tell his dad he wanted to quit hockey, the sport his dad had played and coached for twenty years. On Sunday the storm ended, and on the drive home, Leon finally said it.” Which conflict is the story mainly about?

    1. a) Leon's struggle to tell his dad a hard truth
    2. b) the family against the rules of the league
    3. c) the family's fight to get through the blizzard
    4. d) Leon against the other players on his team

  3. Read: “At the start of the story, Ivy is the only one in her family who refuses to visit her grandfather in the care home, because the place makes her uncomfortable. In the last scene, she rides the bus there alone on a Saturday, carrying her guitar, because he likes to hear her play.” How has Ivy changed?

    1. a) She now puts his happiness ahead of her own discomfort.
    2. b) She no longer finds the care home uncomfortable at all.
    3. c) She has become a much better guitar player since the start.
    4. d) She has finally been made to visit him by her family.

  4. A story follows Nadia as she trains for a spelling bee, is knocked out in the first round, and learns to laugh at her own nerves. Her coach, her best friend and a boy named Ravi, who wins the bee, also appear. Why is Nadia the main character, not Ravi?

    1. a) She is the character the reader is meant to like more than anyone.
    2. b) She has more lines of dialogue than anyone else in it.
    3. c) She is the first character the reader meets in the story.
    4. d) The story follows her problem, and she is the one who changes.

  5. Read: “The town's new bylaw banned skateboarding anywhere downtown, including the plaza where Nico and his friends had skated for years. Nico printed a petition, collected 300 names, and signed up to speak at the next council meeting.” The main conflict is

    1. a) character against character
    2. b) character against society
    3. c) character against self
    4. d) character against nature

  6. Read: “‘Can I walk your dog after school?’ Eli asked Mrs. Chen, for the third time that week. He had already told his mom he was saving every dollar for hockey camp in July.” Why does Eli keep offering to walk the dog?

    1. a) He wants a dog of his own someday.
    2. b) He is trying to get out of homework.
    3. c) He wants to earn money for hockey camp.
    4. d) Mrs. Chen has asked him to help her.

  7. Story 1: A hiker is lost on a mountain trail as night falls and the temperature drops. Story 2: A boy must decide whether to report his best friend for cheating on a test. How do the main conflicts differ?

    1. a) Story 1 is character against nature; Story 2 is mainly character against self.
    2. b) Both stories are mainly about a character against another character.
    3. c) Story 1 is character against self; Story 2 is mainly character against nature.
    4. d) Story 1 is character against society; Story 2 is character against character.

  8. Story 1: Grace breaks her arm before the season, spends it keeping stats for her team, and by the end the coach is asking her for advice. Story 2: Owen is cut from the team, quits sports altogether, and tells everyone he never liked soccer anyway. Which statement best compares the two characters?

    1. a) Both of them give up on the sport they love after something goes wrong.
    2. b) Owen's setback is worse than Grace's, so he cannot be blamed.
    3. c) Both change by the end of their stories and become team leaders.
    4. d) Both face a setback, but only Grace finds a new way to stay involved.

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

  10. Story 1: The Ferreiras search for their lost dog for a week, until a stranger who saw their poster drives two hours to bring it home. Story 2: Ben blames his little sister for leaving the gate open and losing the dog, until he remembers that he was the last one through the gate. Which statement best compares the main ideas of the two stories?

    1. a) They share one main idea, because in both of them a family's dog goes missing.
    2. b) The first is about strangers' kindness, the second about blaming others too fast.
    3. c) The first is about a whole family, and the second is about a brother and a sister.
    4. d) Both show that a lost pet will almost always find its own way back home in the end.

Answer key · Character, conflict and plot

English Language Arts 8 · maddyhelps.com

  1. c) Both choose to face something that is hard for them. — The girl signs up for lessons and the boy joins debate: each walks toward the thing that is hard for them. Only the boy is in a competition, so that answer fits one story, and a comparison has to be true of both.
  2. a) Leon's struggle to tell his dad a hard truth — The story builds toward the moment Leon speaks, and that moment is its climax, so his struggle to find the courage is the main conflict. The blizzard is the loudest thing in the passage, but it only traps the two of them together; the storm ending on Sunday settles nothing that matters.
  3. a) She now puts his happiness ahead of her own discomfort. — Going alone, on her own time, with something he enjoys shows that what matters most to her has changed. The story never says the care home stopped bothering her, so that answer adds something that is not there; what changed is that she goes anyway.
  4. d) The story follows her problem, and she is the one who changes. — The main character is the one whose problem drives the story and who changes by the end, and that is Nadia. Being met first or being likeable can be true of a main character, but neither makes one; Ravi even wins the bee and is still a minor character.
  5. b) character against society — Nico is up against a rule made by his community, which is what character against society means. There is no single person he is fighting, which is the difference from character against character, and he never doubts what to do, which rules out a conflict with himself.
  6. c) He wants to earn money for hockey camp. — The writer puts the dog-walking beside the hockey-camp savings so the reader connects them: Eli is looking for ways to earn money. Wanting a dog is a guess the passage gives no support for, and Eli is the one asking, not Mrs. Chen.
  7. a) Story 1 is character against nature; Story 2 is mainly character against self. — The hiker fights the dark and the cold, which is character against nature. The friend is in Story 2, but the real struggle is the boy's own choice, so it is mainly a conflict within himself; seeing the friend and answering “character against character” is the usual slip.
  8. d) Both face a setback, but only Grace finds a new way to stay involved. — Each character loses a season, which is what makes the comparison work, and then they respond in opposite ways. Saying both gave up is true of Owen only; a sound comparison names what the stories share and where they differ.
  9. c) 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.
  10. b) The first is about strangers' kindness, the second about blaming others too fast. — A main idea is what a story says, not what it is about. Both stories share a topic, a lost dog, but the first is resolved by a stranger's help and the second by Ben finding his own mistake, so they make different points.