Passage from Literature and the Multiple-Choice Question
Navigating a multiple-choice exam for literature is not much different than multiple-choice exam for other types like geometry or history. Though appears difficult the test taker can do the best if they first understand the text itself, they fully comprehend the question, and finally, they can distinguish among the often tricky choices in front of them.
The process will be easier if we break it down into comprehendible steps. Answering multiple-choice questions for passage from literature can be easily tackled by looking first at the given text, then the question itself, and finally the answer options.>
The Literary Text
A multiple-choice test for literature differ from other multiple-choice exams because, it comes down to the material you're presented with. You may have a passage of fiction or non-fiction prose or a well-known poem (as opposed to, say, a Biology identification question or a serious speech of an economist). You will be expected to examine the passage and then respond to a multiple-choice question.
But before you go to questions, you need to do something really important. You need to read very keenly. You need to go in-depth with the text in order to have basic comprehension. You pay attention to the basic material in the passage while you read it, you retain the information as you read, and you reach a basic understanding of the material by the end. How you can accomplish these steps? Use the following process:
Step One:
Notice the title if given. It may provide information about what is in the passage initially. Build a picture of what is the significance of the title keep in the mind the important words in the title.
Step Two:
Read the text. Underline keywords as you go through the passage.
Step Three:
Try to summarize the passage? Write a phrase that summarizes the entire passage. If you find that it is not completely understood what the passage is about. Go back again through the passage for pronouns that may help set a context, keywords that may help in recreating a situation or a story, and any words that indicate speaker purpose or emotion. This can be hard enough to deal with, and it may not always be clear initially. Write down anything that helps.
Step Four:
What type of passage is in front of you? Prose, Poetry, Fiction, or non-fiction? Note it down.
The whole work looks intimidating, but it is important. And really, once you get familiarity of it, it will become second nature. Remember, the idea here is to read, interpret and to gain an overall understanding of the passage before you read the questions themselves.
Let's try the process with a practice poem from the College Board website. While this Robert Frost piece does have a title, it has been left off for this exercise:
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow;
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.