ESL SUPPLEMENTAL EXAM FOR ENGLISH
LANGUAGE STUDENT PRACTICE QUESTIONS
WITH VERIFIED SOLUTIONS
A standard language is the language:
A. spoken informally by the majority of the population in a country.
B. most often occurring in pop culture and the media.
C. labeled as the country's official language by the government.
D. utilized and accepted by formal institutions, like governments. --ANSWER--
D. utilized and accepted by formal institutions, like governments.
A standard language is taught in schools and used in government documents
and proceedings.
When a teacher is working with students on their intonation pattern, the teacher
is dealing with which level of language?
A. semantics
B. morphology
C. syntax
D. pragmatics --ANSWER--D. pragmatics
Intonation patterns of a language are part of the broader pragmatics level.
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,Which of these abilities is the weakest connection between strong oral language
skills and strong writing abilities?
A. the ability to use grammatical structures correctly
B. the ability to understand organization and text structure
C. the ability to write longer paragraphs about a topic
D. the ability to decode new words in a text --ANSWER--D. the ability to
decode new words in a text
While decoding new words is an oral language skill, it is not as immediately
connected to strong writing skills as the other three.
An ELL student wrote the following in her journal for class:
"My parents grew up in the small town in Mexico. They moved to United States
when I was one year old."
The student makes a mistake in her use of:
A. prepositions.
B. tense.
C. pronouns.
D. articles. --ANSWER--D. articles.
Articles are the words a, an, and the. Articles are used with nouns to define the
specificity of the noun. The student incorrectly states, "the small town," rather
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,than "a small town" and doesn't include "the" before United States. These are
article mistakes.
How does a student's level of oral vocabulary impact their decoding and reading
abilities?
A. A student with a large vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not
they have decoded a word correctly.
B. Students who have a wide vocabulary are typically students who have been
read to extensively at home.
C. A student with a large vocabulary will have greater knowledge of sight
words, requiring them to decode less while they read.
D. Oral vocabulary and decoding skills are unrelated. --ANSWER--A. A
student with a large vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not they
have decoded a word correctly.
Oral vocabulary impacts decoding skills because a student with a large
vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not they have decoded a word
correctly. For example, if you are unfamiliar with the word "wander," you will
not be aware of whether or not you have decoded it correctly.
Which is an appropriate activity for ELLs who are lacking in vocabulary
development?
A. giving them vocabulary word lists to memorize
B. having them translate texts into their native language
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, C. asking them to highlight every unfamiliar word and write the definition in
English
D. teaching them how to identify context clues and use them effectively to
interpret meanings --ANSWER--D. teaching them how to identify context clues
and use them effectively to interpret meanings
It is important for ELL students to know how to figure out the meaning of
unfamiliar words by using context clues.
A high school teacher is teaching her students how to use contextual clues to
help determine the meaning of words.
She provides the following example to her students:"We know that sentences
are made of subjects and predicates. The subject contains a noun or pronoun and
the predicate contains the verb. Look at the sentence: John went to the ____.
The structure of the sentence lets us know that the blank must be filled with a
noun. Putting a verb in the blank would not make sense."
This is an example of a:
A. restatement clue.
B. syntactic clue.
A syntactic clue involves implicit knowledge of word order and the function of
words.
C. contrast clue.
D. semantic clue. --ANSWER--B. syntactic clue.
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LANGUAGE STUDENT PRACTICE QUESTIONS
WITH VERIFIED SOLUTIONS
A standard language is the language:
A. spoken informally by the majority of the population in a country.
B. most often occurring in pop culture and the media.
C. labeled as the country's official language by the government.
D. utilized and accepted by formal institutions, like governments. --ANSWER--
D. utilized and accepted by formal institutions, like governments.
A standard language is taught in schools and used in government documents
and proceedings.
When a teacher is working with students on their intonation pattern, the teacher
is dealing with which level of language?
A. semantics
B. morphology
C. syntax
D. pragmatics --ANSWER--D. pragmatics
Intonation patterns of a language are part of the broader pragmatics level.
Page 1 of 43
,Which of these abilities is the weakest connection between strong oral language
skills and strong writing abilities?
A. the ability to use grammatical structures correctly
B. the ability to understand organization and text structure
C. the ability to write longer paragraphs about a topic
D. the ability to decode new words in a text --ANSWER--D. the ability to
decode new words in a text
While decoding new words is an oral language skill, it is not as immediately
connected to strong writing skills as the other three.
An ELL student wrote the following in her journal for class:
"My parents grew up in the small town in Mexico. They moved to United States
when I was one year old."
The student makes a mistake in her use of:
A. prepositions.
B. tense.
C. pronouns.
D. articles. --ANSWER--D. articles.
Articles are the words a, an, and the. Articles are used with nouns to define the
specificity of the noun. The student incorrectly states, "the small town," rather
Page 2 of 43
,than "a small town" and doesn't include "the" before United States. These are
article mistakes.
How does a student's level of oral vocabulary impact their decoding and reading
abilities?
A. A student with a large vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not
they have decoded a word correctly.
B. Students who have a wide vocabulary are typically students who have been
read to extensively at home.
C. A student with a large vocabulary will have greater knowledge of sight
words, requiring them to decode less while they read.
D. Oral vocabulary and decoding skills are unrelated. --ANSWER--A. A
student with a large vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not they
have decoded a word correctly.
Oral vocabulary impacts decoding skills because a student with a large
vocabulary is more likely to recognize whether or not they have decoded a word
correctly. For example, if you are unfamiliar with the word "wander," you will
not be aware of whether or not you have decoded it correctly.
Which is an appropriate activity for ELLs who are lacking in vocabulary
development?
A. giving them vocabulary word lists to memorize
B. having them translate texts into their native language
Page 3 of 43
, C. asking them to highlight every unfamiliar word and write the definition in
English
D. teaching them how to identify context clues and use them effectively to
interpret meanings --ANSWER--D. teaching them how to identify context clues
and use them effectively to interpret meanings
It is important for ELL students to know how to figure out the meaning of
unfamiliar words by using context clues.
A high school teacher is teaching her students how to use contextual clues to
help determine the meaning of words.
She provides the following example to her students:"We know that sentences
are made of subjects and predicates. The subject contains a noun or pronoun and
the predicate contains the verb. Look at the sentence: John went to the ____.
The structure of the sentence lets us know that the blank must be filled with a
noun. Putting a verb in the blank would not make sense."
This is an example of a:
A. restatement clue.
B. syntactic clue.
A syntactic clue involves implicit knowledge of word order and the function of
words.
C. contrast clue.
D. semantic clue. --ANSWER--B. syntactic clue.
Page 4 of 43
