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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When is the reversible colon used?
(a) To show that one side of a sentence is better than the other.
(b) To show that two sides of a sentence explain each other.
(c) To show that one side of a sentence does not need the other.
(d) To show that both sides of the sentence cancel each other out.

2. How may fights have the speaker's parent had in all of their marriage?
(a) Hundreds.
(b) 10.
(c) Dozens.
(d) 1.

3. What phrase can the low point replace?
(a) This is as good as it gets.
(b) What goes up must come down.
(c) It couldn't possible be worse.
(d) Nowhere to go but up.

4. How many heart attacks had the speaker's father suffered when he told his son the secret to his successful marriage?
(a) 4.
(b) 22.
(c) 1.
(d) 19.

5. What example does the speaker use as a familial conversation in which one party understands the words but not the meaning?
(a) When his mother told him it pained her to think of him alone.
(b) When his grandmother told him she hopes he never loves anyone as much as she loves him.
(c) When his brother told him he had been having a heart attack for six years.
(d) When his father told him his brother had become a yes man.

Short Answer Questions

1. What phrase is an example a sentence never uttered by the speaker or any member of the speaker's family?

2. What symbol represents the "backup"?

3. The speaker uses a conversation between himself and which relative as an example of the low point?

4. What symbol represents "the low point" in the speaker's familial communication?

5. What does the speaker say low points tend to do in his communication with family?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the conversation the speaker relays between mother and father to show use of the corroboration mark.

2. Describe the phone call between the speaker and his brother after he ended up in intensive care.

3. What does the severed web symbolize? What does the speaker call this?

4. What are the final words that remain unspoken, as shown by the use of the should-have brackets, between father and son in the final conversation of the story?

5. What are the should-have brackets?

6. What is one example the speaker gives of the use of a reversible colon?

7. What are low points? What conversation between the speaker and his mother does he use to exemplify their use?

8. Why did the speaker's father's doctor advise against pulling weeds? What other things did he advice against?

9. What does the speaker's father confess to him about his marriage after his 19th heart attack?

10. What does the speaker realize about himself after his father discusses how his brother was already a yes man?

(see the answer keys)

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