View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what level of school were the students whom Francisco tutored in the Spanish language and culture in order to prepare them for community service work?

2. What crop would the rest of the family be picking in the days when Francisco watched one of his siblings inside the family car all day?

3. What position at the college did Rafael Hernandez inhabit when Jimenez first befriended him?

4. Who broke the news to Francisco about the sudden departure of Francisco's father?

5. In front of which hall were Francisco and Laura sitting when he confided that he had something to tell her?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was Jimenez's single piece of knowledge about Sodality life before his conversation with Father O'Neill?

2. In which two ways was Laura different than every other student in the Latin American Literature class?

3. What parallel does Jimenez draw between regression and oppression in the scene of his father's drunken tirade?

4. What advice did Jimenez's father always give him about friendship?

5. What news did Jimenez receive about his father's situation in Mexico during the second half of Jimenez's sophomore year of college?

6. What motivation drove Jimenez to try to teach himself how to pick cotton at the age of six?

7. How does Jimenez characterize the emotions he felt upon returning to the University of Santa Clara to begin his sophomore year?

8. What alarming object tumbled out of the Jimenez patriarch's pocket just before the arrival of the police?

9. For what specific reason did Jimenez feel grateful to have known Rafael Hernandez?

10. Which classes constituted Jimenez's favorites during the first semester of his sophomore year?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How is the theme of injustice portrayed within Reaching Out? Examine Jimenez's treatment of and messages regarding injustice throughout the work.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss Jimenez’s use of the motif of sound within the nonfiction work Reaching Out.

Essay Topic 3

In what way does Jimenez go about breaking the text into parts and how do these structural elements help to advance the text’s arguments?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,030 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample