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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Physical communication strategies include proximity between speakers, hand gestures and ______________________.
(a) head movements
(b) utterances
(c) facial expression
(d) tics

2. What brings some sort of uniformity to spelling and language?
(a) Newspapers
(b) The Constitution
(c) The printing press
(d) McGuffy's Reader

3. It is an interesting ____________ that Americans attempt to imitate the British by using words and pronunciations that are not British at all or are no longer used.
(a) symbol
(b) mistake
(c) metaphor
(d) irony

4. Who is Noam Chomsky?
(a) An American linguist
(b) A French archaeologist
(c) A British psychologist
(d) A Russian writer

5. The differences between languages bring up questions about what?
(a) Their purpose
(b) Their clarity
(c) Their ease of use
(d) Their origins and place within the human story

6. In Chapter 4, the author traces the development of English in what country?
(a) United Kingdom
(b) Spain
(c) Norway
(d) France

7. What about the English language gives users greater range of expression?
(a) More letters of the alphabet
(b) Active and passive voices
(c) Past and future tenses
(d) More vowel sounds

8. The English writing system developed from what?
(a) Pictographs
(b) Cave drawings
(c) Markings on trees
(d) Etchings on leaves

9. On what does a child's vocabulary rely?
(a) Exposure to the speech of the primary caregiver
(b) IQ
(c) Nationality
(d) Geographic area

10. What combines with vowels to make pronunciation rules difficult to define?
(a) Complex spelling rules
(b) Too many consonants
(c) Cultural dialects
(d) Punctuation

11. What language is most commonly chosen by international businesses?
(a) English
(b) French
(c) Japanese
(d) Italian

12. What happens when a particular phonology is applied to adopted words?
(a) They become easier to understand
(b) They become almost unrecognizable in their original language
(c) They become more lyrical
(d) They become more rhythmic

13. Many English speakers promote the particular variety of English that they speak while ____________________ the dialects of speakers from other regions.
(a) ridiculing
(b) mimicking
(c) studying
(d) trying

14. What historical occurrence is explored in Chapter 6?
(a) The Great Vowel Shift
(b) The Great Depression
(c) The Johnstown Flood
(d) The Kennedy Assassination

15. In what country does the printing revolution take place?
(a) France
(b) Ireland
(c) Wales
(d) England

Short Answer Questions

1. Which country has been successful in protecting its language?

2. Languages around the world contain common ______________________.

3. Chapter 7 addresses the _________________ examples of ways English is spoken throughout the world.

4. Why could the Neanderthals not keep up with the Cro-Magnons?

5. According to the author, some words are formed out of __________________.

(see the answer keys)

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