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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the Church of Scotland's more common name?

2. Where was Shakespeare born and raised?

3. What style of music was the invention of the Scots-Irish?

4. Approximately how many people speak English as their first language today?

5. Johnson traveled through where at the dawn of the Enlightenment of Hume, Smith, Burns, and Telford?

Short Essay Questions

1. What impact did the printing press and the scientific revolution have on the English language?

2. How do we know how the English language sounded hundreds of years ago? What do the authors relate about grammatical shifts in the Introduction?

3. What do the authors of The Story of English rely upon to relate the history of the English language?

4. What do the authors assert about the state of flux of the English language in the Introduction?

5. What do the authors write of the New World and its influence on English in Chapter 2, The Mother Tongue?

6. What did James I do to reduce the rule of Celtic chiefs in Ulster?

7. What became of the Germanic tribes described in Chapter 2, The Mother Tongue? Where did they spread?

8. Who spread the English language to the west initially? Who are their descendants?

9. What myths relating to the English language do the authors hope to dispel, according to the Introduction?

10. What examples do the authors give in Chapter 1, An English-Speaking World for the history of success of the English language?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the origins of the English language. When do linguists believe the first traces of what we know as English today appear in history? Where?

Essay Topic 2

How can we know how the English language sounded hundreds of years ago? What resources do we have today to examine and analyze dialects? What changes have made this possible?

Essay Topic 3

Describe Daniel Webster's political views and how these influenced his dictionary. What political parties was Webster associated with? What political reactions resulted from the standardization of American English?

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