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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How many hours a day does Jing-Mei have access to the piano at Mr. Chong’s for practice when she first begins taking lessons?
(a) 2
(b) 3
(c) 1
(d) 4

2. What does Jing-Mei’s mother trade with Mr. Chong so that Jing-Mei may take piano lessons from him?
(a) Dog-walking services
(b) Home-cooked meals
(c) Housecleaning services
(d) Medical advice

3. What is Jing-Mei doing on the day when her mother insists she go practice at the piano after the talent show fiasco?
(a) Watching TV
(b) Listening to the radio
(c) Calling a friend
(d) Writing in her journal

4. What does Jing-Mei promise herself when she has the revelation while staring in the bathroom mirror as a child?
(a) I won’t get married to him
(b) I won’t become an actress
(c) I won’t allow myself to be a victim
(d) I won’t let her change me

5. How many days have passed since Jing-Mei and her mother watched The Ed Sullivan Show when Jing-Mei’s mother tells her that she will be taking piano lessons?
(a) 6
(b) 4
(c) 3
(d) 5

6. When the instructor of the beauty school has to cut off Jing-Mei’s hair because of the bad perm, she tells Jing-Mei’s mother that what play is very popular these days?
(a) Little Orphan Annie
(b) Peter Pan
(c) Cinderella
(d) Guys and Dolls

7. What musical term from the story refers to a composition for one or two instruments, typically comprised of three or four movements in contrasting forms and keys?
(a) Sonata
(b) Scale
(c) Treble
(d) Bass

8. What is the nickname that Auntie Lindo’s daughter is known by in the area where Jing-Mei grows up?
(a) Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Swimming Star
(b) Chinatown’s Littlest “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Mah-jongg Champion
(c) Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess Champion
(d) Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Checkers Champion

9. Jing-Mei describes the girl playing piano on The Ed Sullivan Show as having the sauciness of whom?
(a) Little Orphan Annie
(b) Shirley Temple
(c) John Wayne
(d) Peter Pan

10. What does Jing-Mei’s mother tell her she looks like after she’s been given a bad perm at the beauty school?
(a) Negro Chinese
(b) Raggedy Anne
(c) A Cupie Doll
(d) An orphan

11. When Jing-Mei argues with her mother over piano practice after the talent show, she says, “As I said these things I got scared. I felt like” what were “crawling out of my chest”?
(a) Worms and toads and slimy things
(b) Demons and beasts and dragons
(c) Phantoms and ghosts and darkness
(d) The living dead and all my past

12. When Jing-Mei’s mother asks her for the capital of Finland, Jing-Mei responds with the capital of what country in the beginning of the story?
(a) Australia
(b) Great Britain
(c) Kenya
(d) France

13. How old is the little girl on The Ed Sullivan Show that Jing-Mei and her mother watch playing piano?
(a) 9
(b) 12
(c) 16
(d) 3

14. What similarity does Amy Tan share with Jing-Mei from “Two Kinds”?
(a) Her brother went on to become a lawyer
(b) Her mother left behind children in China
(c) Her father was an Italian dentist
(d) Her mother committed suicide when she was young

15. Jing-Mei says that as a child “sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient.” What did Jing-Mei’s inner prodigy tell her at this time?
(a) Tell her to stop making you do this. This is taking forever
(b) I’m dying of boredom. When are we going to do something fun?
(c) If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good
(d) If I’m not on stage in a year, I’ll never get there

Short Answer Questions

1. What musical term from the story refers to a group of notes taken in ascending or descending order within the compass of one octave?

2. What musical term in the story refers to the sounding of notes in a chord in rapid succession instead of simultaneously?”

3. In the 1993 film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, what actress played the role of Jing-Mei?

4. “Two Kinds” is a short story that was initially published in what periodical in February 1989?

5. Mr. Chong and Jing-Mei’s mother conspire to have Jing-Mei perform in a talent show held where in the story?

(see the answer keys)

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