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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Jing-Mei says that Mr. Chong would have her curve her hand around what object and then keep that shape while playing chords?
(a) A rope
(b) A potato
(c) An apple
(d) A penny

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

3. For how long does Jing-Mei say she practiced piano with Mr. Chong before she overheard her mother and Auntie Lindo bragging about their children?
(a) 1 year
(b) 4 weeks
(c) 2 years
(d) 5 months

4. Of her childhood and the ambitions that Jing-Mei and her mother felt for her at this time, she says in the beginning of the story, “In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become” what?
(a) Perfect
(b) Free
(c) Beautiful
(d) Worthwhile

5. Where does Jing-Mei describe the piano as standing in her parents’ living room at the end of the story?
(a) In front of the door to the kitchen
(b) In front of the television
(c) In front of the staircase
(d) In front of the bay windows

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) Cinderella
(b) Peter Pan
(c) Guys and Dolls
(d) Little Orphan Annie

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

8. What word from the narrative means under a magical trance?
(a) Bewitched
(b) Elated
(c) Trilled
(d) Engulfed

9. What does Mr. Chong live in relation to Jing-Mei’s family when she’s growing up?
(a) Next door to Jing-Mei’s apartment on the second floor
(b) In the basement of the apartment building
(c) On the first floor of the apartment building
(d) On the top floor of the apartment building

10. Where does Jing-Mei find her exercise notes and secondhand music books at the end of the story?
(a) In a box in the attic
(b) In a notebook in the basement
(c) In the piano bench
(d) Under her mother’s bed

11. Jing-Mei says in the end of the story of her mother that she had “never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that” what “was inevitable”?
(a) Failure
(b) Despair
(c) Sadness
(d) Revenge

12. What does Jing-Mei say she put her mother’s jewelry in after her death at the end of the story?
(a) A post office box
(b) A bank vault
(c) Special silk pouches
(d) A box made of tin

13. Examine the following sentence from the narrative: “I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the right track.” What literary device is used in this example?
(a) Simile
(b) Jargon
(c) Onomatopoeia
(d) Metaphor

14. How does Jing-Mei describe Mr. Chong’s eyes as always looking when she began piano lessons with him?
(a) Daunting and scary
(b) Dark and mysterious
(c) Tired and sleepy
(d) Sprightly and bright

15. When Jing-Mei was helping her father get things in order after Jing-Mei’s mother died, she says she found “some old Chinese silk dresses, the kind with” what?
(a) Gathers in the sleeves
(b) Hand-sewn little pockets
(c) Little slits up the sides
(d) Golden silk thread

Short Answer Questions

1. What word from the story means coolly unconcerned, indifferent, or unexcited?

2. What word from the story means to play music with a vibratory or quavering effect?

3. Jing-Mei describes her mother having given her a Bible page to study and then report everything she could remember when she was a child. What does Jing-Mei tell her mother is all she can recall from the passage?

4. What are the names of the families from the Joy Luck Club that come up to Jing-Mei’s mother and father after Jing-Mei’s performance at the talent show?

5. 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”?

(see the answer keys)

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