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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What musical term in the story refers to the sounding of notes in a chord in rapid succession instead of simultaneously?”
(a) Sonata
(b) Bass
(c) Arpeggio
(d) Trill

2. Jing-Mei describes Mr. Chong’s mother as having a particular smell about her of what?
(a) Fresh flowers and stale perfume
(b) A baby that had done something in its pants
(c) Freshly mowed grass and spring
(d) Baked apple pies and the smell of autumn

3. How many mothers comprise the Joy Luck Club in the story?
(a) 5
(b) 7
(c) 4
(d) 6

4. What musical term from the story refers to a group of notes taken in ascending or descending order within the compass of one octave?
(a) Bass
(b) Sonata
(c) Treble
(d) Scale

5. Where does Jing-Mei live while growing up?
(a) San Francisco, California
(b) Sacramento, California
(c) Oakland, California
(d) Los Angeles, California

6. What is the name of the Schumann piece that Jing-Mei is to play at the talent show?
(a) Anita's Dance
(b) Pleading Child
(c) Perfectly Contended
(d) Peter’s Waltz

7. 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) If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good
(b) Tell her to stop making you do this. This is taking forever
(c) I’m dying of boredom. When are we going to do something fun?
(d) If I’m not on stage in a year, I’ll never get there

8. What is Jing-Mei’s last name in the story?
(a) Chong
(b) Woo
(c) Jong
(d) Hsu

9. How does Jing-Mei describe the secondhand piano that her parents bought for her?
(a) It was so ratty we kept it in the basement
(b) It was used like a kitchen table for years
(c) It was the showpiece of our living room
(d) It was the eyesore of our household

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

11. What does Jing-Mei kick under her feet as her mother drags her to the piano for practice after the talent show?
(a) Throw rugs
(b) The bedspread
(c) The piano bench
(d) The cat

12. When Jing-Mei and her mother get into an argument about Jing-Mei beginning piano lessons, Jing-Mei’s mother exclaims, “If she had as much talent as she has temper, she would be” what?
(a) Famous now
(b) Rich now
(c) Easier to deal with
(d) A better daughter

13. What word does Jing-Mei use in describing Mr. Chong’s silent instrumental compositions with a vague and dreamy character?
(a) Reverie
(b) Staccato
(c) Arpeggio
(d) Trill

14. Who does Jing-Mei tell her mother she wishes she were like as they argue about piano practice after the talent show?
(a) Her “dead” daughters
(b) Her first husband
(c) Her great-grandmother
(d) Her distant cousins

15. Jing-Mei says that during her childhood, the tests her mother gave her “got harder—multiplying numbers in my head, finding” what card in a deck of cards?
(a) The ace of diamonds
(b) The joker card
(c) The queen of hearts
(d) The five of spades

Short Answer Questions

1. How many days after the talent show is it when Jing-Mei is surprised that her mother insists she practice piano?

2. What literary term refers to a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, idea, setting, or object?

3. What does Jing-Mei say she never really did while she practiced for her talent show?

4. When was Edvard Grieg born?

5. Of her mother’s ambitions and her own as a child, Jing-Mei says, “I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with” what?

(see the answer keys)

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