View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. “Two Kinds” is a short story that was initially published in what periodical in February 1989?
(a) Reader’s Digest
(b) The San Franciscan
(c) The New Yorker
(d) The Atlantic

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

3. What does Jing-Mei do with the Chinese silk dresses she finds when sorting through her mother’s things at the end of the story?
(a) She gives them to her sister
(b) She gives them to her father
(c) She sells them
(d) She takes them home with her

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

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 bay windows
(b) In front of the staircase
(c) In front of the door to the kitchen
(d) In front of the television

6. During what years did The Ed Sullivan Show air on television?
(a) 1929-1949
(b) 1941-1960
(c) 1960-1970
(d) 1948-1971

7. Jing-Mei describes her childhood ambitions in the beginning of the story by comparing herself to “Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with” what type of music “filling the air”?
(a) Sparkly cartoon music
(b) Whispering music
(c) Old-timey piano music
(d) Black-and-white movie music

8. What color dress does Jing-Mei describe the girl wearing that she watches playing piano on The Ed Sullivan Show with her mother?
(a) Yellow
(b) White
(c) Green
(d) Blue

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

10. Who is the only person applauding when Jing-Mei looks up from her curtsy at the talent show?
(a) Auntie Lindo
(b) Jing-Mei’s mother
(c) Mr. Chong
(d) Jing-Mei’s father

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

12. Jing-Mei describes the fingers of Mr. Chong’s mother as feeling like what?
(a) A jellyfish
(b) A fat baby’s
(c) A dead person’s
(d) The inside of an oyster

13. What does Jing-Mei say she never really did while she practiced for her talent show?
(a) Think about anything other than the music
(b) Connect with the music that flowed through her
(c) Worry about how she looked while playing
(d) Listened to what she was playing

14. 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?
(a) Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance
(b) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith
(c) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose
(d) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

15. Of Auntie Lindo’s daughter, Jing-Mei says “We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most part, we” what?
(a) Loved each other
(b) Envied each other
(c) Hated each other
(d) Pestered each other

Short Answer Questions

1. At the talent show where Jing-Mei makes her piano debut, she describes an eleven-year-old boy who won first prize for what performance?

2. Jing-Mei describes sitting down nightly with her mother to examine stories of child prodigies when she was a child. The first of these stories is about a boy who knows all the state capitals and most of the European countries at what age?

3. What does Jing-Mei say she put the sweaters her mother knitted in after she died in the end of the story?

4. What word does Jing-Mei use in describing Mr. Chong’s silent instrumental compositions with a vague and dreamy character?

5. What is the name of Jing-Mei’s mother in “Two Kinds”?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 753 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample