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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. “Two Kinds” is a short story from Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club. This collection of short stories revolves around the lives of Chinese immigrant women who form a club and play what game?
(a) Mah-jongg
(b) Chess
(c) Chinese checkers
(d) Bridge

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

4. How old does Jing-Mei say she was when her mother told her “Of course you can be prodigy too” in the beginning of the story?
(a) 5
(b) 9
(c) 7
(d) 3

5. Of her first lessons with Mr. Chong, Jing-Mei says, “I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord and then I just played some nonsense that sounded like” what?
(a) A cat running up and down on top of garbage cans
(b) A crash of bricks against a tin rooftop
(c) A chorus of birds singing in the treetops
(d) A solitary violin

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

7. Describing her mother’s reaction to her hurtful words, Jing-Mei says, “she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like” what?
(a) A small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless
(b) A paper sack, dull and soiled
(c) A dandelion in the autumn sunset
(d) A wisp of hair, broken and abandoned

8. 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) An orphan
(c) A Cupie Doll
(d) Raggedy Anne

9. Jing-Mei describes Mr. Chong when she began piano lessons with him as “very strange, always tapping his fingers to the silent music of” what?
(a) An era long passed
(b) His wife’s heartbeat
(c) An invisible orchestra
(d) An imaginary guitar

10. Jing-Mei says in the end of the story that she had never asked her mother about her hope, “And that even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most”. What is the question that so frightened Jing-Mei?
(a) Why she wanted to hurt me
(b) Why she had given up hope
(c) Why she had left her children behind
(d) Why she had believed in me

11. 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?
(a) Bitter contempt
(b) Holy indignity
(c) Judicious rage
(d) Holy agony

12. What word from the story means to play music with a vibratory or quavering effect?
(a) Sonata
(b) Trill
(c) Bass
(d) Treble

13. What answer does Jing-Mei give when her mother asks her early in the story, “What’s the capital of Finland?”
(a) Nairobi
(b) Lexington
(c) Rockland
(d) Omaha

14. What composition does the piano prodigy play by Edvard Grieg on The Ed Sullivan Show as Jing-Mei and her mother watch?
(a) Anita’s Dance
(b) Simon’s Waltz
(c) Perfectly Contended
(d) Pleading Child

15. What is the name of Jing-Mei’s mother in “Two Kinds”?
(a) Lindo Jong
(b) Suyuan Woo
(c) Wu-Tsing Hsu
(d) An-Mei Hsu

Short Answer Questions

1. What sensation does Jing-Mei describe as she begins hitting one wrong note after another during the talent show?

2. Jing-Mei describes the girl playing piano on The Ed Sullivan Show as taking a fancy sweep of a curtsy so that the fluffy skirt of her “dress cascaded slowly to the floor like the petals of” what?

3. What is the nickname that Auntie Lindo’s daughter is known by in the area where Jing-Mei grows up?

4. By what name does Jing-Mei refer to Mr. Chong’s mother as in the story?

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

(see the answer keys)

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