10 exam-style questions with answers and explanations, straight from our 1,030-question bank. Tap an answer to check yourself. When you're ready, take the scored version in the free practice test.
The MTEL-English exam has 102 questions and runs 4 hours.
These 10 free MTEL-English questions are organized by exam domain, so you can see how each part of the MTEL English (Field 61, formerly Field 07) blueprint is tested. Reveal the answer and explanation under each question.
A poem consists entirely of one speaker's words, addressed to a silent listener at a specific dramatic moment. As he speaks, the speaker unintentionally reveals his own arrogance and cruelty. This poetic form, which flourished in the Victorian period, is called a:
Correct answer: D - Dramatic monologue
Read these lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73: 'That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.' The metaphor comparing the bare boughs to 'bare ruin'd choirs' MOST directly deepens the speaker's meditation on aging by:
Correct answer: B - Evoking a space once filled with song and now silent
Read this line from Byron's 'The Destruction of Sennacherib': 'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.' The meter of this line is BEST described as:
Correct answer: D - Anapestic tetrameter
A late nineteenth-century American novel follows a young man from a rural background who is destroyed by poverty, chance, and biological impulses he neither understands nor controls. The narrator presents his fate with clinical detachment and offers no moral consolation. This novel is MOST characteristic of:
Correct answer: A - Naturalism
Homer repeatedly interrupts the battle scenes of the Iliad with extended comparisons that carry the reader into a wholly separate and peaceful world - a shepherd watching his flock, a woman weighing wool to feed her children. This device is known as the epic, or Homeric, simile. Its MOST significant effect is to:
Correct answer: B - Measure the violence against ordinary life
Read this excerpt from a school committee memo: '(1) The district should extend the school day by forty-five minutes. (2) Longer school days are common in high-performing systems abroad. (3) In our pilot at Franklin Middle School, students who received an additional forty-five minutes of daily instruction gained an average of 0.4 grade levels in reading over one year, compared with 0.1 grade levels for a matched control group. (4) Everyone knows that more time in class means more learning.' Which sentence supports the memo's central claim with evidence rather than asserting it?
Correct answer: C - Sentence 3
In Modern English, the animals cow, pig, and sheep have names of Germanic origin, while the meats beef, pork, and mutton have names of French origin. This pattern is MOST directly explained by:
Correct answer: C - The Norman Conquest and the resulting French-speaking nobility
A tenth-grade student who arrived from Brazil two years ago converses easily with classmates, uses humor in English, and follows spoken classroom directions without difficulty. She struggles, however, to comprehend the course textbook and to write analytical paragraphs. Applying Cummins's framework, her teacher should conclude that the student:
Correct answer: A - Still requires substantial support with academic language
A student submits a first draft of an argumentative essay. The draft has an arguable thesis and ample evidence, but in three of its five body paragraphs the evidence is never connected back to the thesis. The draft also contains numerous comma splices. Which teacher response is MOST appropriate at this stage of the writing process?
Correct answer: B - Ask how each piece of evidence supports the thesis
A student's draft contains this sentence: 'After reviewing the committee's report, the recommendations were revised.' Which revision BEST corrects the sentence's modification error?
Correct answer: C - After reviewing the committee's report, the board revised the recommendations.
The MTEL-English exam also covers these domains. Drill them in the full free practice test:
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