English 11 ACP Final

Study Guide: 11th Grade ACP ELA Final Exam

The 11th Grade ACP ELA Final is a two-hour cumulative exam which will test your knowledge of our core texts as well as the key writing and critical thinking skills you have developed throughout the school year. 

Texts covered in the exam: All Souls by Michael Patrick MacDonald, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and True Grit by Charles Portis 

The Final Exam will be comprised of four sections: 

I. Character Matching 

II. Quotation Identification 

III. Passage Analysis 

IV. Thematic Essay 

In this study guide, you will find the specific format for each section as well as what to know to ensure success for each section of the exam. 

Section I: Character Matching

You will need to know the following 24 characters (4 from each of our core texts) and be able to identify them based on a sentence describing their key moments, roles or interactions within their given text. 12 of these characters will be randomly selected for the character matching portion of the exam. 

Section II: Quotation Identification Short Answer 

This section will consist of 8 questions, randomly selected from a pool of the following 12 quotations. For each quotation, you will need to (1) identify who said the quotation and/or who it is about, (2) write a one sentence inference about a character’s thoughts, motivations or influences based on the quotation, and (3) write one sentence explaining why the quotation is thematically significant. 

Example Response: 

Quotes to Study: 

1) “I never wanted to be a criminal it just came so easy and nothing else ever came my way” (All Souls, page 196) 

2) “‘These candles burn for my brothers.’” I stopped and took a deep breath. Then I spoke up” (All Souls, page 263) 

3) “All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or perhaps, to tend to it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder ot light and goodness that would never—could never—set anything ablaze” (Little Fires Everywhere, page 161) 

4) “It terrifies you. That you missed out on something. That you gave up something that you didn’t know you wanted…What was it? Was it a boy? Was it a vocation? Or was it a whole life?” (Little Fires Everywhere, page 303). 

5) “Where can I find this Rooster?” (True Grit, page 30) 

6) “Report has it that he rode by the light of the moon with Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. I would not trust him too much. I have heard that he was a particeps criminis in some road agent work before he came here and attached himself to the courthouse” (True Grit, page 94)

7) “Yes. Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed, but it wasn’t the BEST people who survived nor did the best ones die. It was RANDOM!” (Maus II, page 45) 

8) “No, darling! To die, it’s easy…but you have to struggle for life! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you!” (Maus I, page 122) 

9) “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be

     What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; 

     It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness

     To catch the nearest way” (Macbeth, 1.5.15-18). 

10) “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

        Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather 

        The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 

        Making the green one red.” (Macbeth, 2.2.78-81) 

11) “He glittered in the light of their adoration and grew fierce with pride” (Song of Solomon, page 236). 

12) “Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. ‘There must be another one like you,’ he whispered to her. ‘There’s got to be at least one more woman like you’” (Song of Solomon, page 336). 

Section III: Passage Explication

On the exam, for 2 of the following passages, you will write a paragraph of 8-10 sentences in which you analyze the author’s choices and techniques in order to explain how they develop character and theme. The passages will be randomly selected from the passages below. Each passage contains space for you to make annotations in the margin and take bullet point notes. I will walk you through an example mark-up before you perform your own. On the exam, you will be required to properly incorporate and cite at least two quotations in your paragraph. 

Example: 

Long after the BHA inspectors were gone, when it got dark, the roaches would come out in droves.  They didn't like the light, so if you ever got up in the middle of the night, you'd see them scatter all over the place as soon as you flicked the switch.  They'd be covering the kitchen floor, carrying food and hovering around the slightest drop of liquid.  They loved tonic, especially Sprite.  I'd figured this out one morning after I'd left half a glass of Sprite out overnight and had woken up to find about twenty dead cockroaches floating around in the cup.  That's when I realized that they had wings, too, just like the huge water bug roaches that came out in the summer.  But they never used them until they started to drown in the Sprite. They all floated in the cup with their useless wings spread out.  I stared at them for a good long time, wondering if they didn't know how to use their wings, or if they just didn't know they had them until it was too late to save themselves.

We were keeping the house as clean as we could, and the roaches were still taking over. (All Souls, page 72) 

1. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. (Macbeth, 5.5.19-28)

2. People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band. (True Grit, page 1)

3. It felt good, the hate I had for the authorities. My whole family hated them, especially Frankie, Kathy, and Kevin, who got the most involved in the riots. I would’ve loved to throw Molotov cocktails myself, along with some of the adults, but I was only a kid and the cops would probably catch me and beat me at the beach. So I just fantasized about killing them all. They were the enemy, the giant oppressor, like Goliath. And the people of South Boston were like David. (All Souls, page 86)

4. It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn’t deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He’d told Guitar that he didn’t “deserve” his family’s dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn’t even “deserve” to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he “deserve” Hagar’s vengeance. (Song of Solomon, page 276)

5. But Shaker Heights had been founded, if not on Shaker principles, with the same idea of creating a utopia. Order – regulation, the father of order – had been the Shakers’ key to harmony. They had regulated everything: the proper time for rising in the morning, the proper color of window curtains, the proper length of a man’s hair, the proper way to fold one’s hands in prayer (right thumb over left). If they planned every detail, the Shakers had believed, they could create a patch of heaven on earth, a little refuge from the world. (Little Fires Everywhere, page 23)

6.