School Improvement in Maryland

Sample Assessments: Each sample assessment item gives an idea of how an assessment item on the High School Assessment (HSA) might be presented. The items appropriately measure the content of the Core Learning Goals and are formatted similarly to those appearing on the HSA.

Goal 4 Evaluating the Content, Organization, and Language Use of Texts

Expectation 4.2 The student will assess the effectiveness of choice of details, organizational pattern, word choice, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhetorical devices.

Indicator 4.2.1 The student will assess the effectiveness of diction that reveals an author's purpose.

Assessment Limits:

  • Evaluating author's choice of words, phrases, sentences, and word order
    • for a particular audience or effect
    • for a given purpose
    • to extend meaning in a context
    • to provide emphasis

Selected Response Item - Released in 2002

Read the story “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl.” Then answer the following:

Read this sentence from the passage.

Forcibly she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal.

The author uses the word forcibly to suggest the mother’s

  1. cleverness
  2. determination
  3. exhaustion
  4. strength
/share/clg/xml/sample_assessment/english/2002_421_eng03.xml

Correct Answer:
B
Resources for 4.2.1:
Public Release Items | SAMPLE ASSESSMENT ITEMS |