California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) – Sample

Read the passage below; then answer the question that follows. Raven was always cheating the people, so they finally took his beak away from him. After a time he went up the river and made a raft, which he loaded with moss. Floating down to the camps on it, he told the people that his head was sore where his beak had been torn off, and that he was lying in the moss to cool it. Then he went back upriver and made several more rafts. When the people saw these floating down toward them, they thought that a large group of warriors was coming to help Raven regain his beak. They held a council and decided to send a young girl to take the beak to an old woman who lived alone at some distance from the camp. Raven, who had concealed himself among them and heard the council’s plans, waited until the girl came back. Then he went to the old woman and told her that the girl wanted her to return the beak to him. Suspecting nothing, the old woman gave him his beak. He put it on and flew away, cawing with pleasure at his success. This passage is most characteristic of which of the following literary forms associated with the oral tradition?

A job applicant is drafting an e-mail message to thank a prospective employer for a recent interview. In which of the following paragraphs is the style and content most appropriate for the applicant to use for this purpose?

Literary works by postmodern British writers such as Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson generally tend to share which of the following characteristics?

Literary works by American regionalist writers such as Kate Chopin, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Bret Harte typically focus on which of the following subjects?

Now begins the cry Of the guitar, Breaking the vaults Of dawn. Now begins the cry Of the guitar. Useless To still it. Impossible To still it. It weeps monotonously As weeps the water, As weeps the wind Over snow. Impossible To still it. It weeps For distant things, Warm southern sands Desiring white camellias. It mourns the arrow without a target, the evening without morning. And the first bird dead Upon a branch. O guitar! A wounded heart, Wounded by five swords. The style and subject matter of this poem are most characteristic of worksfrom which of the following movements in world literature?

Literary works by British writers of the neoclassical period such as Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson tend to share which of the following characteristics?

A draft research paper includes a passage that is a direct quotation from a primary source. When reviewing the draft, the researcher decides to interject a phrase in the quoted material to explain a term that may not be familiar to modern readers. Which of the following procedures should the researcher use to differentiate the inserted phrase from the quoted material?

Read the poem below, “song at the african middle class” by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie; then answer the question that follows. we charge through the skies of disillusion, seeking the widening of eyes, we gaze at chaos, speak to deadened hearts and ears stopped with commerce. We drift around our region of clowns, walking on air as dreams fly behind our eyes. we forage among broken bodies, fractured minds to find just ways retraced and new like beaten cloth. and if they come again will they come again? and if they come again will they dance this time? will the new egungun1 dance once more resplendent in rich-glassed cloth? will they be of their people’s needs, rise to those needs, settle whirling rifts salve, O, festering hearts? will they say when they come O my people, O my people, how to love you delicately? _________________________ 1egungun: a masqueraded dancer who dances in a religious ritual with the intention of making contact with the supernatural This poem primarily focuses on which of the following concerns of contemporary African writers?

Read the excerpt below from The Art of Love, a work of poetry by Ovid; then answer the question that follows. Love is a kind of war, and no assignment for cowards. Where those banners fly, heroes are always on guard. Soft, those barracks? They know long marches, terrible weather, Night and winter and storm, grief and excessive fatigue. Often the rain pelts down from the drenching cloudbursts of heaven, Often you lie on the ground, wrapped in a mantle of cold. Did not Apollo once, in bondage to King Admetus, Care for the heifers, and find sleep on a pallet of straw? What Apollo could stand is not disgraceful for mortals; Put off your pride, young man; enter the bondage of love. If you are given no path where the journey is level and easy, If in your way you find barricade, padlock on door, Use your inventive wits, come slipping down through a skylight, Clamber, hand over hand, where a high window swings wide. She will be happy to know that she was the cause of your danger; More than anything else, that will be proof of your love. Think of Leander, who could, no doubt, get along without Hero, Yet he would swim the straits, so his beloved might know. In this excerpt, Ovid suggests that a true romantic hero demonstrates which of the following qualities?

Read the passage below from Troilus and Cressida, a play by William Shakespeare; then answer the two questions that follow. In the following passage, the speaker is Ulysses, one of the Greek commanders in the war against the Trojans. When that the general is not like the hive To whom the foragers1 shall all repair, What honey is expected? . . . The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre2 Observe degree, priority, and place, . . . And therefore is the glorious planet Sol3 In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d Amidst the other; whose med’cinable4 eye Corrects the [ill aspects] of [planets evil], And posts5 like the commandment of a king, Sans6 check, to good and bad. But when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny! This passage most clearly reflects the Elizabethan worldview in its assertion that: