CP English 1 Name__________________________

Analyzing Informational Text- Date________________Period_______

Score:____________/100

Part 1. Strategies for Understanding Informational Text. Read each of the following and determine
the BEST answer for each. (+ 1 each)

1. Before ever reading informational text, it is important to preview it because

A. you may not want to read it if it’s not interesting.
B. it may not be on the topic you are looking for.
C. the vocabulary might be too difficult.
D. you need to get an idea about what the text is going to be about.

2. A first reading of informational text should include all of the following EXCEPT
A. Getting a general idea as to what the text is about.
B. Determining the author’s purpose for writing the text.
C. Making note of vocabulary words that are unfamiliar.
D. Determining the meanings of unknown words that hinder your understanding.

3. A second reading of informational text should include all of the following EXCEPT
A. Determining the main claim of each paragraph.
B. Finding evidence to support each main claim
C. Determining the main claim of the text as a whole
D. Determining the organizational pattern of the text.

4. Organizational patterns include all of the following EXCEPT

A. Alphabetical
B. Spatial
C. Chronological
D. Cause and Effect

5. Determining the main claim of the text means

A. stating the moral of the text.
B. restating the message the author intended.
C. expressing what you interpreted to be important.
D. briefly summarizing of the entire text.

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Directions. Read the following essay and answer the questions that follow.

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

MALCOLM X
Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of
black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in
prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of
Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black
separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the
white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an
orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the
teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his
autobiography (1965), coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm X
describes his self-education.

1 It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a
homemade education.

2 I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters
that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler
out there. I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I
not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way 1 would
say it, something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad—”

3 Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve
said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison
studies.
4 It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his
stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to
emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to
nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of
course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison
Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions,
unless I had received the motivation that I did.
5 I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I
was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even

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write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some
tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.
6 I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so
many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of
action, I began copying.
7 In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that
first page, down to the punctuation marks.
8 I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the
tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.
9 I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not
only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world.
Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the
words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that
“aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing
African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.
10 I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same
experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and
events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A
section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what
eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up
handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in
prison I would guess I wrote a million words.
11 I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a
book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal
can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in
every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have
gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my
visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking
about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.
12 The Norfolk Prison Colony’s library was in the school building. A variety of classes was taught
there by instructors who came from such places as Harvard and Boston universities. The weekly debates
between inmate teams were also held in the school building. You would be astonished to know how
worked up convict debaters and audiences would get over subjects like “Should Babies Be Fed Milk?”
13 Available on the prison library’s shelves were books on just about every general subject. Much
of the big private collection that Parkhurst had willed to the prison was still in crates and boxes in the
back of the library—thousands of old books. Some of them looked ancient: covers faded; old-time
parchment-looking binding. Parkhurst, I’ve mentioned, seemed to have been principally interested in

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history and religion. He had the money and the special interest to have a lot of books that you wouldn’t
have in general circulation. Any college library would have been lucky to get that collection.
14 As you can imagine, especially in a prison where there was heavy emphasis on rehabilitation,
an inmate was smiled upon if he demonstrated an unusually intense interest in books. There was a sizable
number of well-read inmates, especially the popular debaters, Some were said by many to be practically
walking encyclopedias.
15 They were almost celebrities. No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did
when this new world opened to me, of being able to read and understand.
16 I read more in my room than in the library itself. An inmate who was known to read a lot could
check out more than the permitted maximum number of books. I preferred reading in the total isolation of
my own room.
17 When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten P.M. I would be
outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing.
18 Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into my room. The glow
was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when “lights out” came, I would sit on the floor
where I could continue reading in that glow.
19 At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the
approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back
out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—until
the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep
a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that.
20 The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when white men
had written history books, the black man simply had been left out...I never will forget how shocked I was
when I began reading about slavery’s total horror. It made such an impact upon me that it later became
one of my favorite subjects when I became a minister of Mr. Muhammad’s. The world’s most monstrous
crime, the sin and the blood on the white man’s hands, are almost impossible to believe...I read
descriptions of atrocities, saw those illustrations of black slave women tied up and flogged with whips; of
black mothers watching their babies being dragged off, never to be seen by their mothers again; of dogs
after slaves, and of the fugitive slave catchers, evil white men with whips and clubs and chains and guns...
21 Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown,
red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings of exploitation. I saw how since the sixteenth
century, the so-called “Christian trader” white man began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African
empires, and plunder, and power. I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white
peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit of Christ’s teachings—meek, humble, and
Christlike…
22 I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in
prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke
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inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way
a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every
additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was
afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking
questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free
fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

Part 2. Vocabulary Acquisition. Using your knowledge of word parts and context clues, determine the
meanings of each of the following words from the text. (+ 2 each)

6. “At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching
footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of
bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—
until the guard approached again.”
The BEST definition of the word feigned is
A. attempted
B. struggled with
C. fought
D. faked

7. “ Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown,
red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings of exploitation. I saw how since the
sixteenth century, the so-called “Christian trader” white man began to ply the seas in his lust for
Asian and African empires, and plunder, and power.”

The BEST definition of the word exploitation is

A. religion
B. abuse
C. treatment
D. greed

8. “In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there. I had commanded attention when I
said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t
even functional.”
The best definition of the word articulate is
A. persuasive
B clear
C. humourous
D. intimidating

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9. It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his
stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had
tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain
anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese.

The BEST definition of the word emulate is

A. listen to
B. mock
C. learn from
D. imitate

10. All of the following are context clues for the answer in #9 EXCEPT
A. “ It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison”
B. “Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge.”
C. “Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in,”
D. “But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one
to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese.”

Part 3. Identifying Main Claim & Evidence. Complete the chart below identifying the main claim
and evidence in each specified paragraph. (+25)

11.

Paragraph Number Main Claim (+2) Support for Claim (+3)

Paragraph 4

Paragraph 11

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Paragraph 13

Paragraph 20

Paragraph 22

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Part 4. Organization. Answer each of the following questions concerning the organizational structure
of the essay. (+2)

12. The primary organizational pattern the author uses throughout the text is
A. Comparison/contrast
B. Spatial
C. Most important to least important
D. Chronological

13. The author breaks from the primary organizational structure in paragraph 3 in order to
A. introduce to the reader the main reason why he chose to educate himself under not so
ideal circumstances.
B. shift to the present tense in order to point out to the reader that people’s present day
impression of him as being educated and well-spoken are due to what he learned in
prison.
C. show the reader an effect that his early environment had on him that led him to desire
to be educated.
D. present a flashback that provides evidence for why he chose to become educated rather
than to remain ignorant.

14. The purpose of paragraphs 1 and 2 are

A. to get the reader’s attention by using startling statistics.
B. to provide an example of how the author learned to read and write.
C. to set up the two sides of the comparison and contrast that are to follow in the essay.
D. to tell the reader the purpose of the entire essay through the use of a specific story.

15. The author included paragraph 11 where he did in the essay

A. to illustrate how his learning had progressed from copying simple words to an obsession
with entire books.
B. to show the passage of time since paragraph 10.
C. to present a totally new way of learning that the author encountered.
D. to provide an example of how copying words from the dictionary had helped him move
closer toward his goal of being educated.

Part 5. Author’s Tone. Choose the best answer for each of the following. (+2)

16. The author’s attitude toward prison is

A. accusatory
B. lighthearted
C. hostile
D. appreciative
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17. The line that best supports my answer to #16 is
A. “When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten P.M. I would
be outraged with the “lights out.”
B. “It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy
of his stock of knowledge.”
C. “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. “
D. “Some were said by many to be practically walking encyclopedias. “

18. The author’s tone toward the white race is

A. perplexed
B. inquisitive
C. confused
D. hostile

19. The line that best supports my answer in #18 is

A. “The world’s most monstrous crime, the sin and the blood on the white man’s hands, are
almost impossible to believe…”
B. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit
more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black
race in America.
C. “The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when
white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out…”
D. “Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black,
brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings of exploitation.”

20. The author’s attitude toward reading is

A. entertaining
B. essential
C. helpful
D. painstaking

21. The line that best supports my answer to #20 is

A. “As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be
mentally alive.”
B. “There was a sizable number of well-read inmates, especially the popular debaters,”
C. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me.”
D. “I preferred reading in the total isolation of my own room.”

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Part 6. Putting It ALL Together. Comprehending the Text. Answer each of the following questions.
(+2)

22. According to the text, what inspired Malcolm X to educate himself?

A. He wanted his letters to be more eloquent.
B. He wanted to become a great leader.
C. He wanted to get a job in education.
D. He wanted his family to be proud of him.

23. According to the text, Malcolm X began to use a dictionary to

A. Acquire new vocabulary and to write more clearly.
B. impress his relatives and keep himself busy.
C. improve his conversation with his friends.
D. assist him in understanding legal documents.

24. The author’s purpose in discussing the “aardvark” in paragraph 9 is to support the idea that
A. The “A” page of the dictionary is the most important page.
B. he still remembers what he learned from studying the dictionary.
C. he can relate to the aardvark.
D. there are things in the dictionary that relate to all parts of the world.

25. In paragraph 11, the line, “You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge”means
A. Reading was extremely difficult for Malcolm X to grasp.
B. Reading was laborsome but rewarding for Malcolm X.
C. Malcolm X loved reading with an intense passion.
D. The information in books was difficult for Malcolm X to digest.

26. In paragraph 11, the best meaning of the lines, “Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my
correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading of books, months
passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so
truly free in my life,” is
A. All of the people I encountered in prison made me want to become a better person.
B. Prison gave me the opportunity to read material and to meet people I never would have
otherwise.
C. Prison life kept me away from the bad influences in my life and saved me from a life of
crime.
D. Because I learned to read in prison, instead of being a place of confinement, it saved my
life.

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27. Complete the following table comparing and contrasting the Malcolm X piece to others we have read
in class. Place an X in the box(es) that correspond to each idea. (+10)

Idea Malcolm X “Superman and “Learning to All

Me” Read and Write”

Reading is
essential for
underprivileged
people

White people have

used knowledge as
a weapon.

A person’s family
is influential in
learning to read.

Knowledge is
equal to freedom.

Surrounding
yourself with
smart people can
help you gain
knowledge.

To get the most

out of reading and
writing, a person
must be self-
motivated

It is everyone’s
responsibility to
spread the
message that
books are
empowering and
essential for
survival.

Reading opens up
new knowledge
that is sometimes
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 painful to
confront.

Many people
choose to live in
ignorance.

The lust for power

makes people
cruel.

Part 7. /Main Claim/Central Idea. Answer the following question in a well-developed essay. (+20)

Prompt: What is the main claim or central idea the authors of “Learning to Read and Write,”
“Superman and Me,” and “Malcolm X”are trying to get across to the reader in the essays? Be sure to
use textual evidence from the essays themselves in your response.

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Essay Rubric

4 3 2 1

Ideas/Content Included a unique Included a lesson Included a lesson The central idea
lesson about life about life that about life that attempted to
that was linked was linked was linked connect with the
directly to the directly to the directly to either title or to the text
title as well as to title as well as to the title or to the but did so in an
x2= the text. The the text. The text. The lesson underdeveloped
____________ lesson applies to lesson applies to applies to way or with
everyone reading everyone everyone misunderstandings
and makes the reading. reading. .
reader stop and
think.

Use of Textual Included a Included a lot of Included some Included very little
Evidence multitude of meaningful evidence from if any evidence
meaningful evidence from the text that from the text to
evidence from the text that sometimes support the central
the text that helped the reader helped the reader message, or there
helped the reader understand the understand the may have been
understand the central message central message some
central message clearly. clearly. misunderstandings
clearly. while reading.

Organization The paragraph The paragraph The paragraph The paragraph

was clearly contained the contained the contained very

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 organized majority of the some of the little if any
throughout with elements of the elements of the organization. The
a “hook,” a clear “4” paragraph; “4” paragraph; writer’s message
thesis that is however, some however, most seemed to jump
directly related to were missing. were missing. around from point
the prompt, The reader, The reader had a to point without
transitions however, could difficult time much if any
between ideas, clearly follow a following a logical connection. The
and a closing logical pattern in pattern in the lack of
statement that the writer’s writer’s message. organization made
wraps up the message. the writer’s
entire paragraph. message difficult
to understand.

MUGS The paragraph is The paragraph There are more Errors in

free of any errors contains 2-3 than three errors mechanics, usage,
in mechanics, errors in in mechanics, grammar and
usage, grammar, mechanics, usage, usage, grammar spelling hindered
and spelling. grammar and and spelling, but the reader from
spelling. the reader could understanding the
still understand author’s message.
the author’s main
message.

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