Grade 9 · English Language Arts · Unit 5 of 11
Allusion, analogy, juxtaposition, flashback
Spotting allusion (a reference to something well known), analogy, juxtaposition (contrasts side by side) and flashback in short original excerpts, and explaining why a writer chooses them.
New Brunswick Curriculum skill descriptor: Reading: Text Analysis/Criticality · sound, image and figurative devices
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
Why might a writer use a flashback?
To give background that explains a character's present choices
Hint: Showing the past can explain why a character acts as they do now.
Question 2
Why might a writer use juxtaposition?
To highlight a contrast so the reader notices a difference
Hint: Putting opposites together makes each stand out more.
Question 3
A chapter opens on a stormy night, then jumps to “three years earlier,” when the characters were laughing at a picnic. What is this device?
flashback
Hint: The jump back in time is a flashback.
Question 4
“Like a compass without a needle, the room had lost its direction” is an example of…
The old radio crackled once and went silent. Kenji turned the dial, and for a moment he was back in his grandfather's workshop, sawdust on his sleeves, listening to a hockey game on a rainy night.
Now the workshop was cold and bare. On the empty bench, a single shiny screw sat beside a pile of dust. Like a compass without a needle, the room had lost its direction.
analogy
Hint: It compares the room to a familiar object that has lost its purpose.
Question 5
Why might an author use an analogy in an explanation?
To explain an unfamiliar idea through a familiar one
Hint: A familiar comparison helps the reader understand something new.
Question 6
Why does the writer include the flashback?
Noor held the brass key in the palm of her hand and felt the cold go up her arm.
She was suddenly eight again, standing on her grandmother's porch in the rain. Back then, the key had belonged to a gate that never seemed to open. Her grandmother had said, “Some things are only locked until you are ready.”
Now Noor stood in front of the same gate, older and quieter. The garden beyond it was overgrown. Beside the broken fountain, a single new tulip stood bright red.
It shows why the key and the gate matter to Noor
Hint: The memory gives the key emotional meaning.