What would you do… if you had to sit this exam? Vol. 2

I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since my last ‘What would you do… if you had to sit this exam?’ post. Well, I’m back with an even trickier one than last time.

Here’s a challenge for those of you with really nothing better to do for the next couple of hours.

GRAMMAR (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.

2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.

4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie,’ ‘play,’ and ‘run’.

5. Define case; illustrate each case.

6. What is punctuation? Give rules for the principal marks of punctuation.

7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

ORTHOGRAPHY* (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?

4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u’.

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

* Do you even know what this is?

What would you have achieved in the past if you’d passed this exam? Congratulations, you just made it out of eighth grade! This is taken from the eighth-grade final exam from the year 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA. These questions were taken from the original examination on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas.

Source: Can You Pass This Final 8th-Grade Exam from 1895? By Michael Michalko