Which of these short passages uses direct characterization? a. anne rang the hotel desk. "i am really sorry for calling so late in the night, but could you send someone over to pick up the laundry in room 202? " b. the moment sue walked into the hall, all eyes turned to her. her face was radiant and her eyes sparkled with mischief. she had let her hair loose and was wearing a beautiful satin dress. c. "why do you always have to argue with me? " james asked. his wife replied that she wouldn't have to if he thought things through once in a while. d. mary unwillingly started picking up the clothes lying on the floor. a short while later, her mother walked in to see a half-filled laundry basket on the floor. mary was lying on her bed listening to music.

Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “even though tom was mary thought he was ” and the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “even though tom was foolish, mary thought he was ridiculous.” well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what tom could have been and what mary might have thought of him. so i never did well on tests like that. how does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? tan discusses the types of questions on achievement tests to support the idea that the tests limit students’ ability to write well. tan explains a question on a language achievement test to support the idea that the tests should include more interesting content. tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability. tan considers how her mother might answer a question on a test to support the idea that nonstandard english limits a person’s ability to communicate.