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The ELA Grade 10 MCAS exam will ask you to define words and derivations in poetry and in longer prose passages. Some exams have had passages over a whole page. But don't look at length as a bad thing. More text means more information to help you.

Every time you come to a new passage on the MCAS, follow the seven steps listed below.

Let's try it out. Read the text and questions below, and then apply our seven steps to find the correct answer choice.

1	It was during the great blizzard of 1882 that I first met the Winnipeg Wolf. I had left St. Paul in the middle of March to cross the prairies to Winnipeg, expecting to be there in twenty-four hours, but the Storm King had planned it otherwise and sent a heavy-laden eastern blast. The snow came down in a furious, steady torrent, hour after hour. Never before had I seen such a storm. All the world was lost in snow -- snow, snow, snow -- whirling, biting, stinging, drifting snow -- and the puffing, monstrous engine was compelled to stop at the command of those tiny feathery crystals of spotless purity.
2	Many strong hands with shovels came to the delicately curled snowdrifts that barred our way, and in an hour the engine could pass -- only to stick in another drift yet farther on. It was dreary work -- day after day, night after night, sticking in the drifts, digging ourselves out, and still the snow went whirling and playing about us.
3	"Twenty-two hours to Emerson," said the official; but nearly two weeks of digging passed before we did reach Emerson, and the poplar country where the thickets stop all drifting of the snow. Thenceforth the train went swiftly, the poplar woods grew more thickly. We passed for miles through solid forests, then perhaps through an open space. As we neared St. Boniface, the eastern outskirt of Winnipeg, we dashed across a little glade fifty yards wide, and there in the middle was a group that stirred me to the very soul.
4	In plain view was a great rabble of dogs, large and small, black, white, and yellow, wriggling and heaving this way and that way in a rude ring; to one side was a little yellow dog stretched and quiet in the snow; on the outer part of the ring was a huge black dog bounding about and barking but keeping ever behind the moving mob. An in the midst, the center and cause of it all, was a great, grim, wolf.
5	Wolf? He looked like a lion. There he stood, all alone -- resolute -- calm -- with bristling mane, and legs braced firmly, glancing this way and that, to be ready for an attack in any direction. There was a curl on his lips -- it looked like scorn, but I suppose it was really the fighting snarl of tooth display. Led by a wolfish-looking dog that should have been ashamed, the back dashed in, the the twentieth time no doubt. But the great gray form leaped here and there, and chop, chop, chop went those fearful jaws, no other sound from the lonely warrior; but a death yelp from more than one this foes, as those that were able again sprang back, and left hip statuesque as before, untamed, unmaimed, and contemptuous of them all.
6	How I wished the train to stick in a snowdrift now, as so often before, for all my heart went out to that gray-wolf; I longed to go and help him. But the snow-deep glade flashed by, the poplar trunks shut out the view, and we went on to our journey's end.
7	This was all I saw, and it seemed little; but before many days had passed I knew surely that I had been favored with a view, in broad daylight, or a rare and wonderful creature, none less than the Winnipeg Wolf.
8	His was a strange history -- a wolf that preferred the city to the country, that passed by sheep to kill the dogs, and that always hunted alone. In telling the story of le Garou, as he was called by some, although I speak of these things as locally familiar, it is very sure that to many citizens of the town they were quite unknown. The smug shopkeeper on the main street had scarcely heard of him until the day after the final scene at the slaughter-house, when his great carcass was carried to Hine's taxidermist shop and there mounted, to be exhibited later at the Chicago World's Fair, and to be destroyed, alas, in the fire that reduced the Mulvey Grammar School to ashes in 1896.

You have heard about the vocabulary on the ELA Grade 10 MCAS exam, and you know about using context, word parts, and derivations. So far, out examples (like your questions on limericks and The Winnepeg Wolf) covered literal meaning, or what the vocabulary really means. But there are instances when words don't mean what we think they do.

If someone says, "Go fly a kite," they aren't telling you they think you should fly a kite. They mean, "Go away!" This expression uses figurative meaning.

We use figures of speech all the time. They are really a breeze to understand. If we don't stop this, I'm going to eat my hat! Linguists call these expressions idioms, or phrases that are not meant to be taken verbatim or literally, but rather intended to be read figuratively.

Besides idioms, there are other examples of figurative speech. In particular, the MCAS exam focuses on two kinds of figurative speech. The first of these is the simile. In a simile, two unrelated things are compared to one another using the words like or as.

An author may compare two things without using the word like or as by using a metaphor. A metaphor is another type of figurative speech but the comparison does not use either like or as. Paul Simon's song "I Am A Rock," does not refer to a person who turned into stone. It is an example of a metaphor, in which the singer compares himself to a cold, unfeeling object. Similarly, Emily Dickinson used a metaphor in her poem, "The Iron Horse," in which she likens a train to a ferrous horse, a horse made of iron

On the MCAS exam, you need to be able to identify examples of figurative speech and to point out what is a simile and what is a metaphor. Because metaphors are often implied, they can be difficult to spot. We will give you a lot of practice finding metaphors and similes and you will soon be a pro.

The difference between a simile and a metaphor is important! The 1999 ELA exam asked six questions about identifying simile and metaphors in texts. That's a lot of points!