WAEC Literature In English 2019
Questions & Answers

Options like romantic, mimetic, or moralistic could seem correct because they describe literary tones or stylistic approaches. Literature serves many purposes, but a text whose primary design is to impart ethical, instructive, or moral lessons to the audience is classified as didactic. Common mistake: Confusing the general moral tone of a text with the specific instructional classification of didactic literature.

A student might mistakenly choose a tale, an episode, or a story because they all refer to narratives or portions of a broader literary work. Length and scope differentiate these terms. A brief, amusing, or illustrative narrative focusing on a single, isolated incident is specifically defined as an anecdote. Common mistake: Confusing a full-length narrative story or tale with the brief, single-incident nature of an anecdote.

Options like bathos, euphemism, or metonymy might look plausible because they are all well-known rhetorical devices and figures of speech. Indirect or figurative language takes many forms. Praising a location by negating its opposite—calling a city 'no mean city' to emphasize that it is grand—is a classic example of litotes, which uses understatement for emphasis. Common mistake: Confusing the polite substitution of a euphemism with the ironical understatement characteristic of litotes.

Students could mistakenly select epilogue, plot, or setting because they are all standard structural components of narratives, plays, and poems. Structural placement matters when categorizing text parts. The preliminary section that introduces the main action, provides context, or hints at future developments is known as a prologue. Common mistake: Confusing the concluding remarks of an epilogue with the introductory framing of a prologue.

One might mistakenly choose complaint, hope, or joy because poetry often explores complex emotional states and themes of longing or celebration. Grief-stricken verse, however, occupies a specific category. An elegy functions as a lament dedicated to the dead, conveying deep sorrow and philosophical reflection on human mortality. Common mistake: Confusing general melancholic poetry of complaint with the specific death-mourning focus of an elegy.

Students might mistakenly pick alliteration, assonance, or paradox because they are common poetic devices dealing with sound patterns or conceptual clashes. Attributing human actions to non-human entities, however, is a distinct device. Describing trees as bowing their heads in shame gives human emotional and physical traits to inanimate objects, which is an application of personification. Common mistake: Confusing the repetition of sounds in alliteration with the attribution of human traits seen in personification.

Options like a round character, the hero, or the villain might seem plausible because they describe prominent character roles in fiction. Character depth varies across storytelling; a character whose traits remain unchanging and whose behavior is easily anticipated is classified as a flat character. Common mistake: Confusing the lack of psychological depth in a flat character with the moral alignment of a villain.

A student might mistakenly select allusion, foreshadowing, or interlude because they are all narrative techniques that manipulate time or reference outside events. Interrupting a chronological timeline to show prior occurrences is distinct. A narrative device that shifts the current action backward to enact past events is called a flashback. Common mistake: Confusing hints about future plot developments in foreshadowing with looking backward through a flashback.

Students could mistakenly choose choice of words, choice of characters, or restrictions in the use of words because they relate to a writer's creative decisions. Regulatory boundaries on grammar are meant to be bent purposefully. Poetic license grants authors the freedom to deviate from strict logical, grammatical, or metrical rules specifically to achieve a desired artistic effect. Common mistake: Confusing standard vocabulary choices with the authorized rule-breaking known as poetic license.

Options such as aside, soliloquy, or suspense might be selected because they are standard dramatic or narrative devices dealing with speech and pacing. Directly addressing a missing entity, however, is unique. When a speaker directly addresses an absent, dead, or imaginary person—such as calling out to John Milton in Wordsworth's verse—the device used is an apostrophe. Common mistake: Confusing a character speaking alone on stage in a soliloquy with the direct address of an apostrophe.

One might mistakenly choose elegy, ballad, or dirge because they are all traditional poetic forms associated with solemn themes or song-like structures. Commemorative writing found on physical markers falls into a separate category. An inscription placed on a tombstone, often carrying a witty or poignant tone like the verse for Martin Elginbrodde, is known as an epitaph. Common mistake: Confusing a general mourning song like a dirge with the gravestone inscription of an epitaph.

Students might mistakenly choose hyperbole, inversion, or oxymoron because they involve dramatic or contrasting linguistic elements. Presenting a seemingly self-contradictory statement that ultimately uncovers a profound truth about existence—such as living to die and dying to live—is the defining feature of a paradox. Common mistake: Confusing the side-by-side contradictory terms of an oxymoron with the deeper conceptual contradiction found in a paradox.

1) Distractor check: A student might choose A because of the word bud, but flowers do not have flesh or eyes. 2) Reasoning to the answer: The passage points to an infant's death through descriptions of a bud developing into flesh, blinking eyes, and a burial under light earth. 3) Common mistake: Confusing metaphorical botanical language in elegies with literal flora.

1) Distractor check: Option A is tempting because grief can feel bitter, but the text lacks rage. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Tender language paired with gentle instructions evokes loving remembrance and deep admiration for the child. 3) Common mistake: Misinterpreting sorrowful elegiac poems as angry or bitter.

1) Distractor check: Option C is plausible if one misreads the end-rhymes as alternating, but the pairings are direct. 2) Reasoning to the answer: The pairs bud and blood, asleep and peep, and stir and her create rhyming couplets that follow an aa bb cc pattern. 3) Common mistake: Failing to map every consecutive line-ending correctly.

1) Distractor check: Students might pick D, but melodrama relies on spoken exaggeration alongside music rather than silent physical acting. 2) Reasoning to the answer: A story and its underlying emotions are conveyed solely through physical movement and expression in a pantomime, or mime. 3) Common mistake: Confusing theatrical genres that use dialogue with those restricted to physical action.

1) Distractor check: Option D is a frequent guess, but roles alone do not encompass how personality is built. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Authors reveal traits, motivations, and overall development through the process known as characterization. 3) Common mistake: Equating the simple assigned part of a persona with their full psychological portrayal.

1) Distractor check: Option A is a distractor because complementing does not capture the explicit opposition meant by the term. 2) Reasoning to the answer: A foil highlights the qualities of the main character through sharp contrast in traits or behavior. 3) Common mistake: Assuming a supporting character who helps the hero is automatically a foil.

1) Distractor check: Option A is incorrect because the audience watches rather than being part of the printed text. 2) Reasoning to the answer: A play lists the cast of characters, indicating who plays whom, under the heading dramatis personae. 3) Common mistake: Confusing the live spectators with the literal roll of characters.

1) Distractor check: Option A is incorrect because imagery paints a mental picture rather than focusing strictly on sound. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Initial consonant sounds are repeated to create musicality and emphasis in verse through alliteration. 3) Common mistake: Confusing visual description devices with auditory poetic techniques.

1) Distractor check: Option B is a close distractor, but a paradox involves a broader contradictory situation rather than a tight two-word pairing. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Contradictory terms are juxtaposed in oxymoron, where supine, meaning lying down, contrasts with rolling or darting eyes. 3) Common mistake: Confusing oxymoron with broader paradoxical statements.

1) Distractor check: Option D is wrong because alliteration repeats consonant sounds across multiple words rather than imitating a single sound. 2) Reasoning to the answer: A word that imitates the sound it describes, like the growl of a hungry stomach, is an example of onomatopoeia. 3) Common mistake: Mixing up sound-imitating words with literary repetition devices.

1) Distractor check: Option C is plausible due to past pacts, but the primary sorrow stems from missed chances. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Mark feels deep regret over missing a chance to escape hardship due to loyalty, highlighting a loss of opportunity. 3) Common mistake: Overlooking the missed escape window as the central tragedy.

1) Distractor check: Option C is tricky since we see inside his head, but the narrative voice is external. 2) Reasoning to the answer: An omniscient view into Mark's situation and thoughts is offered through third-person narration. 3) Common mistake: Confusing deep psychological insight with first-person or interior monologue.

1) Distractor check: Option C is a common misreading, but the final remark distances the narrator from true pity. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Mark's passive resignation to his self-inflicted suffering is mocked by the ironic closing line. 3) Common mistake: Misreading ironic detachment as genuine sympathy.

1) Distractor check: Option A is incorrect because five-line units are not present. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Quatrains are formed because each stanza comprises four lines. 3) Common mistake: Miscounting the line count per stanza in structured poetry.

1) Distractor check: Option C is a distractor, but metonymy substitutes an attribute for the whole rather than addressing an entity directly. 2) Reasoning to the answer: An absent or metaphorical figure is invoked through repeated direct addresses to Walker, employing apostrophe. 3) Common mistake: Confusing direct address with indirect substitution devices.

1) Distractor check: Option A is wrong because the speaker's tone is sorrowful rather than sharp or ridiculing. 2) Reasoning to the answer: A sorrowful, contemplative melancholy is conveyed by the poem's imagery of fading light, woe, and aging. 3) Common mistake: Mistaking mournful reflection for derision.

1) Distractor check: Option B is a frequent default guess for verse, but the opening beats run heavy then light. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Stressed-unstressed syllables, as seen in WALK-er, STOP and LET, make up trochaic meter. 3) Common mistake: Assuming all traditional poetry defaults to iambic feet.

1) Distractor check: Option B is wrong because the end words do not pair up in alternating lines. 2) Reasoning to the answer: The lines rhyme you and birth as a and b, followed by dimmed and Earth as c and b, forming abcb. 3) Common mistake: Failing to trace the exact rhyme scheme of the first stanza.

1) Distractor check: Option C is plausible since Lodovico is present later, but this specific philosophical advice comes from leadership. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Stoic counsel is offered amid the court's deliberations by the Duke of Venice. 3) Common mistake: Attributing formal state advice to minor attendants.

1) Distractor check: Option C is tempting because Othello is the main subject, but he is not the direct recipient of this comfort. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Brabantio is consoled directly by the Duke over his daughter's marriage to Othello. 3) Common mistake: Confusing the person discussed with the direct addressee of the speech.

1) Distractor check: Option D is wrong because no physical brawl is occurring during this council scene. 3) Reasoning to the answer: Acceptance is advised regarding the irreversible loss of Desdemona. 3) Common mistake: Mixing up political grievances with domestic family loss.

1) Distractor check: Option A is incorrect because the speaker wants to calm tensions, not inflame them. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Brabantio's paternal grief is sought to be soothed through proverbial wisdom. 3) Common mistake: Misinterpreting wise counsel as instigation.

1) Distractor check: Option B is too literal, missing the metaphorical weight of smiling through a loss. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Fortune's power is diminished by patience in loss, which advocates against wasteful sorrow. 3) Common mistake: Taking metaphorical resilience as a literal instruction on theft.

1) Distractor check: Option A is wrong because Lodovico is a Venetian noble, not Iago's criminal accomplice. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Othello is conspired against by Iago alongside the gullible Roderigo. 3) Common mistake: Confusing minor characters with Iago's primary dupe.

1) Distractor check: Option D is a distractor, but Brabantio is not the focus of their joint financial and revenge plots. 2) Reasoning to the answer: They are united in a plot of revenge driven by shared animosity towards Othello. 3) Common mistake: Misidentifying the target of the conspirators' hatred.

1) Distractor check: Students might mistakenly select options like enriching Iago, since Iago is the one demanding money, but the text shows Iago exploiting Roderigo's financial resources rather than acting as the ultimate beneficiary of those specific funds. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Roderigo is instructed to gather capital because funds are needed to sustain Roderigo's false pursuit of Desdemona, fueling jealousy. 3) Common mistake: Confusing the person collecting or demanding the money with the actual end purpose of the funds within the plot.

1) Distractor check: A student might choose 'You have your way by making him angry' because the passage mentions Iago's hatred for the Moor, but the specific term relates directly to the marital status rather than general anger. 2) Reasoning to the answer: To 'cuckold' Othello means to make Desdemona unfaithful, benefiting Roderigo's desires. 3) Common mistake: Assuming archaic insults deal purely with emotional outbursts instead of specific domestic betrayals.

1) Distractor check: Option C (friendliness) might look plausible on the surface since they are plotting together, but the harsh tone contradicts genuine warmth. 2) Reasoning to the answer: Iago's condescending commands reveal impatience with Roderigo's naivety, establishing that his underlying attitude toward the addressee is one of intolerance. 3) Common mistake: Mistaking a tactical alliance in a conspiracy for personal affection or respect.