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ALTA Competency Exam (CALT) study materials
ALTA Competency Exam (CALT) study resources

ALTA Competency Exam (CALT) practice questions

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Question 1Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Which term refers to the variety of language a text uses, shaped by its audience, its purpose, and its degree of formality?

  1. Idiolect
  2. Genre
  3. Register Correct answer.
  4. Dialect

Explanation

Register is the conventional label for the audience- and situation-sensitive variety of language a text employs, ranging along a formality continuum from frozen to intimate. The other terms name different phenomena: regional or social variety, an individual's personal speech habits, and the category a text belongs to.

Question 2Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Two readers describe the same editorial as 'bitter' and as 'resigned'. Which feature of the text are they characterising?

  1. Its cohesion
  2. Its syntax
  3. Its tone Correct answer.
  4. Its genre

Explanation

Tone is the attitude a text conveys toward its subject and its reader, and evaluative adjectives such as 'bitter' or 'resigned' are precisely how readers report that attitude. Genre, cohesion, and syntax are structural properties and cannot themselves be bitter or resigned.

Question 3Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The network of explicit links, such as pronouns, conjunctions, and repeated vocabulary, that ties the sentences of a text together is called:

  1. Register
  2. Coherence
  3. Cohesion Correct answer.
  4. Deixis

Explanation

Cohesion names the surface-level ties that link sentences: reference, conjunction, ellipsis, and lexical repetition. Coherence, by contrast, is the underlying logical connectedness that a reader infers rather than a set of visible devices.

Question 4Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'Thrifty' and 'stingy' share roughly the same core meaning. What chiefly separates them?

  1. Their grammatical function
  2. Their connotation Correct answer.
  3. Their denotation
  4. Their register level only

Explanation

Both adjectives denote careful handling of money, but they carry opposite evaluative colouring, approving in one case and disapproving in the other; that evaluative shading is connotation as distinct from denotation. The pair is a standard illustration because the referential core is held constant.

Question 5Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Which text type is a short first-person account of a single incident, usually told in order to illustrate a point?

  1. A parable
  2. A chronicle
  3. An editorial
  4. An anecdote Correct answer.

Explanation

An anecdote is a brief narrative of one episode, typically first-person and offered illustratively. A parable conveys a moral through symbolic narrative, an editorial argues a position, and a chronicle records events in sequence over time.

Question 6Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

An idiom is best described as:

  1. A technical term restricted to a single profession
  2. A word borrowed unchanged from another language
  3. A comparison introduced by 'like' or 'as'
  4. A fixed expression with a non-compositional meaning Correct answer.

Explanation

An idiom is a fixed expression whose overall meaning cannot be computed from the ordinary senses of its component words, which is why idioms resist literal reading. The other definitions describe loanwords, similes, and jargon respectively.

Question 7Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Words such as 'here', 'now', and 'you', whose meaning depends on the situation in which they are uttered, illustrate:

  1. Deixis Correct answer.
  2. Ellipsis
  3. Anaphora
  4. Cataphora

Explanation

Deixis is reference anchored to the context of utterance - place, time, and participant - which is exactly how 'here', 'now', and 'you' function. Anaphora and cataphora are backward and forward reference within a text, and ellipsis is omission of recoverable material.

Question 8Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A speaker caught in a downpour says, 'Wonderful weather we're having.' The utterance is an example of:

  1. Verbal irony Correct answer.
  2. Understatement
  3. Hyperbole
  4. Euphemism

Explanation

The speaker means the opposite of what the words literally say, and the clash with the evident situation is what lets the hearer recover the intended meaning; that reversal is the hallmark of verbal irony. The other devices do not require the stated meaning to be inverted.

Question 9Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A narrator writes in formal standard prose while a character's dialogue uses contractions, slang, and dropped consonants. The contrast is best analysed as:

  1. A break in the text's cohesion
  2. A change of genre mid-text
  3. A shift to cataphoric reference
  4. A register shift marking social identity Correct answer.

Explanation

Register is the formality-and-variety level a speaker or writer adopts, and moving between formal narration and colloquial dialogue is a standard way of signalling a character's social or regional position. Reference type, cohesion, and genre are unaffected by such a switch.

Question 10Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The committee rejected the proposal because it was too costly', the pronoun most naturally refers to the proposal. Which factor chiefly guides that reading?

  1. The plausibility created by the predicate 'costly' Correct answer.
  2. The past tense of the main verb
  3. The position of the pronoun in the clause
  4. The length of the two clauses

Explanation

Pronoun resolution draws on semantic and real-world plausibility as well as on syntax; since proposals rather than committees are ordinarily described as costly, the predicate selects the proposal as antecedent. Word order alone would favour the subject, and tense and clause length play no role in deciding reference.

Question 11Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A source word has two common senses, and the translator settles which one is meant by studying the surrounding clause. This act of reading is called:

  1. Back-translation
  2. Disambiguation Correct answer.
  3. Transposition
  4. Compensation

Explanation

Disambiguation is the process of resolving an ambiguity, whether lexical or structural, by drawing on context. Back-translation, transposition, and compensation are translation procedures rather than acts of source-text interpretation.

Question 12Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'The author has stopped using footnotes' presupposes that:

  1. footnotes suit this genre poorly
  2. the author will resume footnotes later
  3. a new edition is being prepared
  4. the author used footnotes before Correct answer.

Explanation

Presuppositions are background assumptions that a sentence takes for granted, and the verb 'stop' presupposes prior activity of the kind named; the assumption survives negation and questioning. The other options are inferences the sentence does not carry.

Question 13Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A reviewer writes of a novel: 'It has many pages.' The most likely conversational implicature is that:

  1. the book is a work of history
  2. the reviewer has not finished the book
  3. the reviewer found it short on substance Correct answer.
  4. the reviewer admired the book's length

Explanation

By offering something less informative than the occasion calls for - commenting only on length - the reviewer flouts the maxim of quantity, and readers infer the unstated criticism. Implicatures of this kind are cancellable inferences rather than entailments.

Question 14Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'The pen is mightier than the sword' works through which figure?

  1. Metonymy Correct answer.
  2. Simile
  3. Oxymoron
  4. Hyperbole

Explanation

The pen stands for writing and the sword for armed force, so each noun substitutes for something conventionally associated with it, which is the defining move of metonymy. No explicit comparison, exaggeration, or contradictory pairing is involved.

Question 15Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'She ordered tea and he coffee', the missing verb in the second clause is an instance of:

  1. Anacoluthon
  2. Pleonasm
  3. Ellipsis Correct answer.
  4. Deixis

Explanation

Ellipsis is the omission of material that the reader can recover from the surrounding text, and the second 'ordered' is recoverable from the first clause. The other terms label context-anchored reference, a broken construction, and redundancy.

Question 16Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'Admittedly the data are limited; nevertheless the trend is clear', the connective 'nevertheless' signals:

  1. a contrast overriding the concession granted Correct answer.
  2. a causal relation between the clauses
  3. a sequence of events in time
  4. a restatement of the first clause

Explanation

The pair 'admittedly … nevertheless' forms a concessive construction: the first clause grants a point and the second asserts a claim that holds in spite of it. Restatement, causation, and temporal order would each be marked by different connectives.

Question 17Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The claim 'The results may suggest a link' is weaker than 'The results suggest a link' chiefly because of:

  1. the passive voice of the clause
  2. the modal 'may' and the hedged verb Correct answer.
  3. the tense of the main verb
  4. the absence of a definite article

Explanation

Epistemic modality and hedging are the grammatical means by which a writer scales down commitment to a proposition, and both 'may' and 'suggest' perform that function. Article use, voice, and tense do not in themselves reduce the writer's commitment.

Question 18Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'Visiting relatives can be tedious' is ambiguous because:

  1. 'tedious' has two distinct senses
  2. the sentence has no finite verb
  3. the gerund may be subject or object Correct answer.
  4. 'tedious' may modify either of the two nouns

Explanation

The gerund 'visiting' heads a clause that can be read as 'relatives who are visiting' or as 'visiting one's relatives', a structural ambiguity attached to the -ing form. The adjective and the auxiliaries admit no comparable double reading.

Question 19Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A translator notices that a phrase in the source echoes a famous line by a national poet. The device is:

  1. Anacoluthon
  2. Onomatopoeia
  3. Allusion Correct answer.
  4. Asyndeton

Explanation

Allusion is an implicit reference to another text or cultural landmark that the reader is expected to recognise and supply. The other terms name sound imitation, the omission of conjunctions, and a broken construction.

Question 20Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A nineteenth-century text uses 'thou', 'hath', and inverted word order. In analysis these features chiefly signal:

  1. the text's status as a translation
  2. the author's limited education
  3. the author's regional dialect
  4. an elevated or archaic register Correct answer.

Explanation

Such forms belong to an older stratum of the language and, when they appear in later prose, mark elevation, solemnity, or period colour, which is a register choice. They are not in themselves evidence of region, of translation, or of the writer's schooling.

Question 21Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'All the reviewers did not praise the novel' is ambiguous because:

  1. the verb 'praise' has two distinct senses
  2. the article may be generic or specific
  3. negation may take wide or narrow scope Correct answer.
  4. the past tense may be perfective or progressive

Explanation

One reading denies that any reviewer praised the novel, with negation scoping over 'all'; the other asserts only that not every reviewer did so, with negation scoping over the predicate. The other contrasts listed are not present in this sentence.

Question 22Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'She would show them. They had no idea what she was capable of.' In the surrounding passage there are no quotation marks and the narration stays in the third person. The technique is:

  1. first-person interior monologue
  2. a framed narrative
  3. free indirect discourse Correct answer.
  4. dramatic dialogue

Explanation

Free indirect discourse renders a character's thoughts in the third person and past tense without an introductory verb or quotation marks, blending narrator and character. First-person monologue and quoted dialogue would require 'I' or speech marks, and a frame narrative is a story enclosing another story.

Question 23Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Which observation gives the strongest evidence that a paragraph is lexically cohesive?

  1. synonyms of one key term recur throughout Correct answer.
  2. each sentence opens with a different connective
  3. one tense is sustained throughout
  4. every sentence contains a subordinate clause

Explanation

Lexical cohesion arises from repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, and related sense relations among content words, which form a chain around the topic. Sustained tense and varied connectives concern grammar and conjunction rather than lexis.

Question 24Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The clearest textual signal of an unreliable narrator is:

  1. long and complex sentence structures
  2. frequent use of archaic diction
  3. dialect forms in reported speech
  4. conflicts between account and evidence Correct answer.

Explanation

Unreliability is established when the reader has grounds internal to the text for distrusting the narration, typically contradictions with other testimony, documents, or narrated events. Stylistic features such as diction, dialect, or sentence length do not by themselves undermine a narrator's authority.

Question 25Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

An essay alternates between the vocabulary of a scientific report and the diction of a tabloid headline. The most defensible analysis is that:

  1. the author has lost control of the text's cohesion
  2. the register clash is a deliberate satirical device Correct answer.
  3. the text belongs to the genre of scientific reporting
  4. the text must be a translation from another language

Explanation

When two markedly different registers are juxtaposed in a sustained and patterned way, the most economical reading is that the contrast is purposeful, commonly producing satire or parody. Cohesion failure, translated status, and genre membership are not supported by the pattern itself.

Question 26Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Which term names the overall logical connectedness that lets a reader make sense of a text as a whole?

  1. Connotation
  2. Collocation
  3. Cohesion
  4. Coherence Correct answer.

Explanation

Coherence is the global logical unity of a text: its ideas fit together and support a recognizable overall meaning. Cohesion, by contrast, refers to surface-level links such as pronouns, repetition, and connectives.

Question 27Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'When she arrived, the manager smiled', the pronoun 'she' points forward to 'the manager'. This reference pattern is called:

  1. Deixis
  2. Cataphora Correct answer.
  3. Anaphora
  4. Ellipsis

Explanation

Cataphora occurs when a referring expression points forward to a later expression that identifies it. Anaphora is the reverse pattern, where the pronoun points backward to an earlier antecedent.

Question 28Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

'Thrifty' and 'stingy' can describe the same spending behavior, but they differ mainly in:

  1. Connotation Correct answer.
  2. Denotation
  3. Syntax
  4. Register

Explanation

Connotation is the evaluative or emotional association a word carries beyond its core meaning. Both words denote careful spending, but 'thrifty' is positive and 'stingy' is negative.

Question 29Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A contract that repeatedly uses 'hereinafter', 'party of the first part', and 'shall be construed' is marked by which register?

  1. Conversational
  2. Academic
  3. Legal Correct answer.
  4. Journalistic

Explanation

These fixed formulae and archaic-sounding phrases are characteristic of legal register, which favors precision, repetition, and established conventions. Register is the variety of language shaped by situation and purpose.

Question 30Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A text whose main purpose is to move readers to accept a particular viewpoint is best classified as:

  1. Procedural
  2. Narrative
  3. Descriptive
  4. Persuasive Correct answer.

Explanation

Persuasive texts aim to influence belief or action by presenting arguments, evidence, and appeals. Their success is measured largely by whether the audience is convinced.

Question 31Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Scalpel, suture, anesthesia, and ward belong together primarily because they form a:

  1. Semantic field Correct answer.
  2. Register chain
  3. Phonological set
  4. Syntactic category

Explanation

A semantic field is a group of words related by a shared area of meaning. These words all belong to the domain of surgery and hospital care.

Question 32Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Which pair is the strongest conventional collocation in everyday English?

  1. Heavy meal
  2. Heavy smile
  3. Heavy idea
  4. Heavy rain Correct answer.

Explanation

Collocation is the habitual partnership between words in a language. 'Heavy rain' is a standard English collocation, while the other combinations are unusual or nonstandard.

Question 33Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In register analysis, the relationship between the writer and the intended reader is called the:

  1. Tenor Correct answer.
  2. Channel
  3. Mode
  4. Field

Explanation

Tenor describes the participants in a communicative situation and their relationship, including power, distance, and formality. Field concerns the subject matter, and mode concerns the role and medium of language.

Question 34Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The committee approved the budget after lengthy debate', the theme of the clause is:

  1. Approved
  2. The budget
  3. After lengthy debate
  4. The committee Correct answer.

Explanation

In systemic functional analysis, the theme is the element placed first that serves as the clause's starting point. Here 'The committee' occupies that position and frames what the clause is about.

Question 35Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'To begin with, the cost is prohibitive. Moreover, the timeline is unrealistic', 'moreover' signals:

  1. Cause
  2. Concession
  3. Contrast
  4. Addition Correct answer.

Explanation

'Moreover' is a discourse marker that adds a further point in the same direction as the preceding one. It tells the reader that another supporting consideration is coming.

Question 36Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'I asked for the red file, but he handed me the blue one', the word 'one' is best described as:

  1. A substitute Correct answer.
  2. A collocation
  3. A deictic adverb
  4. A cataphoric pronoun

Explanation

Substitution replaces a whole item or phrase with a placeholder to avoid repetition; 'one' stands in for 'file'. It is not a pronoun referring to an entity but a substitute for a noun.

Question 37Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A paragraph develops its topic through 'vehicle', 'car', 'sedan', and 'hatchback'. Its main cohesive pattern is:

  1. Homophony
  2. Antonymy
  3. Metonymy
  4. Hyponymy Correct answer.

Explanation

Hyponymy is the relation between a more general term and more specific terms included under it; 'car' is a hyponym of 'vehicle', and 'sedan' and 'hatchback' are hyponyms of 'car'. This creates lexical cohesion by linking the words in a hierarchy of meaning.

Question 38Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

When a chairperson says 'I declare the meeting open', the utterance primarily performs an action. This is an example of:

  1. A presupposition
  2. An implicature
  3. A tautology
  4. A performative Correct answer.

Explanation

A performative utterance does something rather than merely describe something; saying the words makes the meeting open. The act is accomplished through the utterance itself.

Question 39Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

Choosing 'Could you possibly open the window?' over a bare imperative mainly attends to the hearer's need for:

  1. Negative face Correct answer.
  2. Positive face
  3. End focus
  4. Semantic prosody

Explanation

Negative face is the desire not to be imposed on or constrained by others. A tentative, indirect request respects that desire by reducing the pressure on the hearer.

Question 40Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The report must be submitted by Friday', 'must' most directly expresses:

  1. Epistemic possibility
  2. Evidential source
  3. Deontic obligation Correct answer.
  4. Habitual aspect

Explanation

Deontic modality concerns obligation, permission, and prohibition. Here 'must' imposes a requirement about what is to be done.

Question 41Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The phrase 'According to preliminary reports' primarily signals:

  1. Textual genre
  2. Information source Correct answer.
  3. Speaker certainty
  4. Event time

Explanation

Evidential expressions indicate where information comes from or how it was obtained. 'According to preliminary reports' attributes the claim to an external source rather than asserting it directly.

Question 42Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The council praised the volunteers because they had cleaned the park', 'they' most naturally refers to:

  1. The park
  2. The volunteers Correct answer.
  3. The praise
  4. The council

Explanation

Pronoun resolution relies on semantic plausibility and syntactic context. Volunteers are the ones who would clean a park, and the clause explains why the council praised them.

Question 43Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A Spanish source text uses 'actual' where the context clearly means 'current'. The translator's main issue is:

  1. A register mismatch
  2. A speech act
  3. A false friend Correct answer.
  4. An ellipsis

Explanation

False friends are words in two languages that look similar but differ in meaning. Spanish 'actual' means 'current' or 'present', not English 'actual'.

Question 44Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

A recipe that lists ingredients and then gives ordered steps is primarily which text type?

  1. Expository
  2. Procedural Correct answer.
  3. Argumentative
  4. Narrative

Explanation

Procedural texts instruct the reader how to carry out a task through ordered steps. Recipes are a standard example because their main purpose is successful action, not argument or storytelling.

Question 45Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In an opinion article, a writer states a claim and then cites statistics and expert testimony. Those citations function chiefly as:

  1. Evidence Correct answer.
  2. Foregrounding
  3. Hedging
  4. Paraphrase

Explanation

Statistics and expert testimony are used to support a claim by giving reasons or data that make it more credible. They serve an evidential function within the argument.

Question 46Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The cleft sentence 'It was the manager who approved the request' mainly serves to:

  1. Soften the claim
  2. Build a lexical chain
  3. Report another's words
  4. Focus on the manager Correct answer.

Explanation

Clefting divides a simple clause into two parts to give special prominence to one element. Here the construction highlights 'the manager' as the identified approver.

Question 47Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The White House issued a statement', 'The White House' stands for the administration. This figure is:

  1. Irony
  2. Hyperbole
  3. Simile
  4. Metonymy Correct answer.

Explanation

Metonymy substitutes an associated entity for the thing meant; a building stands for the institution located there. The relation is based on association rather than comparison.

Question 48Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'The lights are on, so someone must be home', 'must' expresses:

  1. Dynamic ability
  2. Epistemic necessity Correct answer.
  3. Deontic obligation
  4. Imperative mood

Explanation

Epistemic modality concerns the speaker's judgment about the likelihood or necessity of a state of affairs. Here 'must' means the evidence makes it logically necessary to conclude someone is home.

Question 49Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

In 'Mistakes were made during the restructuring', omitting the agent most notably:

  1. Makes it more formal
  2. Strengthens the claim
  3. Hides responsibility Correct answer.
  4. Adds a time reference

Explanation

Agentless passives remove the participant who performed the action. In public or institutional discourse this can obscure accountability for what happened.

Question 50Source-Language Comprehension and Text Analysis

The sentence 'The implementation of the policy resulted in a reduction of costs' is marked by heavy use of:

  1. Interrogative mood
  2. Cataphora
  3. Nominalization Correct answer.
  4. Deixis

Explanation

Nominalization turns verbs or adjectives into nouns, as in 'implementation' from 'implement' and 'reduction' from 'reduce'. This often makes prose more abstract and impersonal.