There was a king named midas, and what he loved best in the world was gold. he had plenty of his own, but he could not bear the thought of anyone else having any. each morning he awoke very early to watch the sunrise and said, "of all the gods, if gods there be, i like you least, apollo. how dare you ride so unthriftily in your sun-chariot, scattering golden sheaves of light on rich and poor alike—on king and peasant, on merchant, shepherd, warrior? this is an evil thing, oh wastrel god, for only kings should have gold; only the rich know what to do with it."

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.