Gebbia's English 1, 2nd Semester
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- Dynamic character
- Undergoes a change of behavior during the plot.
- Denotation
- The dictionary definition of a word (i.e., dislike, hate, and repugnance carry the same denotation of extreme distaste, but repugnance has the strongest connotation).
- Realism
- Writing that sticks close to the facts and details of everyday life.
- Mood
- The emotional effect of a story or a scene; the atmosphere of fiction.
- Rimes
- Part of a syllable that contains the vowel and all that follows it (i.e., the rime of bag is ag and the rime of swim is im.)
- Metaphor
- A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically different but have something in common; unlike a simile, a metaphor does not contain the words like or as (i.e., in the evening of life).
- Foreshadowing
- Hints inserted by the author to indicate how the action of the story is going to develop and thus to contribute to the credibility of plot.
- Environment
- Surroundings.
- Symbol
- Something that stands for something else.
- Decode
- To pronounce a word by applying knowledge of letter/sound correspondences and phonetic generalizations.
- Antonym
- A word that means the opposite of another word (i.e., happy/sad).
- Static character
- A character whose behavior does not change.
- Round character
- A character for which you can see all sides of a personality.
- Meaning
- What the story says about life
- Rhythm
- The pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in a poem.
- Text feature
- An important feature of literary and informational text that facilitates understanding for the reader (i.e., title, illustrations, labels, bulleted lists, captions, etc.).
- Character
- A person or animal represented in or acting in a story, poem, or drama.
- Folklore
- The traditional customs, beliefs, stories, etc. of a people, country, or region.
- Consonance
- The repetition of consonant sounds anywhere in words.
- hyperbole
- a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor
- Tone
- The attitude of the writer toward his or her subject.
- Onomatopoeia
- The use of a word whose sound suggests its meaning (i.e., buzz).
- Primary source
- An original source, such as someone's diary or journal, a survey or interview, letters, autobiographies, and observations.
- Personification
- Inanimate objects act human.
- Onomatopoeia
- The formation or use of words that imitate the sound associated with something,
- Figures of speech
- Words or groups of words the writer doesn't mean literally, such as similes (thin as a curve), metaphors, (... traffic is a high energy current jumping constantly between the poles of Brooklyn and New Jersey), and personification (... the very skins of the drums are singing with pleasure...).
- Figurative language
- Language enriched by word meanings and figures of speech (i.e., similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole).
- Theme
- In literary text, a brief statement of the idea behind the story; a message about human nature or mankind that the author is sending to the reader; the author's purpose for writing.
- Point of view
- The author's choice of narrator for a story. The choice determines the amount of information a reader will be given, as well as the angle from which this information will be presented.
- Consonant blend
- A combination of two or three consecutive consonants each representing a distinct sound (i.e., thr, br).
- Diction
- Selection by the author of one word as opposed to another.
- Rhetorical question
- A question to which no answer is expected.
- Diphthong
- A vowel sound produced by two adjacent vowels in the same syllable whose sounds blend together (i.e., oy, ow).
- Haiku
- A type of Japanese poetry about nature that is three lines long. The first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables.
- Assonance
- The repetition of vowel sounds anywhere in words.
- Narrative text
- A story/description of events.
- Prefix
- A word part added to the beginning of root or base word to create new meaning (i.e., regain, incomplete).
- Idiom/Idiomatic expression
- A phrase or expression that means something different from the literal meanings of the words (i.e., on the phone, over his head).
- Conflict
- A clash of persons, forces or ideas.
- Irony
- A contrast between the apparent and the real situation (the contrast between what is expected or what appears to be and what actually is).
- Digraph
- Two letters that represent one speech sound (i.e., autumn, snow).
- Plot
- The movement of a story's actions from the problem to the solution.
- Suffix
- A word part that is added to the end of a root word (i.e., darkness).
- Stanza
- A recurring grouping of two or more lines of verse, often of the same length, metrical form, and rhyme.
- Cognate
- A word related to one in another language, such as theater (English) and theatre (French).
- Bias
- A general tendency or leaning in one direction; a partiality toward one view over another.
- Genre
- The category used to define literary works, usually by form, technique, or content (i.e., poetry, realistic fiction, historical fiction, play, and folklore).
- Short story
- A piece of fiction that can be read at a single sitting and has a unity of impression (William Somerset Maugham, a famous short story writer).
- Fable
- A story meant to teach a useful lesson that often has animals that speak and act like humans.
- Vignette
- A short, usually descriptive, literary sketch.
- Novella
- A piece of fiction longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel.
- Fluency
- The ability to easily speak, read, or write a language; automatic word recognition, rapid decoding, and checking for meaning.
- Drama
- A written story meant to be acted out on a stage.
- Exposition
- The beginning of a story when the setting and characters are revealed.
- Print feature
- Type of text feature that relates to print, such as font style, color, and size.
- Flat Character
- See only one side of a personality.
- Homophone/homonym
- One of two ore more words alike in pronunciation but different in meaning, derivation, or spelling (i.e., to, two, too).
- Antagonist
- The person who opposes the main character.
- Protagonist
- The main character or central character in a piece of literature.
- Culture
- The ideas, activities (art, foods, businesses) and ways of behaving that are special to a country, people, or region.
- Folk Tale
- A traditional story with a moral or lesson handed down by people of a region from one generation to the next.
- Antithesis
- The opposite of (i.e., good is the antithesis of evil.)
- Hyperbole
- A figure of speech that makes an intentional exaggeration for emphasis or comic effect.
- Ethnicities
- Group characteristics related to race, country of origin, religion, or culture.
- Inference
- A decision based on reasoning from evidence that is only hinted at or implied, as in I made an inference about the child's height when I saw his tall parents.
- Contraction
- The shortening of a written word or expression by omission of one or more letters or sounds, such as can't.
- Setting
- The physical background, time, and location against which the action in a story takes place.
- Compound word
- A combination of two or more words that function as a single unit of meaning, such as barefoot.
- Suspense
- Tense anticipation aroused in reading a story.
- Analyze
- To examine, closely study, and evaluate in order to better understand.
- Alliteration
- The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of two or more words of a sentence or line of poetry (i.e. Waves want to be wheels).
- Synonym
- A word that has a meaning identical with, or very similar to, another word in the same language (i.e., right/correct).
- Secondary source
- A source that contains information that other people have gathered and interpreted, extended, analyzed, or evaluated such as newspaper articles, a documentary on television, a website, a science text, and an encyclopedia entry.
- Flashback
- A movement in time from the present to the past.
- Stereotype
- A fixed generalized idea about a character or a situation.
- Base word
- A word to which affixes may be added to create related words (i.e. Hemisphere, coauthor).
- Etymology
- The origin or history of words.
- Context clue
- Information surrounding a word or phrase (i.e., words, phrases, sentences, illustrations, or syntax) that gives clues to its meaning.
- Connotation
- The surrounding emotional feelings associated with a word (i.e., slaughter has a stronger connotation than destroy or kill.
- Syntax
- The order and relationship of phrases in a sentence; the grammatical rules that describe their order.
- Synthesize
- To make a new whole out of different parts or elements.
- Homograph
- One of two or more words alike in spelling but different in meaning, derivation, or pronunciation; for example, the noun conduct and the verb conduct are homographs.
- Colloquialism
- Informal words, or phrase of conversational language that brings color to everyday speech and a friendly, conversational tone to writing; many are figures of speech that are not meant to be taken literally, such as fly off the handle or foot the bill.