8th Grade Academic Vocabulary
Terms
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- thesis statement
- a statement that tells both the topic or issue and the writer's point of view on it
- inflection
- emphasis or stress; the way the voice naturally stresses some words and phrase when you speak; words important to the message are emphasized
- enunciation
- diction; pronounce words clearly when speaking to help listeners understand
- facilitator
- someone who skillfully helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion; middle man; chairperson
- allusion
- a reference in a piece of writing to a well-known character, place, or situation from another work of literature, music, art, or history
- debate
- argument: a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal
- composition
- made up of paragraphs and has three main parts: introduction, body, conclusion
- shades of meaning
- differences in meaning between similar words or phrases: kid and youth both refer to young people, but carry different connotations
- participial phrase
- phrase that begins with a verbal ending in -ing or -ed and includes its complements and modifiers; serves as an adjective
- gerund phrase
- a noun formed from a verb and ending in -ing along with its accompanying modifiers and objects
- inferring
- an educated guess based on information in the text and on prior knowledge and experience; reading between the lines
- elaboration
- the support or development of a main idea with facts, statistics, sensory details, incidents, anecdotes, examples, or quotations
- sidebars
- short, often boxed auxiliary news or information that is printed alongside a longer article and that typically presents additional information or additional references
- footnotes
- notes at the bottom of a page
- acronym
- a word formed from the first or first few letters of a series of words; written without periods
- rate
- tempo of speaking; slower tempo when giving a formal speech to increase listeners' understanding
- pitch
- voice modulations when speaking; saying some words higher and some words lower gives cues to the meanig and message of speech
- bias
- a tendency to think a certain way; could impact how a writer or speaker presents his/her ideas; similar to stereotype
- jargon
- a special language used by a group of people who share the same profession, occupation, hobby, or field of study; effective only if the reader is familiar with its meaning
- tension
- the uncertainty or anxiety that a reader feels about what will happen next in the story, novel, or drama
- inductive reasoning
- a way of thinking or explaining that starts with specific observations or facts to make a generalization
- sensory detail
- writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses
- endnotes
- notes at the end of a chapter or a book
- antecedent
- the word or to which a pronoun refers
- deductive reasoning
- a way of thinking or explaining that starts with a generalization or broad statement and provides specific cases that reflect and support it
- clincher sentence
- concluding sentence; pulls together all preceding sentences by emphasizing the main idea; zinger
- preface
- an introductory statement to an article, book, or speech telling its subject, purpose, etc.
- dramatization
- a story written to be performed by actors; often divided into parts called acts which can be further divided into scenes
- persuasive writing
- a type of writing that aims at convincing people to think or act in a certain way
- derivation
- the forming of words from bases, as by adding suffixes
- cross-reference
- refers to other heading or related topic under which a book or topic is listed
- reliability
- determined by examining the authority and objectivity of the author, the accuracy and currency of the information; dependability
- participles
- verbal that ends with -ing or -ed and serves as an adjective
- mood/tone
- the attitude a writer takes toward his subject, character, and audience
- gerund
- a verbal formed from a verb and ending in -ing
- coherent order
- makes composition smooth and easy to understand; arrangment of writing so that readers can easily see how ideas are related