TO ALL INCOMING GRADE 8 STUDENTS 2004-2005...
First of all, allow me to welcome
ALL of you in advance to the next chapter of your Middle School Life---
WITH ME IN IT!!! I intend to challenge you to the maximum to
think,
speak out, and
improve your English skills to the best of your ability...! This is going to be our
BLOGSPOT Post from this time onwards, which means that whenever I give you an online assignment...this is where you will find it. Be sure to have this website tagged in your list of
FAVORITES from now on.
To start off, I am sending together with this first message the complete list of
LITERARY TERMS and
VOCABULARY TERMS which we are going to deal with the whole year next year. For those of you who have not started yet...today is just
23 June 2004, which means you have an entire
seven weeks to understand, know the spelling, and memorize all these
82 LT plus
50 VOCABS equals
132 very important Grade 8 words...! Please make sure to be ready and prepared by the time you step in my classroom for
School Year 2004-2005---THANK YOU!
Before I end, I wish all of you a
WONDERFUL and RELAXING SUMMER VACATION! I cannot wait to see you all in August...
BE GOOD ALWAYS,
BE SAFE wherever you are, and
STUDY WELL and practice your English skills...!!! Kindly send my regards to your entire family...
CIAO!!!
Mr. A
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82 LITERARY TERMS
1. Alliteration - the repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in
words that are close together.
2. Allusion - a reference
3. Analogy - a comparison between things, which have similar features
4. Anecdote - a brief story told to illustrate a point.
5. Assonance - the similarity in sound between two syllables
6. Atmosphere - the overall mood or emotion of a work of literature
7. Author - the writer of a book, article, play
8. Autobiography - the story of a person’s life, written or told by that person.
9. Ballad - a song or poem that tells a story
10. Biography - the story of a real person’s life, written or told by another person
11. Character - a person or animal who takes part in the action of a story, play, or
other literary work.
12. Characterization - the way a writer reveals the personality of a character.
13. Chronological Order - The arrangement of events in the order in which they
occurred.
14. Climax - the most important or exciting point in a story or situation,which
usually happens near the end
15. Comedy - in general, a story that ends happily for its main characters.
16. Conflict - a struggle or clash between opposing characters and opposing forces.
17. Connotation - the feelings and associations that a word struggles.
18. Denotation - the literal, dictionary definition of a word.
19. Description -writing indented to re-create a person, a place, a thing, an
event,or an experience.
20. Dialect - a way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or
group of people.
21. Diction - a writer’s or speaker’s choice of words.
23. Drama - a story written to be acted in front of an audience.
24. Essay - a short piece of writing on a particular subject, especially one done by
students as part of the work for a course
25. Exaggeration - when someone makes something seem larger, more important, better
or worse than it really is
26. Exposition - the king of writing that explains or gives information.
27. Fable - a brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or gives a
practical lesson about how to get along in life.
28. Fiction - a prose account that is made up rather than true.
29. Figure of Speech - a word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of
something else and is not literally true.
30. Flashback - an interruption in the action of a plot to tell what happened at an
earlier time.
31. Folk Tale - a story, with no known author, that originally was passed on from
one generation to another by word of mouth
32. Foreshadowing - the use of clues to suggest events that will happen later in the
plot.
33. Free verse - poetry without a regular meter or a rhyme scheme.
34. Historical Fiction -a novel, story, or play set during a real historical era.
35. Idiom - an expression peculiar to a particular language that means something
different from the literal meaning of the works.
36. Imagery - language that appeals to the senses.
37. Inversion - the reversal of the normal word order of a sentence.
38. Irony - a contrast between expectation and reality.
39. Legend - a story of extraordinary deeds that is handed down from one generation
to the next.
40. Limerick - a humorous five-line verse that has a regular meter and the rhyme
scheme.
41. Lyric Poem -a poem that expresses the feelings or thoughts of a speaker rather
than telling a story.
42. Metamorphosis - a miraculous change from one shape or form to another one.
43. Metaphor - an imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which
one thing is said to be another thing.
44. Meter - a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
45. Mood - see atmosphere.
46. Motif - see folk tale.
47. Motivation - the reasons a character behaves in a certain way.
48. Myth - a story that explains something about the world and typically involves
gods or other supernatural forces.
49. Narration - the kind of writing that tells a story.
50. Narrative poem - a poem that tells a story.
51. Nonfiction - prose writing that deals with real people, thing, events, and
places.
52. Novel - a long fictional story whose length is usually somewhere between one
hundred and five hundred book pages.
53. Objective writing - writing that presents fact without revealing the writer’s
feelings and opinions.
54. Onomatopoeia - the use of words whose sounds imitate or suggest their meaning.
55. Personification - a figure of speech in which an object or an animal is spoken
of as if it had human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.
56. Persuasion - a kind of writing intended to convince a reader to think or act in
a certain way.
57. Playwright - the author of a play, or drama.
58. Plot - the series of related events that make up a story.
59. Poetry - a kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech
and imagery designed to appeal to our emotions and imagination.
60. Point of view - the vantage point from which a story is told.
61. Prose - any writing that is not poetry.
62. Protagonist - the main character in a work of literature.
63. Pun - a play on the multiply meanings of a word or on two words that sound
alike but have different meaning.
64. Refrain - a repeated sound, word, phrase, line, or group of line.
65. Rhyme - the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following
them in words that are close together in a poem.
66. Rhythm - a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and
unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound
patterns.
67. Satire - writing that ridicules something often in order to bring about change
68. Setting - the time and place of a story, play, or narrative poem.
69. Short story - a short fictional prose narrative.
70. Simile - a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like,
as, than, or resembles.
71. Speaker - the voice talking to us in a poem.
72. Stanza - a group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit.
73. Stereotype - a fixed idea about the members of a particular group of people
that does not allow for any individuality.
74. Style - the way a writer uses language.
75. Subjective writing - writing in which the felling and opinions of the writer
are revealed.
76. Suspense - the uncertainty or anxiety that a reader fells about what will
happen next in a story, novel, or drama.
77. Symbol – a person, a place, a thing, or an event that has meaning in itself and
stands for something beyond itself as well.
78. Tall tale - an exaggerated, far-fetched story that is obviously untrue but is
told as though it should be believed.
79. Theme - the general idea or insight about life that a work of literature reveals.
80. Tone - the attitude a writer takes toward his or her subject, characters, and
audience.
81. Tragedy - a play, novel, or other narrative in which the main character comes
to an unhappy end.
82. Understatement - a statement that sys less than what is meant.
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50 VOCABULARY TERMS (please find the meanings yourself!)
1. TREMENDOUS
2. CAUTION
3. HUMANITY
4. CONSERVATION
5. CHAOTIC
6. SLAVERY
7. INDECISIVE
8. COLLABORATE
9. MURALS
10. POETIC
11. PLAGIARISM
12. CIVILIZATION
13. COURTESY
15. SYMPATHY
16. CONDUCIVE
17. DECISIVE
18. SUBCONSCIOUS
19. PERSECUTION
20. WHOMEVER
21. WHOEVER
22. SCORN
23. PERFECTION
24. TIGHTEN
25. ROBBERY
26. GAIETY
27. IMITATE
28. TRADITIONS
29. CUSTOMS
30. CUSHION
31. NIECE
32. NEPHEW
33. APOLOGY
34. APPLAUSE
35. HASTEN
36. EXCELLENT
37. STRIPE
38. MANDATE
39. SELFISH
40. UPRIGHT
41. STIFFEN
42. WICKED
43. INFLUENTIAL
44. LANDLORD
45. IMAGINATIVE
46. RIPPLES
47. TANTRUM
48. SOAR/SORE
49. OFFENSE
50. FREEDOM
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