HOMEWORK...!

TO ALL INCOMING GRADE 8 STUDENTS 2005-2006...

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!!! My intention this year, just like every year, is to challenge each and everyone of 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 27 June 2005, 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 very ready and well prepared by the time you step in my classroom for Academic Year 2004-2005---THANK YOU! By the way, I will hold each and every one of you responsible for informing the rest of your class about all this...!

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 of course, if you want to survive Grade 8 with me...practice your English skills...!!! Kindly send my regards to your entire family...next posting will be Friday this week, 01 July 2005---stay tuned! 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
22.
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
14.
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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