question

Informal Essay

answer

uses casual language

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Historical Essay

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gives facts, explanations, and insights about historical events

question

Expository Essay

answer

explains an idea by breaking it down

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Narrative Essay

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tells a story about a real-life experience

question

Informational Essay

answer

explains a process

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Persuasive Essay

answer

offers an opinion and supports it

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Direct Characterization

answer

a writer states the characters' traits or characteristics

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Indirect Characterization

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a writer depends on the reader to draw conclusions about the characters' traits

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Main Character

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the most important character in a story, poem, or play

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Minor Character

answer

one who takes part in the action but is not the focus of attention

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Flat Character

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one-sided and often stereotypical

question

Round Character

answer

fully developed and exhibits many traits often both faults and virtues

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Dynamic Character

answer

changes and grows during the course of work

question

Static Character

answer

one who does not change

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External Conflict

answer

man against man, man against nature, man against society

question

Internal Conflict

answer

man against himself

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Poetry

answer

poetry: lyric, concrete, dramatic, narrative, and epic

question

Prose

answer

fiction (novels and short stories) and nonfiction (biography, autobiography, letters, essays, and reports)

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Drama

answer

drama: serious and tragedy, comic, melodrama, and farce

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Third-Person Narrator

answer

one who stands outside the action and speaks about it

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First-Person Narrator

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one who tells a story and participates in its action

question

First-Person Point of View

answer

is told by a character who uses the first-person pronoun "I"

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Omniscient Third-Person Point Of View

answer

the narrator knows and tells about what each character feels and thinks

question

Limited Third-Person Point of View

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the narrator relates the inner thoughts and feelings of only one character, and everything is viewed from this character's perspective

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Alliteration

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the repetition of initial consonant sounds

question

Analogy

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makes a comparison between two or more things that are alike in some ways but otherwise unalike

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Anecdote

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a brief story about an interesting, amusing, or strange event

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Antagonist

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a character or a force in conflict with the main character or protagonist

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Atmosphere

answer

or mood is the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage

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Autobiography

answer

is the nonfiction story of the writers own life, told by the writer, first person

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Biography

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a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells the life story of another person

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Character

answer

a person or animal that takes part in the action of a literary work

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Characterization

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the act of creating and developing a character

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Climax

answer

also called the turning point is the high point in the action of the plot

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Comedy

answer

a literary work, especially a play, which is light, often humorous or satirical, and ends happily

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Concrete Poem

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one with the shape that suggests its subject

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Conflict

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a struggle between opposing forces

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Connotation

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a word is the set of ideas associated with the meaning of the word

question

Denotation

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a word is its dictionary meaning of the word

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Description

answer

a portrait in words, using language that appeals to the five sense: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell

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Development

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the sequence of cause and effect events in the plot

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Dialect

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the form of a language spoken by people in a particular region or group

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Dialogue

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a conversation between characters

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Drama

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a story written to be performed by actors, acts and scenes

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Dynamic Character

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one who changes or grows during the course of the work

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Essay

answer

a short nonfiction work about a particular subject, have a single major focus

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Exposition

answer

introduces the chracters, setting, and basic situation

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Expository Writing

answer

writing that explains or informs

question

Extended Metaphor

answer

several connected comparisons are made

question

External Conflict

answer

man against man, man against nature, man against society

question

Fable

answer

a brief story or poem, usually with animal characters, that teaches a lesson, or moral

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Fantasy

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highly imaginative writing that contains elements not found in real life

question

Fiction

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prose writing that tells about imaginary characters and events

question

Figurative Language

answer

language not meant to be taken literally

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Figure of Speech

answer

metaphor, personification, and simile

question

Flashback

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a writing technique that interrupts the story to tell about things in the past

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Flat Character

answer

one-sided, often stereotypical

question

Folk Tale

answer

it is story passed down from person to person by word of mouth

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Foot

answer

In a poem the weak and the strong stresses are then divided by vertical lines into groups called feet

question

Foreshadowing

answer

a writer's technique that gives you clues about what might happen in the future

question

Free Verse

answer

is poetry not written in a regular rhyme scheme, rhythmical pattern, or meter

question

Genre

answer

division or type of literature, poetry, prose, and drama

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Haiku

answer

a Japanese poem, three lines, five, seven, five syllables

question

Hero/Heroine

answer

a character whose actions are inspiring or noble

question

Figures of Speech

answer

metaphor, personification, and simile

question

Flashback

answer

a writing technique that interrupts the story to tell about things in the past

question

Flat Character

answer

one-sided and often stereotypical

question

Folk Tale

answer

a story passed down from person to person by word of mouth

question

Foot

answer

In a poem, the weak and strong stresses are then divided by vertical lines (|) into groups called feet.

question

Foreshadowing

answer

a writer's technique that gives you clues about what might happen in the future

question

Free Verse

answer

poetry not written in a regular rhyme scheme, rhythmical pattern, or meter

question

Genre

answer

division or type of literature; poetry, prose, and drama

question

Haiku

answer

a Japanese poem, three lines, five, seven, five syllables

question

Hero/Heroine

answer

a character whose actions are inspiring, or noble

question

Historical Fiction

answer

real events, places, or people are incorporated into a fictional or imaginative story

question

Images

answer

words or phrases that appeal to one or more of the five senses

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Imagery

answer

mental pictures, a portrait in words

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Internal Conflict

answer

man against himself

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Irony

answer

is a literary technique that uses surprising, interesting, or amusing contradictions

question

Journal

answer

a periodic, account of events and the writer's thoughts and feelings about those events

question

Legend

answer

is a widely told story about the past and every culture has some

question

Letters

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written communication from one to another

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Limerick

answer

a humorous, rhyming, five-line poem with a specific meter and rhyme scheme

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Lyric Poem

answer

a highly musical verse that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker

question

Main Character

answer

the most important chracter in story, poem, or play

question

Media Accounts

answer

writings for television, radio, newspaper, and magazines

question

Metaphor

answer

figure of speech in which something something is described as though it were something else without using like or as

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Meter

answer

a poem's rhythimical pattern

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Minor Character

answer

one who takes part in the action but is not the focus of attention

question

Mood

answer

Atmosphere, the feeling created in the reader while reading a literary work

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Moral

answer

a lesson taught by a literary work

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Motivation

answer

what propels a character to think, act, speak, and feel a certain way

question

Motive

answer

a reason that explains a character's thoughts, feelings, actions, or speech

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Myth

answer

a fictional tale that explains the actions of gods, heroes, or nature

question

Narration

answer

writing that tells a story

question

Narrative

answer

a story

question

Narrative Poem

answer

a story told in verse

question

Narrator

answer

a speaker or character who tells a story

question

Nonfiction

answer

prose writing that tells about real people, places, objects, or events

question

Novel

answer

a long work of fiction

question

Novella

answer

a fiction work that is longer than a short story but shorter than a novel

question

Onomatopoeia

answer

the use of words that imitate sounds

question

Oral Tradition

answer

the passing of songs, stories, and poems from generation to generation by word of mouth

question

Personification

answer

figurative language where a nonhuman object is given human characteristics

question

Perspective

answer

point of view

question

Persuasion

answer

convince the reader or listener to adopt a particular opinion

question

Playwright

answer

a person who writes plays

question

Plot

answer

sequence of cause and effect events

question

Poetry

answer

one of the three major types of literature; musical, imagery, figurative language, rhythm, and special devices of sound such as rhyme

question

Point of View

answer

perspective from which a story is told

question

Problem

answer

conflict

question

Prose

answer

ordinary form of written language, opposite of poetry

question

Protagonist

answer

the main character in a literary work

question

Refrain

answer

regularly repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song

question

Repetition

answer

the use, more than once, of any element of language (sound, word, phrase, clause, or sentence) is used in both prose and poetry

question

Resolution

answer

outcome of the conflict in a plot

question

Rhyme

answer

the repetition of sounds at the ends of words

question

Rhyme Scheme

answer

a regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem

question

Rhythm

answer

is the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

question

Round Character

answer

one who is fully developed and has many traits often both faults and virtues

question

Scene

answer

a selection of uninterrupted action in the act of a drama- scene, act, drama

question

Science Fiction

answer

combines the elements of fiction, fantasy and scientific fact

question

Sensory Language

answer

writing or speech that appeals to the five senses

question

Setting

answer

the time and place of the story

question

Short Story

answer

a brief work of fiction

question

Simile

answer

figure of speech that uses like or as to compare two unlike things

question

Speaker

answer

the imaginary voice a poet uses when writing a poem

question

Stage Directions

answer

notes in a drama to describe how the work is to be performed or staged

question

Staging

answer

the setting, lighting, costumes, special effects, music, dance, all the elements of a stage performance in a drama

question

Stanza

answer

a group of lines of poetry that acts like a paragraph in prose

question

Static Character

answer

one who does not change

question

Surprise Ending

answer

is a conclusion that is unexpected

question

Suspense

answer

anxious uncertainty about the outcome

question

Symbol

answer

anything that stands for or represents something else

question

Theme

answer

central message, main idea

question

Tone

answer

the writer's attitude toward the audience and subject

question

Tragedy

answer

a work of literature, especially a play, that results in a catastrophe for the main character

question

Turning Point

answer

climax

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