CSET English Subtest I and II

homophones

These are words that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings and spelling.

example: capital (seat of the government) and capitol (government building)

Homonyms

words that are spelled and pronounced the same,yet have a different meaning

Ex. Tear-when you cry tear-when something rips

Homographs

words that are spelled alike but have different sounds and meanings (bow and arrow vs. bow of a ship) .

Prepositional Phrase

a group of words beginning with a preposition and ending with a noun or pronoun

Example: Out of bed, down the tree, through the forest, up the hill, around the lake, etc.

Adverb Phrase

a prepositional phrase that modifies a verb, an adjective, or an adverb

Example: The bears were in the bed. Mama bear is naive about her bears.

Participial Phrase

A verb form that is used as an adjective

Example: Sleeping soundly, she got her rest. Chewing loudly, people started to stare.

Gerund Phrase

A verb form that is used as a noun

Example: Disciplinging the dogs is a teadious task. Singing to the audience makes me nervous.

Infinitive Phrase

to + verb used as an adjective, adverb, or noun

Example: To learn how to read, Ana practices reading everyday before bedtime. To calm her nerves, Mama Jo knits.

Independent Clause

a group of words with a subject and verb that is a complete thought.

Example: It was after midnight and Mother was downstairs.

Subordinate Clause

a group of words with a subject and a verb that MUST be combined with an independent clause to form a complete though.

Example: Mrs. Smith, who was cooking breakfast downstairs at the time, did not hear the kids leave the house.

Adjective Clause

A subordinate clause that, like an adjective, modifies a noun or pronoun. Usually it starts with a WHO, WHOM, WHICH and THAT.

Example: Maria, WHO I went to school with, is getting married this Saturday. My friends were surprised THAT the event was kept down low.

Noun Clause

A subordinate clause used as a noun

Example: Do you know WHAT THE DOGS WILL DO NEXT?

ANYONE WHO DISCOVERS THE KIDS ARE OUT AT NIGHT will tell police.

Adverb Clause

A subordinate clause that, like any adverb, modifies a verb, adjective, or an adverb. Words used before clause (after, before, when, since, unless, while)

Example: Mama Jo knits WHEREVER SHE CAN. The animals get out at night most THAN I DO. We ate the cookies AFTER dinner.

Trickster Tale

in oral traditions worldwide, a story featuring a protagonist (often an anthropomorphized animal) who has magical powers and is characterized as a compendium of opposites. TT= FEMT

Slave Narrative

autobiographical account of the life of a slave

Villanelle

a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain

bildungsroman

a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist

Example: The Magic Fountain, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, A Sentemental Education

classicism

a movement in literature and art during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe that favored rationality and restraint and strict forms

romanticism

a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization

realism

A 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be

modernism

was an artistic and literary movement of the early 20th century that championed experimentation, technicality, primitivism, impersonalism, aestheticism, and intellectualism

Neoclassical

characterized the arts in Europe during the late 1700s -a time when authors and artists tried to bring back the elements and values of the classical times (Greek and Roman)

Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson - a fondness for satire and an inclination to make generalizations about the world in the form of aphoristic verse,

Rationalism

17th- 18th century held that all truths, especially religious ones, were accessible and comprehensible through pure

human reason; reason was in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense

perceptions.

Parnassian

Of or relating to poetry, relating to the Parnassians or their style of poetry- A member of a school of late 19th-century French poets whose work is characterized by detachment and emphasis on metrical form.

new formalist

Mid - late 20th century, return to strict form, response to free verse

Symbolist

Symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements.

imagist

20th Century movement of poetry; typically written in free verse, draws on a wide range of subject matter, is expressed in common speech, and relies on a clear, concentrated image to convey meaning.

Comic irony

The audience knows more than the character knows and creates humor

stream-of-consciousness narrative

characterized by a writing technique or style that is free and indirect and seeks to record in an all-inclusive way the continuous flow of the narrator's thoughts, feelings, memories, and expectations. Stream-ofconsciousness narrative can also be somewhat discursive and repetitive. ("Beaten up, broken up, . . . the brutality . . . the eager advance . . . of angular men . . . of flaunting women . . . ")

stream-of-consciousness

a literary genre that reveals a character's thoughts and feeling as they develop by means of a long soliloquy

Deus ex machina

The phrase has come to mean any turn of events that solves the characters' problems through an unexpected and unlikely intervention.

ambivalence

the state of having contradictory or conflicting emotional attitudes or opinions

Theatre of the Absurd

tries to capture the absurdity of the human condition; man is in charge and god is absent, lack of humanity-no meaning to life, actors are clown-like, no hope Example: Waiting for Godot

deference

courteous regard for people's feelings

condescension

a patronizing manner or behavior

benevolence

an act intending or showing kindness and good will

conciliation

the state of manifesting goodwill and cooperation after being reconciled

postcolonial literary criticism

Postcolonial literary criticism explores how colonization

continues to affect former colonized societies. The literature of colonized cultures reflects their common experience of colonization, an experience that may be presented differently in the texts of colonizing nations.

Structuralist Criticism

relies heavily on linguistics and linguistic theory to analyze literary works. One structuralist view holds that a literary work is a mode of writing that consists of an interaction of various constitutent parts according to wholly literary conventions, codes, and genres.

figurative language

language that is used in writing to produce images in a reader's mind and to express ideas in fresh, vivid, and imaginative ways

Formalist Criticism

Formalist criticism focuses on the way individual literary

elements combine to create a coherent whole text, independent of outside factors such as the author's life or intent, or the sociocultural and historical context. Formalist critics, for example, might examine how structure or syntax contributes to the theme or overall emotional impact of a text.

Parallel structures

the repetition of phrases , clauses, or sentencesthat have the same grammatical structure

Psychoanalytic criticism

based on the idea that literary works can reflect the imagined fulfillment of the author's thoughts and desires that are denied in real, everyday life or are prohibited by social or cultural standards—i.e., thoughts and desires that are censored by the self, or repressed.

Great Vowel Shift

A systematic shifting of the long vowels (in milliseconds) of Middle English into different sounds. The high back and high front vowels became diphthongs while the other long vowels moved higher and sometimes fronter in the mouth, e.g., the vowel in the word "sweet" was "ay" for Chaucer but "eee" by the time of Shakespeare. The spelling of certain vowel sounds no longer corresponded to the pronuciation of those sounds. The drop of the e as well.

Universal Grammar

Chomsky-no dialect or language is more complex or sophisticated than the other. We are all born with the capacity to learn any language w/o formal instruction. A set of principles that apply to all languages and are unconsciously accessible to every human language user.

Creolization

in a linguistic context, the process describing the convergence of two or more languages, forming a separate, new language; development of a language through the merging of two or more different languages.

Overt

(Adj.) Open, not hidden, expressed or revealed in a way that is easily recognized

Inflectional Ending

A form, suffix or element added to the end of a word that changes the form of the word to mark such distinctions as those of case, gender, number, tense person, mood or voice.

Example: pre-TENDS

Orthography

a method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols; only partially regular (i.e., the spelling of a word is not a perfect guide to its pronunciation). In the transition to Modern English, the pronunciation of many words changed while their spelling did not.

pramatics

the uses of different types of utterances in different context;

aspects of language involving the practical ways of communicating with others, or the social "niceties" of language

second language acquisition

A second-language learner uses familar vocabulary to mentally form sentences before speaking. The process by which children who have already established a solid foundation in their first language learn an additional language. This usually takes place in the context of a school. Universal Grammar Cognitive Learning Theory Sociocultural Learning Theory. An immigrant living in a country where the second language is spoken who feels accepted by speakers of the second language is most likely acquire second language more easily.

Aspects of Language development (social backgrounds)

Children from different sociocultureal backgrounds may differ in the style and structure of their oral narratives.

Critical Period Hypothesis

theory of language development that states language must be learned by a certain age, otherwise, we will experience continual difficulty learning language (after age of five or after an individual reaches puberty).

code-switching

Shifting back and forth between languages in the same conversation

Primary influence of a first language on second-language development

A second-language learner internalizes his own systematic set of rules to use for speaking and understanding the second language, thus creating an interlanguage.

Negative side of second-language development

Second-language learners often have trouble recongnizing and producting certain phonemes in the target language

enumeration

Is listing items in order; provides a list of facts and examples that can support a statement

appositional phrase

identifies or describes a nearby noun, as illustrated in the way that 'my favourite author' indentifies the author. An embedded appostional pharse is set within the body of the sentence rather than coming at the beginning or the end.

Verbal Phase

Verbals are formed from verbs but are not used as verbs in a sentence (it is a participal phrase used as an adjective to modify 'the man')

tanka

a form of Japanese poetry

Ex. the 1st and 3rd lines have five syllables and the 2nd, 4th, and 5th have seven syllables

New criticism

A movement in literary criticism, dating from the late 1920s, that stressed close textual analysis in the interpretation of works of literature.

gender criticism

feminist and gay criticism reflecting cultural framework

mythological criticism

An approach to literature that seeks to identify what in a work creates deep universal responses in readers, by paying close attention to the hopes, fears, and expectations of entire cultures.

hypercorrection

the act of producing nonstandard forms by way of false anology - usually done with 'I' vs. 'me.' - this is done by adults - not children just learning the language; seeing the wrong form as correct because it seems correct

negative transfer

interference with learning that results from differences between two otherwise similar tasks

borrowing

Taking words from other languages and incorporating them into your own. sushi

semantic mapping

diagrams that are useful during pre-reading. The word is in the center circle and rays and circles branch out of the word.

Theory of Communicative Competence

Dell Hymes - is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.

Critical Period hypothesis

Erick Lenneberg - theory of language development that states language must be learned by a certain age, otherwise, we will experience continual difficulty learning language

Affective Filter Hypothesis

Stephen Krashen based on the theory that successful language acquisition depends on the learners feelings. Positive emotions surrounding learning enhance it while negative emotions do the opposite.

positive transfer

Mastery of one task aids learning or performing another

faulty reasoning

Reasoning formed based on either untrue or misunderstood ideas.

negative transfer

interference of previous learning inprocess of learning something new

pragmatic competence

The ability to take contextual factors into account when using and interpreting language. This includes knowledge of the real world, how speakers use and understand speech acts and the relationship between speaker and listener. For example, "It's hot in here, isn't it?" could mean "It's time to get something to eat" depending on the different factors of the situation.

deep structure

The underlying structure of a statement that holds its meaning.

surface structure

the particular words and phrases used to make up a sentence

Ferdinand de Saussure

Thought of language as a structured system of elements, a self-contained whole. In this system, the place of each element is defined by the way in which it relates to other elements.