keystone prep

Author’s Purpose

**P- persuade, I- Information, E- Entertain**

What’s the author’s opinion?

What info did they include/ leave out? Was that on purpose?

What’s the connotation of the author’s word choice?

What’s the overall tone?

Figurative Language

Tools or techniques that writers use to make their writing more interesting or easier to understand.

Purpose of Figurative Language

Authors use figurative language to comprehend something more complicated and complex. Also helps to elicit emotion, help readers form mental images and draw readers into the work.

Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Fiction comes from imagination vs. nonfiction that’s solelly based on facts.

Purpose of Personification

Gives human-like characteristics to non-human things to help the reader relate to and better understand the text. Makes the text more engaging for the reader.

Purpose of Simile

A comparison between 2 things using like or as. A simile helps your reader or listener visualize, understand, and have a better conception of the quality of the nouns being compared. It makes it a lot more vivid and descriptive.

Purpose of Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary device that helps readers understand, pay attention, remember, and act on messages. Doesn’t use like or as.

Purpose of Hyperbole

An exaggeration or overstatement not meant to be taken seriously. Use it to get a point across.

Pupose of Satire

The usage of exaggeration to criticise. Readers can understand the purpose of the story through the authors opinion.

Purpose of Foreshadowing

Hints as to what will happen later in the plot. To create suspense + tension. Keeps the engaged.

Purpose of Irony

Serve as a way to teach lessons and adds humor or can create tension. Also makes the text more relatable.

Purpose of Flashback

This gives the readers insight into the characters history/background that provides more context for the readers. Adds more plot to the story.

Purpose of Imagery

Helps convey an image in the readers mind. Makes the story more captivating and engaging.

Purpose of Allegory

Allegory is a literary device used to express large, complex ideas in an approachable manner. Allegory allows writers to create some distance between themselves and the issues they are discussing.

Purpose of Symbolism

Symbolism allows writers to express complex ideas while giving the reader a visual, sensory experience.

Purpose of Dialect

A way to differentiate different time periods and regions. This is used to make the reader feel immersed into the story.

Purpose of Allusion

Allusion is a reference to a well-known person, character, place, or event that a writer makes to deepen the reader's understanding of their work.

Keystone Exam: Constructed Response Grading

* CCARS - clear, consistent, accurate, relevant, specific
* Answer the prompt
* Identify the 2 pieces/ elements that needed to be answered
* Include reference to TWO pieces of evidence
* Thesis statement in 1st sentence
* One paragraph

Main Idea

* The key information that author wants you to know after reading.
* The main idea is the central point or message that the author wants to convey in a piece of writing. It is the most important thought or concept that the readers should take away from the text.

Main Idea vs. Theme

The main idea is what the book is mostly about. The theme is the message, lesson, or moral of the book.

Finding the Main Idea

* Ask what or whom the writing is about
* Summarize each paragraph and identify the main topic/ point they have in common
* Ask what or whom the writing is about
* Ask “What does the author want me to know about this topic?“
* Ask yourself what the character is learning
* Authors often explicitly state the main idea in the intro or conclusion
* Look for reversal transitions… words like but, otherwise, however…
* Look for ideas that are repeated in different ways

Connotation

* the feeling a word evokes
* the way a word feels
* helps understand the tone of a passage

Denotation

dictionary definition of a word

Satire

* A joke, but used as commentary
* Use to highlight comedy/ humor and social activism
* Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice or folly
* Poking fun in order to provide humor while also criticizing the object to evoke change.

Purpose of Satire

promote change through comedy

Affix

One or more letters occurring as a bound form attached to the beginning, end, or base of a word and serving to produce a derivative word or an inflectional form (e.g., a prefix or suffix).

Allegory

A form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning may have moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas such as charity, greed, or envy.

Alliteration

The repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.

Allusion

The repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.

Analysis

An implied or indirect reference in literature to a familiar person, place, or event.

Antonym

A word that is the opposite in meaning to another word.

Argument/Position

The position or claim the author establishes. Arguments should be supported with valid evidence and reasoning and balanced by the inclusion of counterarguments that illustrate opposing viewpoints.

Bias

The subtle presence of a positive or negative approach toward a topic.

Biography

A written account of another person's life.

Character

A person, animal or inanimate object portrayed in a literary work

Characterization

The method an authors uses to reveal characters and their various traits and personalities (e.g., direct and indirect)

Climax

The turning point in a narrative; the moment when the conflict is at its most intense. Typically, the structure of stories, novels, and plays in one of rising action, in which tension builds to the climax.

Compare/Contrast

Place together characters, situations, or ideas to show common and/or differing features in literary selections

Conflict/Problem

A struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions

Context Clues

Words and phrases in a sentence, paragraph, and/or whole text, which help reason out the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

Cultural Significance

The generally accepted importance of a work representing a given culture

Defense of a Claim

Support provided to mark an assertion as reasonable

Dialect

A variety of a language distinct from the standard variety in pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary

Dialogue

In its widest sense, dialogue is simply conversation between characters or speakers in a literary work; in its most restricted sense, it refers specifically to the speech of characters in a drama

Diction

An author’s choice of words, phrases, sentence structures and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning and tone.

Differentiate

Distinguish, tell apart, and recognize differences between two or more items.

Drama

The genre of literature represented by works intended for the stage; a work to be performed by actors on stage, radio, or television; play.

Dramatic Script

The written text of a play, which includes the dialogue between characters, stage directions and often other expository information.

Draw Conclusion

To make a judgment or decision based on reasoning rather than direct or implicit statement.

Elements of Fiction

Traits that mark a work as imaginative or narrative discourse (e.g., plot, theme, symbol).

Elements of Nonfiction

Traits that mark work as reportorial, analytical, information, or argumentative (e.g., facts, data, charts, graphics, headings).

Evaluate

Examine and judge carefully. To judge or determine the significance, worth or quality of something; to assess.

Explicit

Clearly expressed or fully stated in the actual text

Exposition

A narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances.

Fact

A piece of information provided objectively, presented as true

Falling Action

The part of a literary plot that is characterized by diminishing tensions and the resolution of the plot’s conflicts and complications.

Fiction

Any story that is the product of imagination rather than a documentation of fact. Characters and events in such narratives may be based in real life but their ultimate form and configuration is a creation of the author.

Figurative Language

Language that cannot be taken literally since it was written to create a special effect or feeling.

First Person

The “first person” or “personal” point of view relates events as they are perceived by a single character. The narrating character may offer opinions about the action and characters that differ from those of the author.

Flashback

An organizational device used in literature to present action that occurred before current (present) time of the story. Flashbacks are often introduced as the dreams or recollections of one or more characters.

Focus

The center of interest or attention

Foreshadowing

An organizational device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments.

Generalization

A conclusion drawn from specific information that is used to make a broad statement about a topic or person.

Headings, Graphics and Charts

Any visual cues on a page of text that offer additional information to guide the reader’s comprehension.

* Headings typically are words or phrases in bold print that indicate a topic or the theme of a portion of text
* Graphics may be photographs, drawings, maps or any other pictorial representation
* Charts (and tables or graphs) condense data into a series of rows, lines or other shortened lists.

Hyperbole

An exaggeration or overstatement (e.g., I had to wait forever.)

Imagery

Descriptive or figurative language in a literary work; the use of language to create sensory impressions.

Implicit

Though unexpressed in the actual text, meaning that may be understood by the reader; implied.

Inference

A judgment based on reasoning rather than on a direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances; understanding gained by “reading between the lines.”

Informational Text

Nonfiction written primarily to convey factual information. Informational texts comprise the majority of printed material adults read (e.g., textbooks, newspapers, reports, directions, brochures, technical manuals).

Interpret

To give reasons through an explanation to convey and represent the meaning or understanding of a text.

Irony

The use of a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or usual meaning; incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result.

Key/Supporting Details

Points of information in a text that strongly support the meaning or tell the story. Statements that define, describe, or otherwise provide information about the topic, theme, or main idea.

Key Words

Specific word choices in a text that strongly support the tone, mood, or meaning of the text.

Literary Device

Tool used by the author to enliven and provide voice to the text (e.g., dialogue, alliteration).

Literary Element

An essential technique used in literature (e.g., characterization, setting, plot, theme).

Literary Form

The overall structure or shape of a work that frequently follows an established design. Forms may refer to a literary type (narrative, short story) or to patterns of meter, lines, and rhymes (stanza, verse).

Literary Movement

A trend or pattern of shared beliefs or practices that mark an approach to literature (e.g., Realism, Naturalism, Romanticism).

Literary Nonfiction

Text that includes literary elements and devices usually associated with fiction to report on actual persons, places, or events. Examples include nature and travel text, biography, memoir and the essay.

Main Idea

The author’s central thought; the chief topic of a text expressed or implied in a word or phrase; the topic sentence of a paragraph.

Metaphor

The comparison of two unlike things in which no words of comparison (like or as) are used (e.g., The speech gave me food for thought.)

Monologue

An extended speech spoken by one speaker, either to others or as if alone.

Mood

The prevailing emotions or atmosphere of a work derived from literary devices such as dialogue and literary elements such as setting. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter.

Motif

A recurring subject, theme, or idea in a literary work

Multiple-meaning Words

Words that have several meanings depending upon how they are used in a sentence.

Narrative

A story, actual or fictional, expressed orally or in text

Narrator

A person, animal, or thing telling the story or giving an account of something.

Nonfiction

Text that is not fictional; designed primarily to explain, argue, instruct or describe rather than entertain. For the most part, its emphasis is factual.

Opinion

A personal view, attitude, or appraisal

Personification

An object or abstract idea given human qualities or human form (e.g., Flowers danced about the lawn.)

Plot

The structure of a story. The sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. The structure often includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by an antagonist, creating what is called conflict.

Poetry

In its broadest sense, text that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery and connotative and concrete words. Some poetry has a carefully constructed structure based on rhythmic patterns. Poetry typically relies on words and expressions that have several layers of meaning (figurative language). It may also make use of the effects of regular rhythm on the ear and may make a strong appeal to the senses through the use of imagery.

Point of View

The position of the narrator in relation to the story, as indicated by the narrator’s outlook from which the events are depicted (e.g., first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, etc). The perspective from which a speaker or author recounts a narrative or presents information. The author’s manner in revealing characters, events, and ideas; the vantage point from which a story is told.

Prefix

Groups of letters placed before a word to alter its meaning

Propaganda

Information aimed at positively or negatively influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people.

Propaganda Techniques

Propaganda techniques and persuasive tactics are used to influence people to believe, buy or do something. Students should be able to identify and comprehend the propaganda techniques and persuasive tactics listed below.

Name-Calling

is an attack on a person instead of an issue

Bandwagon

tries to persuade the reader to do, think or buy something because it is popular or because “everyone” is doing it.

Red herring

is an attempt to distract the reader with details not relevant to the argument.

Emotional Appeal

tries to persuade the reader by using words that appeal to the reader’s emotions instead of appealing to logic or reason.

Testimonial

attempts to persuade the reader by using a famous person to endorse a product or idea (for instance, the celebrity endorsement).