Year 8 English: Close Reading, Grammar, Poetics, and Examination Guide

Vocabulary flashcards covering English close reading techniques, parts of speech, punctuation, poetic terminology, dramatic conventions, and essay writing structures for Year 8.

PQRS Strategy

A four-step close reading strategy: Passage (read through to understand the gist), Questions (read over to know what to find), Re-read (read closely and annotate), and Search (locate answers to the questions).

Explicit Meaning

Information directly and clearly stated in a text, leaving no ambiguity about the writer's meaning.

Implicit Meaning

Information that is suggested or hinted at indirectly in the text, requiring the reader to deduce or infer meaning from descriptions and actions.

Proper Noun

A noun referring to the specific name of a person, place, brand, object, or historical period; always capitalised (e.g., Auckland, Sarah, Nintendo, Victorian Era).

Common Noun

A general name for everyday things, people, places, or objects; also known as a concrete noun when referring to physical items that can be touched, seen, heard, smelled, or tasted.

Abstract Noun

A noun referring to ideas, concepts, qualities, emotions, or states that cannot be physically seen or touched (e.g., freedom, anger, aroha, humour).

Collective Noun

A noun that refers to a group or collection of people, animals, or things treated as a single unit (e.g., flock, team, committee).

Countable Noun

A noun referring to things that can be counted and possess a plural form (e.g., apple/apples, chair/chairs).

Uncountable Noun

A noun referring to things that cannot be counted or divided into individual parts (e.g., water, advice, information).

Compound Noun

A noun made up of two or more words joined together (e.g., ice cream, toothpaste, rainfall, swimming-pool).

Action Verb (Dynamic Verb)

A verb that expresses physical or mental actions (e.g., run, write, choose).

Stative Verb

A verb that expresses a state, condition, or feeling rather than an action (e.g., love, believe, know).

Transitive Verb

A verb that requires a direct object to complete its meaning (e.g., 'She brought a book').

Intransitive Verb

A verb that does not take a direct object (e.g., 'He sneezed').

Auxiliary Verb (Helping Verb)

A verb used alongside a main verb to show tense, mood, or voice (e.g., am, is, have, do).

Modal Verb

A special type of auxiliary verb that expresses necessity, possibility, or permission (e.g., can, could, should, must, might).

Linking Verb

A verb that connects the subject of a sentence to a word that describes or identifies it (e.g., seem, become, is).

Phrasal Verb

An idiomatic phrase consisting of a verb combined with a preposition or an adverb (e.g., give up, break down, look after).

Descriptive Adjective

An adjective that gives qualities or characteristics to a noun, answering 'What kind?' (e.g., loyal, intelligent, green).

Quantitative Adjective

An adjective describing the quantity or number of a noun, answering 'How many?' (e.g., two, many, several, few, some).

Demonstrative Adjective

An adjective that points out specific nouns, answering 'Which one?' (this, that, these, those).

Possessive Adjective

An adjective indicating ownership or belonging that modifies a noun (e.g., my, your, his, her, their, our, its).

Compound Adjective

An adjective formed by joining two or more words with a hyphen (e.g., well-deserved, feather-light, single-minded).

Proper Adjective

An adjective derived from a proper noun, typically capitalised (e.g., Italian food, Kiwi culture, Mauritian beaches).

Degrees of Comparison

The three grammatical forms used to compare nouns: positive (refers to one thing), comparative (compares two things), and superlative (compares more than two things, denoting the best or most).

Personal Pronoun

A pronoun that refers to specific people or things, often twinned with possessive adjectives (e.g., I, you, she, he, they).

Possessive Pronoun

A pronoun that indicates ownership and stands alone without preceding a noun (e.g., mine, ours, hers, yours).

Reflexive Pronoun

A pronoun ending in -self or -selves that reflects back to the subject noun or pronoun (e.g., herself, himself, themselves).

Interrogative Pronoun

A pronoun used to interrogate or ask questions (e.g., who, whose, to whom, what, which).

Preposition

A word that indicates the position or spatial/temporal relationship of something in relation to something else (e.g., under, through, between, across).

Coordinating Conjunction

A conjunction used to connect two independent clauses, remembered by the acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Subordinating Conjunction

A conjunction that connects a dependent clause to an independent clause, establishing relationships such as comparison, time, concession, reason, condition, place, or manner.

Simple Sentence

A sentence containing a subject and a verb and no other independent or dependent clauses.

Compound Sentence

A sentence made up of two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction with a comma, an adverbial conjunction with a semicolon, or a semicolon alone.

Complex Sentence

A sentence containing one independent clause and at least one dependent (subordinate) clause.

Minor Sentence

A sentence fragment that is not grammatically complete (e.g., 'Ouch.' or 'Never again.').

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines, sentences, or clauses.

Enjambment

A line of poetry that continues onto the next line without terminal punctuation.

Caesura

A pause occurring within a line of poetry, frequently created by punctuation.

Volta

A turn or sudden change in mood, attitude, perspective, or direction within a poem.

Stanza

A group of lines forming a unit within a poem, separated from other groups by a blank space.

Refrain

A repeated line, phrase, or group of lines recurring at intervals throughout a poem.

Pathetic Fallacy

A literary device wherein nature, weather, or inanimate objects reflect human emotions, mood, or narrative events.

Apostrophe (Poetic Device)

A figure of speech in which the speaker directly addresses an absent person, inanimate object, place, or abstract concept.

Visual Imagery

Descriptive language that appeals to the reader's sense of sight.

Auditory Imagery

Descriptive language that appeals to the reader's sense of hearing.

Tactile Imagery (Touch iImagery)

Descriptive language that appeals to the reader's sense of touch.

Olfactory Imagery

Descriptive language that appeals to the reader's sense of smell.

Gustatory Imagery

Descriptive language that appeals to the reader's sense of taste.

Dramatic Irony

A theatrical device occurring when the audience understands facts or events of which characters on stage are unaware.

Soliloquy

A dramatic speech delivered by a character who is alone on stage, revealing their private innermost thoughts and feelings to the audience.

Monologue

A long, uninterrupted speech delivered by one character addressed to other characters present on stage.

Aside

A brief comment spoken by an actor directly to the audience, assumed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage.

In Media Res

A storytelling convention in which a narrative begins in the middle of things or in the midst of the action without preliminary introduction.

Rhyming Couplet

A pair of successive lines of rhyming verse, frequently employed to signal the end of a scene or complete an idea in drama.

PACT

An analytical framework for examining non-fiction texts: Purpose (what the writer aims to achieve), Audience (the intended reader), Context (the when, where, and why), and Tone (the writer's attitude).

Thesis

The central, arguable claim of an essay that answers the prompt directly and establishes two specific categories of analysis.

SEED

The four-part structural unit of analytical paragraphs: Statement (arguable claim), Evidence (short quotation), Explanation (word-level connotation analysis), and Development (broad thematic connection).

Development (SEED)

The final analytical move of a SEED paragraph that zooms out from the quote to connect the writer's technique to the reader's response and the text's broader ideas.

Sophistication Marker

A three-part development structure: what the writer chose to do, what the reader feels as a result, and which broader thematic idea it connects to.