CSET English Subtest I Practice Flashcards

A set of 100 vocabulary-style flashcards based on the CSET English Subtest I Test Guide, covering literary movements, devices, authors, and compositional strategies.

Trickster tale

A literary form from the oral tradition featuring an anthropomorphized animal protagonist who is often a shape-shifter, cheat, or liar.

Sonnet

A form of fixed or closed verse that originated in Italy and was introduced to England in the early sixteenth century.

Postmodern British writers

Authors such as Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie who use fragmented narrative structures with multiple shifts in consciousness and chronology.

American regionalist writers

Writers like Kate Chopin and Bret Harte who focus on the unique physical landscape, customs, dialect, and way of thinking of a specific place.

Modernism

A world literature movement characterized by uncertainty, disillusionment, and imagery of death, often in response to the devastation of war.

Neoclassical period (British)

A literary period featuring writers like Alexander Pope and John Dryden who used satire and generalizations about the world in aphoristic verse.

Young adult literature

Narratives that focus on the thoughts and experiences of an individual character and convey a sense of immediacy rather than nostalgia.

Contemporary African writers

Often address themes of spiritual and emotional bankruptcy arising from the loss of traditional values and aspirations for wealth.

Ovid's 'romantic hero'

A character demonstrating resourceful determination and the view that love is a kind of war requiring courage.

Elizabethan worldview

The belief that human society is part of a cosmic hierarchy in which every element has its proper role.

Rationalism (late 17th/early 18th century)

The belief in the power of human reasoning to reveal truth, which Jonathan Swift satirized as potentially being the result of 'accidental circumstances'.

Imagist movement

A poetic style written in free verse that relies on clear, concentrated, and singular images expressed in common speech.

Stream of consciousness

A narrative technique that seeks to record the continuous, all-inclusive flow of a narrator's thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Deus ex machina

A technique in ancient Greek drama used to resolve plot complications and save the hero from difficulties through unexpected intervention.

Theatre of the Absurd

A literary movement where characters use dislocated, repetitious speech to illustrate the illogical and purposeless nature of the human condition.

Personification

A literary device used to attribute human characteristics or perspectives to non-human entities, such as the ocean or an ox.

Metaphor

A poetic device used to highlight similarities between different things, such as comparing love to a war or a mind to letters in locked drawers.

Hyperbole

A rhetorical technique using exaggeration to emphasize a specific quality or idea, such as the vastness of an ocean.

Recursive revision

The principle that revision is an activity that may occur at any phase of the writing process, rather than being a discrete final step.

Text complexity dimensions

Qualitative factors contributing to difficulty, such as sentence structure, levels of meaning, and language conventionality.

Internal rhyme

A poetic device where words rhyme within a single line of verse, used by Edgar Allan Poe in 'The Raven'.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds, often used in verse and sometimes associated with old tales of kings and knights.

Trochaic octameter

A specific poetic meter consisting of eight trochaic feet per line, referenced as a feature of 'The Raven'.

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, art, person, or event, such as referencing Pallas Athena in a poem.

Comic irony

A literary device resulting from an amusing reversal of expectations, often highlighting the delight in observing despondent situations.

Annotated bibliography

A list of documents or sources that includes descriptive or evaluative comments regarding each entry.

Extended definition

A mode of development in reports that explains complex terms to a lay audience by responding to various clarifying questions.

Service learning

An educational approach that meets learning goals through community service and integrates curricular objectives with volunteer work.

Petrarchan sonnet

The Italian sonnet form introduced to England with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba followed by cdecde or cdcdcd.

English sonnet

An established literary tradition in England with the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Egungun

A masqueraded dancer who performs in religious rituals with the intention of making contact with the supernatural.

Claude Lévi-Strauss's view on Myth

The idea that a myth's value is preserved through translation because its substance lies in the story told rather than the syntax or style.

Technical jargon

Specialized language used in a specific field which may require electronic resources for quick cross-referencing or definitions.

Parallel structures

Reptition of a chosen grammatical form within a sentence to aid comprehension and clarity of central points.

Thesis statement

A sentence that summarizes the main point or claim of an essay or research paper.

Brackets [ ]

Punctuation used within a direct quotation to differentiate a researcher's inserted explanation from the original text.

Past perfect tense

A verb tense used to describe an action that was completed before some point in the past, such as 'had never been'.

Present perfect tense

A verb tense used for an action that began in the past and continues into the present, such as 'has never been'.

Clausal modifier

A clause that acts as an adjective or adverb to qualify the meaning of another part of a sentence, used to control narrative flow.

General practitioner

A doctor who provides health care for a wide range of medical problems and does not focus on one specific area of medicine.

Family practitioner

A doctor similar to a general practitioner but with extra training for health care for all family members regardless of age.

Internist

A doctor specifically for adults; some may take additional training to become specialists like cardiologists.

Geriatrician

A doctor who specializes in the care of older adults and is trained in family practice or internal medicine with additional training.

OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration; the U.S. Department of Labor agency to which employees can report unsafe conditions.

Common Core State Standards

Educational standards that place specific literary works like 'The Raven' into specific grade-level text complexity bands.

Edith Maud Eaton

The first Chinese-American author to be published in the United States, writing under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far.

Pseudonym

A fictitious name used by an author to conceal their identity, such as Sui Sin Far.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

A law passed by Congress barring further immigration from China, which remained in effect until 1943.

Reader variables

Individual factors like personal experience, motivation, and prior knowledge that affect a student's ability to use inference.

Anthropomorphized

The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.

Aphoristic verse

Poetry that is concise, memorable, and expresses a general truth or principle, often utilized in the Neoclassical period.

SMR Code

Subject Matter Requirement identifiers used in the CSET Test Guide to categorize different literary and rhetorical standards.

Pallas

A reference to Pallas Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom.

Plutonian shore

A mythological allusion to the underworld or the realm of Pluto in Edgar Allan Poe's poetry.

Intertidal zone

A division of the ocean ecosystem defined by its distance from shore and the area between high and low tide.

Pelagic zone

The open ocean zone that is not near the bottom or the shore.

Benthic zone

The lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, including the sediment surface.

Abyssal zone

A deep-sea zone of the ocean where there is no light and temperatures are near freezing.

Biodiversity

The variety of life in a particular habitat or ecosystem, noted to be higher in oceans by some measures.

Marine biome

A major ecological community that includes oceans, coral reefs, and estuaries.

Recursive activity

A process that can repeat or return to previous stages, such as the revision stage in writing.

Logic and coherence

The qualities of a piece of writing where ideas are presented in a sensible, orderly, and connected manner.

Inference

A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning rather than explicit statements.

Narrative technique

Special tools or methods used by a writer to tell a story, such as point of view, pacing, or stream of consciousness.

Rhetorical question

A question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.

Conciliatory manner

A way of behaving intended to pacify or make peace, contrasted with warlike actions in Patrick Henry's speech.

Textual features

Elements of a text such as boldface, bullets, or paragraphs that help convey and organize information.

Public service document

Informational texts, like brochures from the National Institute on Aging, designed to provide clear information to the public.

Immigrant experience

A literary theme exploring the link between personal identity and cultural heritage, as seen in the work of Edwidge Danticat.

Reticent

Not revealing one's thoughts or feelings readily; described in Virginia Woolf's characterization.

Binary opposition

The system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set against one another.

Genre conventions

Specific traits or elements common to a particular category of literature, such as codes or signs that convey meaning.

Workplace document

Texts like safety manuals or policies that define rights and procedures for employees and employers.

Eldorado

A place of fabulous wealth or opportunity, used by gold seekers in the nineteenth century to describe California.

Tenacity

The quality of being very determined and persistent, described as 'pulling one more oar' or 'marching one more mile'.

Analogy

A comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.

Main claim

The primary argument or point being advanced in a speech or piece of writing.

Adages

Proverbs or short statements expressing a general truth, frequently produced by Neoclassical writers.

Fragmented narrative

A story structure where the plot is not told in chronological order, using shifts in time and location.

Regionalism

A literary style that captures the specific characters, dialect, customs, and topography of a particular region.

Modernist imagery

Words like 'cry,' 'weeps,' and 'mourns' used to create a stark and unsettling atmosphere in 20th-century poetry.

Admetus

A mythological king mentioned in Ovid’s poetry, to whom Apollo was in bondage.

Leander and Hero

Mythological figures used as examples of selfless and dangerous romantic love in Ovid's 'The Art of Love'.

Sol

A reference to the sun, personified as a king or ruler in Elizabethan literature.

Portent

A sign or warning that something momentous or calamitous is likely to happen.

Discursive

Running from one subject to another; a quality sometimes found in stream of consciousness writing.

Detachment

The state of being objective or aloof, often used to describe a narrator's perspective in urban-rural observations.

Pseudonym Sui Sin Far

The pen name of Edith Maud Eaton, reflecting her Chinese heritage.

Obsequiousness

Abject or cringing submissiveness; an inappropriate tone for job-related correspondence.

Formal sentence definition

A definition style that establishes a clear focus, often used as the first sentence in an extended definition.

Recursive

An activity that is not a one-time step but can be revisited multiple times, like the revision of writing drafts.

Colloquial language

Informal words or phrases used in everyday conversation, typically inappropriate for professional emails.

Climax of a narrative

The most intense, exciting, or important point of a story, often preceded by rising action and specific clausal modifiers.

Integrity of the quotation

The preservation of the original text’s literal meaning when a researcher adds explanatory brackets.

Alphabetical Index

A tool in printed text that is useful but less efficient than electronic searches for finding specific words.

Qualitative dimension

Non-numerical attributes of text, such as the complexity of layers of meaning or sentence structures.

Internal and External Conflict

Narrative elements where characters struggle against their own feelings or outside forces.

Aesthetic impact

The effect of a literary work's beauty or style on a reader's emotions and senses.

Tone

The attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience, often identified through inference and descriptive details.

Symbol

An object or phrase that represents an idea or quality beyond its literal meaning, such as 'five swords' representing a wounded heart.