Keystone Preparation

Authors Purpose

Authors Purpose

What’s the authors opinion?

What info did they include/leave put?

Was that on purpose?

What’s the connotation of the authors 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

To explain abstract emotions such as love, grief, envy and happiness

Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Fiction is from Imagination, while nonfiction is based on facts.

Purpose of Personification

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

Purpose of Allusion

Making reference to something in order to make a comparison. The author uses this to make the text more understandable and relatable.

Purpose of Metaphor

Helps the readers understand, pay attention, and remember messages. Doesn’t use like or as.

Purpose of Flashbacks

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

Purpose of Simile

A comparison using like or as. Used to compare different nouns. Makes text more interesting.

Purpose of Foreshadowing

Hints as to what will happen later in the plot. To create suspense and tension. Keeps the reader engaged. Reader ego boost.

Purpose of Satire

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

Purpose of Hyperbole

An exaggeration or overstatement. Not meant to be taken seriously. Used to get a point across.

Purpose of Imagery

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

Purpose of Irony

Serve as a way to teach lessons. Adds humor or can create tension. Makes the text more re

Keystone Exam: Constructed Response Grading

• CCARS - Clear, Consistent, Accurate, Relevant, Specific

• ANSWER THE PROMPT

• Identify the two pieces/elements that need to be answered

• Include reference to TWO pieces of evidence

• Thesis statement is 1st sentence

• One paragraph

Main Idea

The central point or thought the author wants to communicate to readers.

The key information.

How to find the main idea

• Find the topic

• Ask yourself: “What does the author want me to know about the topic?” or “What is the author

  teaching me about the topic?”

• Use these clues:

  1- Read the first and last sentences of the paragraph

  2- Pay attention to any idea that is repeated in different ways

  3- Look for a sentence that states the main idea

  4- Look for reversal transitions at the beginning of sentences

  5- At times the main idea will not be stated directly

  6- Once you feel sure that you have found the main idea, test it

Connotation

The feeling a word evokes

The way a word feels

Help understand the tone of a passage

Denotation

dictionary definition of a word, literal

Main Idea vs Theme

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

Satire

• A joke but used to 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. initial sounds in neighboring words

Allusion

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

Analysis

The process or result of identifying the parts of a whole and their relationships to one another.

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 author uses to reveal characters and their various traits and personalities(e.g., direct, 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 is 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

Support provided to mark an assertion as reasonable.

Dialogue

Diction

Differentiate

Drama

Dramatic script

Rhyming pattern

The pattern of sounds that repeats at the end of a line or stanza

Meter

Describes the rhythm (or pattern of beats) in a line of poetry.

Prose

Any written work that follows a basic grammatical structure

Stanza

A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

Free verse

Poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter

Sonnet

A poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line

Ballad

A verse form consisting of three main stanzas and one concluding stanza called an envoi, each of which culminates in a repeated last line

Heroic couplet

A pair of rhyming iambic pentameters, much used by Chaucer and the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope.

Draw Conclusion

Elements of fiction

Elements of nonfiction

Evaluate

Explain

Explicit

Exposition

Fact

Falling action

Fiction

First person

Flashback

Focus

Foreshadowing

Generalization

Genre

Headings, Graphics, and Charts

Hyperbole

Imagery

Implict

Inference

Informational Text

Interpret

Irony

Key/Supporting Details

Key Words

Literary Device

Literary element

Literary form

Literary movement

literary nonfiction

main idea

metaphor

monologue

mood

motif

multiple meaning words

narrative

narrator

nonfiction

opinion

personification

plot

POV

prefix

propaganda