Literary Lab
This is a brief, objective retelling of a story that remains completely distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
What is an objective summary?
If the prefix mono- means "one" and the Greek root log means "speak," this is what a character delivers when speaking alone on a stage
What is monologue?
In the sentence, "She handed the book to him," the bolded words represent two different pronoun cases. This is the specific case used for the word "She" because it is performing the action.
What is subject pronoun?
The main point or primary focus an author wants the reader to understand about a nonfiction topic.
What is the central or main idea?
If you are 'spilling the tea,' gossiping, or sharing a wild story online, you might use this single-word slang word to mean 'truth'.
What is Fax?
This literary element refers to the life lesson, moral, or central message that an author conveys throughout a text.
What is theme?
While the denotation of a word is its literal, strict definition found in a dictionary, this term refers to the emotional baggage, vibes, or cultural associations that a word carries.
This type of punctuation can be used to set off parenthetical or nonrestrictive elements in a sentence, acting as a dramatic pause—like this.
What is a dash?
"Cell phones should be banned in schools because they decrease focus." This statement represents the author's primary argument also known as this.
What is a claim?
This popular sandbox video game, which allows players to build with 3D blocks, is officially the best-selling video game of all time.
What is minecraft?
This term describes how two different narrative elements influence one another—such as when a dark, stormy setting directly causes a character to feel terrified and make a reckless choice.
What is an interaction?
Between the words scrimping, thrifty, and stingy, this is the word that carries a distinctly negative connotation.
What is stingy?
When writing an essay, you use quotation marks for shorter works like poems or chapters. However, for longer, major works like books, plays, or websites, you must format the titles using this slanted text style.
What is italics?
To make an argument valid, an author's reasoning must be sound, and their evidence must be both relevant and this word, meaning 'enough'.
What is sufficient?
This is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight (not just gliding!).
What is a bat?
To avoid making assumptions, readers must use this strategy: combining explicit details from the text with their own background knowledge.
What is making an inference?
The Latin root bell, found in words like belligerent and rebel, means this.
What is war or fighting?
This type of sentence structure consists of exactly two independent clauses joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS).
What is a compound sentence?
Nonfiction articles use this text structure when organizing events in the exact same order in which they occured over time.
What is chronological order?
In the original fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, Cinderella’s slippers weren't made of glass—they were actually made of this shiny precious metal.
What is gold?
"The clock ticked like a countdown to doom, and Sarah knew she couldn't run anymore." This literary device is used to establish the story’s dark atmosphere.
What is mood?
"The detective found the suspect’s alibi to be specious; it sounded true at first, but closer inspection proved it was entirely fake." The context clues define specious as this.
What is falsely appearing to be true?
"When the students entered the cafeteria, they noticed that it was very messy." The pronoun it is an example of this error because it could refer to the cafeteria or the student body.
What is a vague pronoun?
While the "central idea" is the primary message or main point the author wants you to take away from a nonfiction text, these are the specific facts, statistics, examples, or expert quotes the author uses throughout the paragraphs to prove and build that central idea.
What are supporting details?
This ancient civilization is responsible for inventing the 365- day calendar, paper (papyrus), and breath mints to hide the smell of bad teeth.
Who were the ancient egyptians?