Fictional
Texts
Texts
Details like age, appearance, actions, speech, or personality that an author uses to bring a character to life.
What is characterization?
The overall message of a piece of writing.
What is the main idea?
An opinion that the author wants to convince the reader to believe.
What is a claim?
The acronym that helps us remember the seven coordinating conjunctions.
What is FANBOYS?
An "educated guess" based on personal experience and details provided by an author.
What is an inference?
The problem the main character of a story must solve.
What is conflict?
Factual information that explains, defines, or otherwise supports an author's main idea.
What are supporting details?
Support for an author's claim (explains why a claim is logical or important, for example.)
Reason
These two punctuation marks can separate two complete thoughts (dependent clauses).
What are periods and semicolons?
The meaning associated with a word. This meaning is not found in a dictionary but is generally agreed upon by readers.
What is connotation?
The angle from which a story is told. First person and third person are the most common.
What is point of view?
Visual representation of information, data, or knowledge. A pie chart or Venn diagram is an example.
What is graphics (or graphical information)?
Support for an author's reason (facts, research, or experience, for example.)
What is evidence?
A group of word that is missing a subject, a verb, or both.
What is an incomplete sentence (or fragment)?
Two words: One is something that can be proven; the other is something that can only be supported.
What are fact and opinion?
A hint or clue the author provides that suggests or predicts what will happen later in a story.
What is foreshadowing?
A text organization patterns that explains similarities and differences between two ideas or subjects.
What is compare and contrast?
A good argument uses this to show that the author understands the other side of his or her argument, too.
What is counterclaim?
Words that sound alike but are spelled differently. Hole and whole are an example.
What is a homonym?
A shorter version of a text. This version is NOT copied from the text but contains the most important ideas of a text.
What is a summary?
The time and place in which a story takes place.
What is setting?
This text structure includes signal words like "as a result," "therefore," or "consequently" to show the relationship among its ideas.
What is cause and effect?
A weak type of reasoning or evidence that claims something is true or right because it is popular.
What is bandwagon?
The correct possessive spelling of "something belonging to it."
What is its?
The acronym RLA on the GED.
What is Reasoning Through Language Arts?