What Freshmen Need to Learn

Concepts and Skills for English I (page 3 in your notebook)

This isn't really a study guide; it's just a list of what you'll need to learn in this class. You may be familiar with some of the items already. Others will be completely foreign. Don't worry too much - we'll have instruction and practice on all of it. Remember, however, that YOU are responsible for your own learning. Ultimately, how well you understand the items on this list is up to YOU.

• Literature
  • Figurative language: personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, oxymoron, symbolism, figurative vs literal
  • Plot, narrative/narration, plot cycle: exposition, conflict, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, denouement/resolution, foreshadowing, flashback
  • Setting, tone, mood, description, imagery, concrete/sensory detail
  • Character, character development, diction, point of view, protagonist, antagonist, motivation
  • Theme (especially the difference between theme and topic or theme and plot)
  • Sound technique: alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance, meter, types of rhyme (visual, near/slant rhyme, true rhyme)
  • Dramatic techniques: dialogue, monologue, soliloquy, aside, act/scene/line, dramatic irony, verbal irony, situational irony
• Research/writing
  • Organization: introduction, thesis ("controlling idea"), commentary, concrete detail, support/evidence/proof, conclusion, chronological order, spatial order, order of importance, cause-and-effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution, classification/definition, process analysis, subordination, super-ordination
  • Support: citation, plagiarism, paraphrase, quote
  • Process: drafting, revising, editing/proofreading
  • Format: audience, purpose, formal/informal
• Vocabulary
  • idiom, cognate, prefix, suffix, root, context, euphemism, ambiguity, precision
• Grammar
  
  • Parts of speech: preposition, noun, pronoun, verb (main/helping, action/linking), adjective, adverb, conjunction
  • Parts of a sentence: subject, predicate, prepositional phrase, appositive phrase, [action verb: direct object, indirect object, objective complement], [linking verb: predicate nominative or predicate adjective], independent clause, subordinate/dependent clause
  • Punctuation: capitalization, ending sentences, apostrophes, quotation marks, commas
  • Correct use: consistent verb tense (correctly formed), subject/verb agreement, pronoun/antecedent agreement, fragments, run-ons, comma splices