Language Features

Question 1

Collective Noun

Answer 1

a count noun that denotes a group of individuals (e.g. assembly, family, crew ).

Question 2

Abstract Noun

Answer 2

a noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object, e.g. truth, danger, happiness.
“the website contains considerably more abstract nouns than hard facts”

Question 3

Determiner

Answer 3

a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every.

Question 4

Adverb

Answer 4

a word or phrase that modifies the meaning of an adjective, verb, or other adverb, expressing manner, place, time, or degree (e.g. gently, here, now, very ). Some adverbs, for example sentence adverbs, can also be used to modify whole sentences.

Question 5

Pronoun.

Answer 5

a word that can function as a noun phrase used by itself and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g. I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g. she, it, this ).

Question 6

Noun

Answer 6

a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things ( common noun ), or to name a particular one of these ( proper noun ).

Question 7

Proper Noun

Answer 7

a name used for an individual person, place, or organization, spelled with an initial capital letter, e.g. Jane, London, and Oxfam.

Question 8

Verb

Answer 8

a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.

Question 9

Common Noun

Answer 9

a noun denoting a class of objects or a concept as opposed to a particular individual.

Question 10

Concrete noun

Answer 10

a noun denoting a material object rather than an abstract quality, state, or action, e.g. dog, building, tree.
“the list consisted of 20 high-frequency concrete nouns”

Question 11

Preposition

Answer 11

a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in ‘the man on the platform’, ‘she arrived after dinner’, ‘what did you do it for ?’.

Question 12

Adjective

Answer 12

a word naming an attribute of a noun, such as sweet, red, or technical.

Question 13

Imperative

Answer 13

denoting the mood of a verb that expresses a command or exhortation, as in come here!.

Question 14

Superlative

Answer 14

(of an adjective or adverb) expressing the highest or a very high degree of a quality (e.g. bravest, most fiercely ).

Question 15

Main Clause

Answer 15

a clause that can form a complete sentence standing alone, having a subject and a predicate.

Question 16

Modal Verb

Answer 16

an auxiliary verb that expresses necessity or possibility. English modal verbs include must, shall, will, should, would, can, could, may, and might.

Question 17

Sentence fragment

Answer 17

Sentence fragments are groups of words that look like sentences, but aren’t. To be a sentence, groups of words need to have at least one independent clause. An independent clause is any group of words that contain both a subject and a verb and can stand on its own

Question 18

Protagonist

Answer 18

the leading character or one of the major characters in a play, film, novel, etc.

Question 19

Antagonist

Answer 19

a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.

Question 20

Subordinate Clause

Answer 20

a clause, typically introduced by a conjunction, that forms part of and is dependent on a main clause (e.g. ‘when it rang’ in ‘she answered the phone when it rang’).

Question 21

Monologue

Answer 21

a long speech by one actor in a play or film, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast programme.

Question 22

Oxymoron

Answer 22

a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true ).

Question 23

Hyperbole

Answer 23

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Question 24

Colloquial

Answer 24

(of language) used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary.

Question 25

Lexis

Answer 25

the total stock of words in a language.

Question 26

Semantic Field

Answer 26

a lexical set of semantically related items, for example verbs of perception.

Question 27

Pathetic Fallecy

Answer 27

Technique where the environment (usually the weather) reflects the emotions of the main character.

Question 28

Connotations

Answer 28

An idea or image which is suggested by a word, which is not its dictionary meaning, eg the connotation of 'desk' might be school.

Question 29

Literary device

Answer 29

Any method an author uses to add meaning or interest to a text, such as metaphors, similes or alliteration.

Question 30

Synecdoche

Answer 30

A type of metaphor where you use part of something to refer to the whole. For example, in the phrase ‘all hands on deck’, the hands are people and the deck is the ship.

Question 31

Ominous

Answer 31

Suggestive of danger to come.

Question 32

Dialect

Answer 32

The language of a particular subset of English speakers - often those living in a particular place - having its own unique diction, vocabulary, spelling and even grammar.

Question 33

Active Voice

Answer 33

one of two voices in English; a direct form of expression where the subject performs or "acts" the verb; see also passive voice eg: "Many people eat rice"

Question 34

Adjunction

Answer 34

word or phrase that adds information to a sentence and that can be removed from the sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical eg: I met John at school.

Question 35

Affirmative

Answer 35

statement that expresses (or claims to express) a truth or "yes" meaning; opposite of negative eg: The sun is hot.

Question 36

Affix

Answer 36

``` language unit (morpheme) that occurs before or after (or sometimes within) the root or stem of a word eg: un- in unhappy (prefix), -ness in happiness (suffix) ```

Question 37

antecedent

Answer 37

word, phrase or clause that is replaced by a pronoun (or other substitute) when mentioned subsequently (in the same sentence or later) eg: "Emily is nice because she brings me flowers."

Question 38

appositive

Answer 38

noun phrase that re-identifies or describes its neighbouring noun eg: "Canada, a multicultural country, is recognized by its maple leaf

Question 39

Aspect

Answer 39

feature of some verb forms that relates to duration or completion of time; verbs can have no aspect (simple), or can have continuous or progressive aspect (expressing duration), or have perfect or perfective aspect (expressing completion)

Question 40

Bare infinitive

Answer 40

unmarked form of the verb (no indication of tense, mood, person, or aspect) without the particle "to"; typically used after modal auxiliary verbs; see also infinitive eg: "He should come", "I can swim"

Question 41

Base Form

Answer 41

basic form of a verb before conjugation into tenses etc | eg: be, speak

Question 42

Causative verb

Answer 42

verb that causes things to happen such as "make", "get" and "have"; the subject does not perform the action but is indirectly responsible for it eg: "She made me go to school", "I had my nails painted"

Question 43

Comparative

Answer 43

form of an adjective or adverb made with "-er" or "more" that is used to show differences or similarities between two things (not three or more things) eg: colder, more quickly

Question 44

Complement

Answer 44

part of a sentence that completes or adds meaning to the predicate eg: Mary did not say where she was going.

Question 45

Concord

Answer 45

another term for agreement

Question 46

Conditional

Answer 46

structure in English where one action depends on another ("if-then" or "then-if" structure); most common are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd conditionals eg: "If I win I will be happy", "I would be happy if I won"

Question 47

Past Perfect

Answer 47

tense that refers to the past in the past; formed with HAD + VERB-ed eg: "We had stopped the car"

Question 48

Past participle

Answer 48

``` verb form (V3) - usually made by adding "-ed" to the base verb - typically used in perfect and passive tenses, and sometimes as an adjective eg: "I have finished", "It was seen by many people", "boiled eggs" ```

Question 49

Person

Answer 49

grammatical category that identifies people in a conversation; there are three persons: 1st person (pronouns I/me, we/us) is the speaker(s), 2nd person (pronoun you) is the listener(s), 3rd person (pronouns he/him, she/her, it, they/them) is everybody or everything else

Question 50

Subjective Case

Answer 50

case form of a pronoun indicating a subject | eg: Did she tell you about her?

Question 51

Subjunctive

Answer 51

fairly rare verb form typically used to talk about events that are not certain to happen, usually something that someone wants, hopes or imagines will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE (except past of "be") eg: "The President requests that John attend the meeting"

Question 52

Suffix

Answer 52

affix that occurs after the root or stem of a word | eg: happiness, quickly

Question 53

SVO

Answer 53

subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the verb and then the object eg: "The man crossed the street"

Question 54

Syntax

Answer 54

sentence structure; the rules about sentence structure

Question 55

Tag question

Answer 55

special construction with statement that ends in a mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question; the mini-question is a question tag; usually used to obtain confirmation eg: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat meat, do you?"

Question 56

Third Conditional

Answer 56

"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a possible event in the past that did not happen (and is therefore now impossible) eg: "If we had won the lottery we would have bought a car"

Question 57

Transitive Verb

Answer 57

action verb that has a direct object (receiver of the action); see also intransitive verb eg: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV"

Question 58

Uncountable Nouns

Answer 58

thing that you cannot count, such as substances or concepts; see also countable nouns eg: water, furniture, music

Question 59

Usage

Answer 59

way in which words and constructions are normally used in any particular language

Question 60

V1,V2,V3

Answer 60

referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 - being the base, past and past participle that students typically learn for irregular verbs eg: speak, spoke, spoken

Question 61

Voice

Answer 61

form of a verb that shows the relation of the subject to the action; there are two voices in English: active, passive

Question 62

WH-question

Answer 62

question using a WH-word and expecting an answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are "open" questions; see also yes-no question eg: Where are you going?

Question 63

Yes-No question

Answer 63

question to which the answer is yes or no; yes-no questions are "closed" questions; see also WH-question eg: "Do you like coffee?"

Question 64

Word order

Answer 64

order or sequence in which words occur within a sentence; basic word order for English is subject-verb-object or SVO

Question 65

Plot

Answer 65

The events of a story

Question 66

Symbolism

Answer 66

the use of symbols to represent ideas or | qualities.

Question 67

Motif

Answer 67

a pattern or recurring idea in an artistic work.

Question 68

Slang

Answer 68

Informal words to be used mostly in speech with a particular social group.

Question 69

Jargon

Answer 69

Specialist language for the topic

Question 70

Colloquial

Answer 70

General informal language. Understood by all unlike slang

Question 71

Narative Writing Definition

Answer 71

A narrative or story is a report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, or still or moving images, or both.

Question 72

Definition of Descriptive writing

Answer 72

DEFINITION OF DESCRIPTIVE WRITING. DESCRIPTIVE WRITING is the clear description of people, places, objects, or events using appropriate details. An effective description will contain sufficient and varied elaboration of details to communicate a sense of the subject being described.