CSET English (Subtests I 105 & II 106) cheat sheet

Informational text structures: description, sequence/chronological, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution. Signal words (because, however, similarly, first, as a result) are the fastest structural cue.

Text features in informational text (headings, captions, bold terms, sidebars, indexes, diagrams) carry meaning independent of body prose; questions may test what a caption or heading contributes.

Main idea vs. theme: informational texts have a main idea supported by key details; literary texts have a theme, an implied comment on life conveyed through characters, plot, and imagery.

Author's purpose categories: to inform/expose, to persuade/argue, to entertain/narrate, to explain/instruct, to describe. Purpose is inferred from tone, structure, and evidence selection, not from topic alone.

Point of view in informational text includes first-person participant, first-person observer, third-person objective, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient; bias often tracks with which perspectives are omitted.

Argument evaluation: a claim needs reasons plus evidence (facts, statistics, expert testimony, examples, anecdotes). Distinguish evidence from appeals to emotion, authority without expertise, and circular reasoning.

Text complexity is judged on three legs: quantitative (readability measures such as Lexile), qualitative (levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality, knowledge demands), and reader/task considerations.

Chronological and sequential structures are cued by dates and ordinals; comparison-contrast by unlike/similar/both; problem-solution by a stated difficulty followed by remedies and their limits.

Inference rule for constructed response: cite the smallest piece of textual evidence that, combined with background knowledge, logically forces the stated conclusion.

Plot arc: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax (turning point), falling action, resolution/denouement. Conflict types: person vs. self, person, nature, society, technology, fate.

Narrative point of view: first person (I), second person (you, rare), third-person omniscient (access to all minds), third-person limited (one character's mind), third-person objective/dramatic (behavior only, no interior access).

Characterization: direct (explicit statement by narrator) vs. indirect (speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions, looks). Flat/static vs. round/dynamic characters; foil characters sharpen contrast.

Figurative language: simile (like/as), metaphor (direct identification), personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy (attribute for thing), synecdoche (part for whole), apostrophe (address to absent entity).

Sound devices: alliteration (initial consonants), assonance (vowel repetition), consonance (final consonants), onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme scheme. These shape tone and pace, not just decoration.

Irony types: verbal (speaker means opposite), situational (outcome reverses expectation), dramatic (audience knows what character does not). Irony requires a gap between appearance and reality.

Poetic forms: sonnet (14 lines; Petrarchan octave/sestet, Shakespearean three quatrains/couplet), ballad, ode, elegy, epic, haiku, free verse, villanelle (19 lines, two rhymes, two refrains).

Symbol vs. motif vs. allegory: a symbol is an object carrying abstract meaning; a motif is a recurring element building theme; allegory is a sustained one-to-one correspondence across a whole work.

Tone is the author's attitude (detectable through diction, syntax, imagery); mood is the reader's felt atmosphere. Diction categories: concrete/abstract, denotative/connotative, formal/colloquial.

Phoneme is the smallest unit of sound; grapheme is the written representation. English has roughly 44 phonemes and about 26 letters, so spelling is not a one-to-one sound mapping.

Phonological awareness is the umbrella (syllables, rhyme, onset-rime, phoneme manipulation); phonemic awareness is the narrow skill of isolating and manipulating individual phonemes.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning: free morphemes stand alone (dog, run); bound morphemes must attach (un-, -ed, -s). Inflectional affixes change grammar (-s, -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -'s); derivational affixes change word class or meaning (un-, -ness, -ly).

Syntax: a phrase has a head with no subject-predicate pairing; a clause does. Independent clauses stand alone; dependent clauses (subordinate, relative, adverbial) do not.

Sentence types by structure: simple (one independent clause), compound (two or more independent, coordinated), complex (one independent plus one or more dependent), compound-complex.

Semantics vs. pragmatics: semantics concerns literal word and sentence meaning; pragmatics concerns meaning in context, including implicature, speech acts, and presupposition.

Language acquisition stages: cooing, babbling, one-word/holophrastic, two-word/telegraphic, then multiword with overgeneralization errors ("goed," "mouses") that show rule learning, not imitation.

Miscue analysis: substitutions, omissions, insertions, and reversals reveal whether a reader is using meaning (semantic), structure (syntactic), or visual (graphophonic) cueing systems.

Second-language terms: BICS (conversational fluency, roughly 1-2 years) vs. CALP (academic language, roughly 5-7 years); L1 transfer, interference, and the silent period are normal developmental features.

Rhetorical triangle: speaker/writer, audience, message, with context. Ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), logos (logic) are appeals, not organizational patterns.

Classical arrangement: exordium (introduction), narratio (background), partitio (division/thesis), confirmatio (proof), refutatio (rebuttal), peroratio (conclusion).

Thesis test: a thesis is arguable, specific, and supportable. A statement of fact or a broad topic is not a thesis.

Paragraph unity requires one controlling idea; coherence comes from transitions, pronoun reference, parallel structure, and consistent order of old-to-new information.

Evidence hierarchy in argument: relevant, sufficient, representative, and accurately cited. Warrants (Toulmin) are the unstated assumptions linking evidence to claim; rebuttals limit the claim's scope.

Logical fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, hasty generalization, post hoc, appeal to authority, begging the question, red herring, bandwagon.

Drafting and revision are separate passes: global revision (thesis, organization, evidence, audience fit) precedes local editing (sentence variety, word choice, grammar, mechanics).

Grammar mechanics tested in context: subject-verb agreement with intervening phrases, pronoun-antecedent agreement, comma splices, fused sentences, dangling and misplaced modifiers, parallel construction in lists.

Citation and attribution: quotation marks mark exact wording; paraphrase still needs citation; common knowledge needs none. MLA (humanities) and APA (social sciences) differ chiefly in in-text format and reference list style.

Informational text structures: description, sequence/chronological, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution. Signal words (because, however, similarly, first, as a result) are the fastest structural cue.

Text features in informational text (headings, captions, bold terms, sidebars, indexes, diagrams) carry meaning independent of body prose; questions may test what a caption or heading contributes.

Main idea vs. theme: informational texts have a main idea supported by key details; literary texts have a theme, an implied comment on life conveyed through characters, plot, and imagery.

Author's purpose categories: to inform/expose, to persuade/argue, to entertain/narrate, to explain/instruct, to describe. Purpose is inferred from tone, structure, and evidence selection, not from topic alone.

Point of view in informational text includes first-person participant, first-person observer, third-person objective, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient; bias often tracks with which perspectives are omitted.

Argument evaluation: a claim needs reasons plus evidence (facts, statistics, expert testimony, examples, anecdotes). Distinguish evidence from appeals to emotion, authority without expertise, and circular reasoning.

Text complexity is judged on three legs: quantitative (readability measures such as Lexile), qualitative (levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality, knowledge demands), and reader/task considerations.

Chronological and sequential structures are cued by dates and ordinals; comparison-contrast by unlike/similar/both; problem-solution by a stated difficulty followed by remedies and their limits.

Inference rule for constructed response: cite the smallest piece of textual evidence that, combined with background knowledge, logically forces the stated conclusion.

Plot arc: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax (turning point), falling action, resolution/denouement. Conflict types: person vs. self, person, nature, society, technology, fate.

Narrative point of view: first person (I), second person (you, rare), third-person omniscient (access to all minds), third-person limited (one character's mind), third-person objective/dramatic (behavior only, no interior access).

Characterization: direct (explicit statement by narrator) vs. indirect (speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions, looks). Flat/static vs. round/dynamic characters; foil characters sharpen contrast.

Figurative language: simile (like/as), metaphor (direct identification), personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy (attribute for thing), synecdoche (part for whole), apostrophe (address to absent entity).

Sound devices: alliteration (initial consonants), assonance (vowel repetition), consonance (final consonants), onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme scheme. These shape tone and pace, not just decoration.

Irony types: verbal (speaker means opposite), situational (outcome reverses expectation), dramatic (audience knows what character does not). Irony requires a gap between appearance and reality.

Poetic forms: sonnet (14 lines; Petrarchan octave/sestet, Shakespearean three quatrains/couplet), ballad, ode, elegy, epic, haiku, free verse, villanelle (19 lines, two rhymes, two refrains).

Symbol vs. motif vs. allegory: a symbol is an object carrying abstract meaning; a motif is a recurring element building theme; allegory is a sustained one-to-one correspondence across a whole work.

Tone is the author's attitude (detectable through diction, syntax, imagery); mood is the reader's felt atmosphere. Diction categories: concrete/abstract, denotative/connotative, formal/colloquial.

Phoneme is the smallest unit of sound; grapheme is the written representation. English has roughly 44 phonemes and about 26 letters, so spelling is not a one-to-one sound mapping.

Phonological awareness is the umbrella (syllables, rhyme, onset-rime, phoneme manipulation); phonemic awareness is the narrow skill of isolating and manipulating individual phonemes.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning: free morphemes stand alone (dog, run); bound morphemes must attach (un-, -ed, -s). Inflectional affixes change grammar (-s, -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -'s); derivational affixes change word class or meaning (un-, -ness, -ly).

Syntax: a phrase has a head with no subject-predicate pairing; a clause does. Independent clauses stand alone; dependent clauses (subordinate, relative, adverbial) do not.

Sentence types by structure: simple (one independent clause), compound (two or more independent, coordinated), complex (one independent plus one or more dependent), compound-complex.

Semantics vs. pragmatics: semantics concerns literal word and sentence meaning; pragmatics concerns meaning in context, including implicature, speech acts, and presupposition.

Language acquisition stages: cooing, babbling, one-word/holophrastic, two-word/telegraphic, then multiword with overgeneralization errors ("goed," "mouses") that show rule learning, not imitation.

Miscue analysis: substitutions, omissions, insertions, and reversals reveal whether a reader is using meaning (semantic), structure (syntactic), or visual (graphophonic) cueing systems.

Second-language terms: BICS (conversational fluency, roughly 1-2 years) vs. CALP (academic language, roughly 5-7 years); L1 transfer, interference, and the silent period are normal developmental features.

Rhetorical triangle: speaker/writer, audience, message, with context. Ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), logos (logic) are appeals, not organizational patterns.

Classical arrangement: exordium (introduction), narratio (background), partitio (division/thesis), confirmatio (proof), refutatio (rebuttal), peroratio (conclusion).

Thesis test: a thesis is arguable, specific, and supportable. A statement of fact or a broad topic is not a thesis.

Paragraph unity requires one controlling idea; coherence comes from transitions, pronoun reference, parallel structure, and consistent order of old-to-new information.

Evidence hierarchy in argument: relevant, sufficient, representative, and accurately cited. Warrants (Toulmin) are the unstated assumptions linking evidence to claim; rebuttals limit the claim's scope.

Logical fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, hasty generalization, post hoc, appeal to authority, begging the question, red herring, bandwagon.

Drafting and revision are separate passes: global revision (thesis, organization, evidence, audience fit) precedes local editing (sentence variety, word choice, grammar, mechanics).

Grammar mechanics tested in context: subject-verb agreement with intervening phrases, pronoun-antecedent agreement, comma splices, fused sentences, dangling and misplaced modifiers, parallel construction in lists.

Citation and attribution: quotation marks mark exact wording; paraphrase still needs citation; common knowledge needs none. MLA (humanities) and APA (social sciences) differ chiefly in in-text format and reference list style.