FAST flashcards
FAST · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Central idea
- The main point a text develops about its topic, supported by details throughout; it is broader than a single fact and is often stated or implied.
- Theme
- A universal message or insight about life that a literary work conveys through characters, plot, and repeated ideas; it differs from the topic.
- Objective summary
- A brief restatement of a text's key ideas or events in logical order, using only information from the text and excluding personal opinions.
- Textual evidence
- A direct quotation, paraphrase, or specific detail from a text used to support an answer, claim, or inference about the reading.
- Connotation
- The emotional or cultural association a word carries beyond its dictionary meaning; it can be positive, negative, or neutral and shapes tone.
- Text structure
- The way an author organizes information, such as chronological order, cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, or description.
- Author's purpose
- The reason an author writes a text, commonly to inform, explain, persuade, or entertain; clues include tone, evidence, and audience.
- Point of view
- The perspective from which a story is told, such as first person, second person, or third person limited or omniscient.
- Claim and evidence
- A claim is a debatable position; evidence is verifiable information such as facts, statistics, quotations, or examples that supports the claim.
- Source reliability
- The trustworthiness of information judged by author expertise, publication reputation, date, bias, and whether other sources corroborate it.
- Fact versus opinion
- A fact is a statement that can be verified; an opinion expresses a belief, judgment, or feeling and cannot be proven true or false.
- Context clue
- Information in surrounding words, sentences, or text features that helps a reader infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
- Prefix
- A word part added before a base word that changes its meaning, such as un- meaning not or pre- meaning before.
- Denotation and connotation
- Denotation is a word's dictionary meaning; connotation is the emotional or cultural association it carries, which can affect tone.
- Homophone
- A word that sounds the same as another word but has a different spelling and meaning, such as to, too, and two.
- Thesis statement
- A sentence that states a text's central claim or position and previews the reasons or evidence the writer will develop.
- Text-based response
- A written answer that addresses a prompt, cites relevant evidence from the text, and explains how that evidence supports the answer.
- Transition
- A word or phrase that shows how ideas connect, signaling addition, contrast, cause and effect, sequence, or examples between sentences.
- Counterclaim
- An opposing position to a writer's claim; a strong argument acknowledges it and responds with evidence and reasoning in a rebuttal.
- Order of operations
- The agreed sequence for evaluating expressions: parentheses or grouping symbols, exponents, multiplication and division left to right, then addition and subtraction left to right.
- Reciprocal
- Two numbers whose product is 1, such as 3/4 and 4/3; dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by its reciprocal.
- Absolute value
- The distance of a number from zero on the number line, always nonnegative; the absolute value of both 5 and -5 is 5.
- Unit rate
- A rate that compares a quantity to exactly one unit of another quantity, found by dividing and used to compare prices or speeds.
- Slope-intercept form
- An equation written as y = mx + b, where m is the slope and b is the y-intercept, graphing as a straight line.
- Distributive property
- Multiplying a sum by a factor gives the same result as multiplying each addend by the factor and adding: a(b + c) = ab + ac.
- Inequality reversal rule
- When both sides of an inequality are multiplied or divided by a negative number, the inequality symbol must be reversed to keep it true.
- Pythagorean theorem
- In a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the legs: a² + b² = c².
- Similar figures
- Figures with the same shape but not necessarily the same size; corresponding angles are equal and corresponding side lengths are proportional.
- Supplementary angles
- Two angles whose measures add to 180 degrees; they can be adjacent or separate and are common with straight lines.
- Mean
- The arithmetic average found by adding all values in a data set and dividing by the number of values; it is affected by outliers.
- Probability
- A number from 0 to 1 describing how likely an event is, calculated as favorable outcomes divided by total possible outcomes when equally likely.
- Correlation versus causation
- Correlation means two variables change together; causation means one causes the other, which requires more evidence than a pattern alone.