ASSEB HSLC Elective Santhali key terms

The Santhali language, written today most often in the Ol Chiki script invented by Raghunath Murmu; the medium of the whole paper and of all prescribed texts.

The alphabet of thirty letters created for Santhali, each letter named after a natural object or action; knowing its letter names and order helps in reading unseen passages.

Language; used in questions asking about the language of a text, its dialect, or the difference between spoken and written forms.

Sound or voice; in comprehension questions it refers to the spoken quality of words, and in poetry to the sound pattern that supports meaning.

The main idea or central thought of a passage; candidates must state it in one or two sentences rather than retelling the whole text.

Topic or subject matter; a question may ask what the subject of a paragraph is, distinct from the writer's opinion about it.

Purpose or aim; in prose questions it means the reason the writer produced the piece, such as to inform, persuade, warn, or entertain.

Summary or essence; a short restatement of a passage in the candidate's own words, keeping the order of ideas and dropping examples.

Story, talk, or matter; appears in titles of prose pieces and in idioms, so its exact sense depends on the sentence in which it stands.

A short story or narrative tale; a prescribed prose form whose features include characters, setting, conflict, and a closing turn of events.

A folk tale or old traditional story handed down orally; often tested for its moral and for the cultural values it preserves.

A riddle or puzzling traditional saying; useful in vocabulary sections where the candidate must explain a figurative expression in plain words.

Character in a story or play; questions ask about a character's qualities, motives, and change, supported by evidence from the text.

The hero or central figure of a narrative; distinguished from other characters by the share of action and sympathy the text gives them.

Poet; used when naming the author of a prescribed poem and when describing that poet's style, period, and recurring themes.

Song or poem meant to be sung; many Santhali poems carry a tune, so rhythm and refrain matter as much as literal meaning.

Rhythm or metrical movement in verse; the pattern of stressed and light syllables that gives a poem its beat when read aloud.

Simile; a figure of speech comparing two things with an explicit word such as 'like' or 'as', unlike a direct metaphor.

Metaphor; a figure in which one thing is spoken of as if it were another, without any word of comparison, so the image is fused.

Figurative or indirect expression; the quality that makes a line mean more than its literal words and that candidates must unpack in appreciation answers.

Personification; giving human feeling or speech to nature, animals, or objects, a device common in Santhali nature poetry.

Sandhi, the joining of two sounds at a word boundary, with the resulting change written or pronounced as one unit; tested by splitting and combining forms.

Compound formation, where two or more words combine into a single noun whose meaning is read from the parts; tested by expanding a compound into a phrase.

Case relation, the grammatical link between a noun and the verb, such as doer, object, instrument, place, or recipient; marked in Santhali largely by postpositions.

Verb, the word carrying the action or state in a sentence; questions test agreement with the subject and the choice of tense and aspect.

Tense, the grammatical marking of time as past, present, or future; candidates must convert sentences from one tense to another without changing meaning.

Sentence transformation, such as changing a statement into a question, a negative, or a passive, while keeping the original sense intact.

Number, singular or plural; agreement between noun and verb in number is a frequent trap in grammar items and in composition.

Suffix or affix added to a root to build a new word or form; recognising common affixes helps in deriving meanings of unfamiliar words.

Synonym, a word with nearly the same meaning as another; the vocabulary section asks candidates to supply or match such words in context.

Antonym, a word of opposite meaning; candidates should choose the opposite that fits the same part of speech and register as the given word.

Idiom, a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be guessed from its separate words; candidates must give its sense and often use it in a sentence.

Gender, a grammatical category that affects pronouns and some verb forms; errors here cost marks in transformation and composition tasks.

Letter, the informal or formal written message tested in composition; it needs sender, date, salutation, body, closing, and a suitable sign-off.

Essay, a structured piece of writing with an introduction, developed body paragraphs, and a conclusion, all on one controlling idea.

Application or petition, a formal written request addressed to an authority, following a fixed layout with subject line and polite closing.

News report or notice; an applied-writing task where the candidate states what happened, where, when, and who was involved, in plain order.

Biography or life sketch; a prose type that records a person's birth, struggles, achievements, and contribution to society in chronological order.

Plan or outline; in composition it means the rough skeleton of points drawn before writing, which keeps a long essay organised and on topic.