KSEAB SSLC TL English flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Theme

The central idea a whole text develops about life or human nature, expressible as a full sentence rather than a single topic word such as love or courage.

Indirect characterisation

Revealing a character's qualities through actions, speech, appearance or others' comments, so the reader infers the trait instead of being told it directly.

Valid inference

A conclusion drawn only when the passage supplies concrete textual evidence for it; a merely plausible guess unsupported by the text does not qualify.

Turning point

The moment in a narrative where the situation decisively changes direction, after which events move toward the climax and resolution.

Simile

A figure of speech comparing two unlike things using the words like or as, for example describing cheeks as red as roses.

Personification

A figure of speech giving human qualities, feelings or actions to non-human things, such as a wind that whispers or a road that waits.

Alliteration

Repetition of the same initial consonant sound in nearby words, as in wild and windy weather, used to create rhythm or emphasis.

Oxymoron

A compressed phrase joining two contradictory words, such as sweet sorrow or living death, to create a striking paradoxical effect.

Rhyme scheme

The pattern of end rhymes in a poem, shown by letters per line, so alternating rhyme appears as abab and couplets as aabb.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or comic effect, not meant to be read literally, as in I have told you a million times.

Climax

The point of highest tension in a story where the main conflict reaches its decisive confrontation and the outcome becomes inevitable.

Protagonist

The central character whose goal or struggle the narrative follows, regardless of whether that character is morally admirable.

Moral

The general principle about behaviour or values that a story's outcome implies, stated broadly enough to apply beyond the specific events.

Rising action

The section of a plot between the inciting incident and the climax, in which complications build and the conflict intensifies.

Subject-verb agreement

The rule that a verb matches its subject in number and person; intervening phrases do not change the subject's number.

Reported speech shift

When the reporting verb is past, the reported clause usually moves one tense back, and time words change, as now becomes then.

Third conditional

A sentence pattern using if plus past perfect in the condition and would have plus past participle in the result, describing unreal past situations.

Passive voice

A construction made of a form of be plus the past participle, used when the doer is unknown, unimportant or deliberately unstated.

Question tag

A short question added to a statement, repeating its auxiliary with reversed polarity, so a positive statement takes a negative tag.

Prefix

A bound morpheme attached before a root word, usually changing meaning rather than word class, as un- does in unhappy.

Suffix

A bound morpheme attached after a root word, frequently changing word class, as -ness turns the adjective kind into a noun.

Idiom

A fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out from its individual words, such as a piece of cake for something easy.

Phrasal verb

A verb combined with a particle that produces a new meaning, so give up means surrender while give away means donate.

Antonym

A word with a meaning opposite to another; pairs may be graded, like hot and cold, or complementary, like alive and dead.

Skimming and scanning

Skimming is rapid reading for overall gist; scanning is rapid search for one specific detail such as a date or name.

Not Given

A comprehension option used when the passage neither confirms nor contradicts a statement, which differs from False, where it contradicts.

Vocabulary in context

Determining a word's meaning from surrounding clues such as definitions, examples, contrasts and cause-effect links, rather than from a fixed list.

Notice format

A short public announcement headed NOTICE, naming the issuing body and date, with a bold heading, brief body and the writer's designation.

Yours faithfully

The formal letter closing used when the salutation is Dear Sir or Madam, that is, when the recipient's name is unknown.

Topic sentence

The sentence, usually first in a paragraph, that states the paragraph's single controlling idea which the remaining sentences support.

SOV versus SVO

Kannada typically orders subject, object, verb, while English orders subject, verb, object, so translation shifts the verb's position.

Summary proportion

The convention that a summary keeps main ideas in their original relative importance and runs to roughly one-third of the source length.