MATSEC AM English cheat sheet

Skimming yields gist and text structure; scanning locates specific data such as dates, names, figures, and keywords.

Main idea = topic + the writer's controlling point about it; supporting details illustrate, prove, or qualify that point.

Fact is verifiable independently of the writer; opinion expresses judgement, evaluation, or prediction and often carries evaluative adjectives.

Inference must be anchored in textual evidence plus logical reasoning; an unsupported guess is not an inference.

Tone words to recognise: ironic, nostalgic, indignant, detached, celebratory, cautionary, resigned, sardonic.

Register signals: contractions, phrasal verbs, and direct address suggest informal register; nominalisation and passive voice suggest formal register.

Cohesive devices: reference (pronouns), substitution (do so, one), ellipsis, conjunction (however, therefore), lexical cohesion (synonyms, repetition).

A summary condenses the source's main points in the candidate's own words, preserves proportion and stance, and omits examples and repetition.

Argument structure: claim, supporting reason, evidence, acknowledgement of counter-argument, rebuttal, conclusion.

Paragraph unity requires one controlling idea per paragraph; the topic sentence states it, the closing sentence links forward or concludes.

Discursive essay moves between positions; argumentative essay commits to one position and defends it throughout.

Formal letter conventions: sender address, date, recipient address, salutation (Dear Sir/Madam), body, Yours faithfully (unknown name) or Yours sincerely (named recipient).

Article conventions: headline, byline optional, hook opening, subheadings permitted, direct address to reader, closing call to action or reflection.

Review conventions: brief description, evaluative judgement, evidence from the work, recommendation to a defined audience.

Cohesion checklist: consistent tense sequence, pronoun antecedent clarity, varied sentence length, controlled use of discourse markers.

Register consistency: avoid mixing slang and Latinate formality in the same text; match vocabulary to audience and purpose.

Narrative point of view: first person (limited, unreliable possible), second person (address), third-person limited, third-person omniscient.

Free indirect discourse blends third-person narration with a character's idiom and judgements without quotation marks.

Dramatic irony arises when the audience knows something a character does not; verbal irony says the opposite of what is meant.

Sonnet: 14 lines; Petrarchan divides 8 (octave) + 6 (sestet) rhyming abbaabba + cdecde; Shakespearean divides 3 quatrains + couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.

Metre terms: iamb (unstressed-stressed), trochee (stressed-unstressed), pentameter (five feet), blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).

Figures: metaphor (implied comparison), simile (like/as), personification, synecdoche (part for whole), metonymy (associated object for concept), oxymoron.

Unseen poem method: read for literal sense, identify speaker and situation, map structure and volta, analyse imagery and sound, then link form to meaning.

Character analysis requires evidence of speech, action, description by others, and development or stasis across the text.

Subject-verb agreement: intervening phrases do not change the number of the subject; 'each', 'every', 'neither' as subject take singular verbs.

Pronoun case: after prepositions and as object use me/him/her/them; as subject complement formal usage prefers it was he/she.

Tense sequence: past narrative frames past perfect for prior events; reported speech shifts present to past and backshifts modals (will to would).

Conditionals: zero (present + present), first (present + will), second (past + would), third (past perfect + would have).

Apostrophes mark possession (singular 's, plural s') and omission in contractions; 'its' is possessive, 'it's' means it is.

Comma splice joins two independent clauses with only a comma; remedy with full stop, semicolon, or coordinating conjunction.

Dangling modifier: the introductory participle must share its subject with the main clause subject.

Common confusions: affect (verb) versus effect (noun); complement versus compliment; principal (main) versus principle (rule); fewer (countable) versus less (mass).