MTTC English Language Arts (7-12) (130) flashcards

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

Transactional theory

Rosenblatt's view that meaning arises from a live transaction between reader, text, and context, so different readers and rereadings produce different constructions of the same text.

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do alone and what the learner can do with guidance from a more capable peer or adult.

Metacognitive monitoring

A reader's ongoing awareness of whether comprehension is succeeding, triggering repair strategies such as rereading, summarizing, or clarifying vocabulary when meaning breaks down.

Phoneme versus grapheme

A phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing sound unit, while a grapheme is the written letter or letter combination that represents that sound.

Derivational morpheme

A bound morpheme that attaches to a base and may change the word's meaning or part of speech, as the suffix -ness changes adjectives into nouns.

Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar

Prescriptive grammar states rules about how language should be used; descriptive grammar documents how speakers actually use language without judging correctness.

Register

A variety of language chosen to suit a particular audience, purpose, and social setting, ranging from formal academic prose to casual conversation among friends.

Compound-complex sentence

A sentence containing at least two independent clauses joined by coordination and at least one dependent clause attached through subordination.

Dramatic irony

A gap between what a character understands and what the audience knows, creating suspense or comic effect through the character's mistaken assumptions.

Unreliable narrator

A first-person teller whose account is distorted by limited knowledge, self-interest, or instability, requiring readers to read against the narration for evidence.

Straw man fallacy

Misrepresenting an opponent's position in a weakened form and then refuting that distorted version instead of the actual argument offered.

Synecdoche

A figure in which a part stands for the whole or the whole for a part, as in referring to hired hands for workers or to the crown for a monarch.

Villanelle

A nineteen-line fixed form with five tercets and a closing quatrain, using two rhymes and repeating two refrain lines in a set pattern.

Soliloquy

A speech delivered by a character alone on stage, revealing inner thoughts to the audience rather than to other characters in the scene.

Metaphysical conceit

An extended, intellectually ingenious comparison, often drawn from science or geography, characteristic of Donne and other seventeenth-century metaphysical poets.

Gothic fiction

A genre blending terror, mystery, and the supernatural in decaying settings, established in the late eighteenth century by writers such as Walpole and Radcliffe.

Stream of consciousness

A modernist narrative technique presenting the continuous, associative flow of a character's thought without conventional transitions or logical ordering.

Dramatic monologue

A poem spoken by a single character to an implied listener at a critical moment, revealing personality and circumstance through what is said and avoided.

In medias res

Beginning an epic or narrative in the middle of the action, with earlier events supplied later through flashback or exposition.

Recursive writing process

The non-linear model in which planning, drafting, revising, and editing recur and overlap as writers reconsider purpose, audience, and content throughout composition.

Six traits of writing

A framework for describing and assessing writing through ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.

Analytic rubric

A scoring guide that separates performance into distinct criteria, each with its own descriptive levels, allowing targeted feedback on specific writing traits.

MLA in-text citation

Parenthetical documentation giving the author's last name and page number with no punctuation between them, placed near the borrowed material.

Thesis statement

A single sentence that states an arguable, specific claim and forecasts the structure of the essay that will support it.

Ethos, pathos, logos

Aristotle's three modes of persuasion: credibility of the speaker, emotional appeal to the audience, and logical appeal through reasoning and evidence.

Critical listening

Listening that evaluates the logic, evidence, and credibility of a message rather than merely absorbing or empathizing with its content.

Card stacking

A persuasive media technique that presents only evidence favoring one side while suppressing or omitting contrary information.

Glittering generality

A persuasive technique using vague, emotionally appealing words such as freedom or honor that carry positive feeling without concrete meaning.

Backward design

Wiggins and McTighe's planning sequence that begins with desired results, then identifies acceptable evidence, and only then designs aligned learning activities.

Formative assessment

Ongoing, low-stakes evidence gathered during instruction, such as exit tickets or conferences, used to adjust teaching rather than to assign a final grade.

Criterion-referenced assessment

An assessment that interprets a student's performance against a defined standard or learning objective rather than against the scores of other students.

Differentiation

Adjusting content, process, or product in response to students' readiness, interests, and learning profiles so that each learner works at appropriate challenge.