TExES ELAR 7-12 (331) flashcards

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

Phonemic awareness

The ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words, such as blending, segmenting, and deleting sounds; it is a subset of phonological awareness and involves no print.

Phonological awareness

Umbrella term for awareness of spoken language units including words, syllables, rhyme, and onset-rime; it develops before phonics and does not require letters or written text.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a language; free morphemes can stand alone as words, while bound morphemes such as prefixes and suffixes must attach to a base.

Derivational versus inflectional affixes

Derivational affixes build new words and often change part of speech; inflectional affixes mark grammatical information such as tense, number, or comparison without changing the word class.

Krashen's affective filter

The hypothesis that anxiety, low motivation, and low self-confidence raise an emotional barrier that blocks comprehensible input from reaching the learner's language acquisition system.

Cognate

A word in one language that shares an origin, form, and meaning with a word in another language, such as Spanish familia and English family; useful for building English vocabulary.

Semantics versus pragmatics

Semantics is the study of literal word and sentence meaning; pragmatics is how context, speaker intent, and social conventions shape the interpretation of an utterance.

Literal comprehension

Understanding information explicitly stated in a text, including facts, sequence, and directly stated main ideas; it forms the foundation beneath inferential and evaluative comprehension.

Inferential comprehension

Constructing meaning that is implied rather than stated, requiring the reader to combine textual clues with prior knowledge to draw conclusions, predictions, and interpretations.

Compare-contrast text structure

An organizational pattern that explains similarities and differences among two or more subjects, typically signaled by cue words such as both, however, unlike, and similarly.

Dramatic irony

A device in which the audience or reader knows information that a character does not, creating tension, suspense, or humor from the character's mistaken understanding.

Third-person limited point of view

A narrator outside the story reports events while revealing the thoughts and feelings of only one character, usually the protagonist, keeping other minds opaque.

Theme

A central insight about life or human nature conveyed by a literary work, expressed as a complete statement rather than a single topic word such as love or courage.

Soliloquy

A speech in a play delivered by a character who is alone on stage, disclosing inner thoughts and motives to the audience rather than to other characters.

Six traits of writing

A descriptive framework made of ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions, used to teach writing qualities and to structure analytic scoring.

Revising versus editing

Revision reshapes content, organization, and clarity of ideas; editing corrects surface conventions such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar after the ideas are settled.

Analytic rubric

A scoring guide that evaluates separate traits or criteria independently, producing detailed feedback and a profile of a writer's relative strengths and weaknesses across dimensions.

Warrant

In argumentation, the assumption or principle that links a piece of evidence to a claim, explaining why that evidence counts as support for the position.

Rebuttal

The portion of an argument that acknowledges and then refutes an opposing counterclaim, strengthening the writer's position through reasoning or additional evidence.

Sentence combining

An instructional technique in which students merge short, choppy sentences into longer complex or compound constructions to build syntactic fluency and reduce repetition.

Ethos, pathos, logos

The three classical rhetorical appeals: ethos establishes the speaker's credibility, pathos stirs the audience's emotions, and logos relies on logic and evidence.

Ad hominem fallacy

An argument that attacks the character, motives, or circumstances of the person making a claim instead of addressing the substance of the claim itself.

CRAAP test

A source evaluation framework that checks currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose to decide whether information is credible and appropriate for a research task.

Primary source

An original document or artifact created during the period being studied, such as letters, diaries, raw data, photographs, or eyewitness accounts that provide direct evidence.

Secondary source

A work that interprets, analyzes, or summarizes primary evidence, such as a textbook chapter, scholarly review article, biography, or critical essay.

Media literacy

The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce messages in varied media formats by examining purpose, audience, production techniques, and embedded values.

Gradual release of responsibility

An instructional sequence moving from teacher modeling to shared practice to guided collaborative work to independent application, transferring increasing control of the task to students.

Formative assessment

Ongoing checks for understanding during instruction that inform immediate teaching adjustments and give students feedback; typically low-stakes and not used for final grades.

Summative assessment

Evaluation administered at the end of a unit, course, or year to measure mastery against standards, usually graded and used for reporting, placement, or accountability decisions.

Miscue analysis

Examination of oral reading errors to determine whether a reader draws on semantic, syntactic, or graphophonic cueing systems, revealing the strategies the reader uses.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability concerns consistency of scores across raters, occasions, and item samples; validity concerns the degree to which an assessment measures the construct it claims to measure.

Three-tier RTI model

Tier 1 provides core classroom instruction for all students, Tier 2 adds targeted small-group intervention, and Tier 3 delivers intensive individualized support with frequent progress monitoring.