short story & poetry terms review for mr. reddish’s 8 th grade language arts classes

Short Story & Poetry Terms Review

for Mr. Reddish’s 8th Grade Language Arts

classes

Short Story Terms

the people or animals that take part in the action

characters

the time and place of the action in a story

setting

a struggle between opposing forces

conflict

conflict that takes place in the mind of a character

internal conflict

conflict in which a character struggles with an outside force or

another person

external conflict

introduces the setting, the characters, and the basic situation

exposition

introduces the conflict, or problem/

events leading up to the climax

rising action

the turning point of a story / highest point of action

climax

the part of the story when the conflict lessens /

events after the climax

falling action

a story’s conclusion

resolution

the perspective from which a story is told

point of view

the contrast between an actual outcome and what the reader or the characters expect will happen

irony

the use of clues that hint at future events

foreshadowing

the use of scenes within a story that interrupt the sequence of

events to reveal past occurences

flashback

the central message expressed in a story

theme

a message about life that is often expressed in many different eras

and cultures

universal theme

Poetry Terms

the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words

alliteration

writing that is innovative, imaginative, and not meant to be

taken literally

figurative language

describes one thing as if it were something else

metaphor

uses like or as to compare two unlike things

simile

gives human qualities to something nonhuman

personification

the use of words that imitate sounds

onomatopoeia

writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses—

sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

imagery

help poets add natural pauses by breaking up a poem into many

individual parts

lines

occurs when the ends of lines share the same sound

end rhyme

when a rhyme occurs within a single line

internal rhyme

the pattern of rhyme in a poem

rhyme scheme

the use, more than once, of any element of language—a sound,

word, phrase, clause, or sentence

repetition

the character, or voice, who tells the poem

speaker

the arrangements of groups of lines to create an appearance on the page or to organize thoughts

stanzas