Mastering English Literature Elements, Vocabulary, and Scientific Experiments

Literary Elements and Storytelling

Dialogue is a conversation between characters. It reveals character traits and it advances the action or plot in a story. Dialogue shows the speaker’s exact words and is usually enclosed in quotation marks (“”).

Plot is the sequence of events that happen in a story. These events can be presented in chronological, or time, order. Sometimes, they may be told through flashbacks. A flashback is a scene from the past that interrupts the sequence of events. Flashbacks show a character’s memories, dreams, or accounts of past events.

Essential Academic Vocabulary: Part One

• Accompany: go somewhere with someone
• Assist: help
• Goal: something you want to do in the future
• Interpreter: someone who translates the spoken words in one language into another language
• Locate: find the exact position
• Adjacent: very close or next to
• Chart: a presentation of information in the form of graphs or tables
• Erode: destroy gradually by wind, rain, or acid
• Found: discovered by searching or by chance
• Labels: written words or phrases that name or describe something
• Physical: relation to the body, not the mind; having material existence

Practical Science: How to Make a Simple Compass

You can make your own simple compass.

Materials Needed

• A sewing needle
• A magnet
• A small cork
• A plastic container filled with water

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Magnetize the needle by moving the magnet over the tip of the needle twenty-five to fifty times in the same direction.
2. Carefully push the needle through the side of the cork.
3. Place the container of water on a table or desk.
4. Gently place the cork on the surface of the water.
5. Watch as the needle points north. Now you can determine south, east, and west.

Transition and Sequence Words

Sequence words help organize text and actions smoothly: first, second, third, then, next, now, after that, last, finally.

Figurative Language and Literary Devices

Onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate the sounds they represent. Examples include words such as splash, zip, and slurp.

Hyperbole is a way of describing something by exaggerating on purpose—saying that it is much bigger, smaller, faster, slower, or in some other way more than it really is. Tall tales use hyperbole to exaggerate the qualities of the setting and the characters.

Essential Academic Vocabulary: Part Two

• Instruct: teach
• Invisible: not able to be seen
• Partnership: relationship in which two or more people work together
• Rigid: stiff and still
• Substitute: use something new or different instead of something else
• Unique: unusually good and special
• Maintain: continue in the same way as before
• Survey: a set of questions designed to get information
• Tradition: belief or custom that has existed for a long time
• Ultimate: best, biggest, worst, etc., in comparison to others of the same kind
• Widespread: happening in many places among many people or in many situations

Advanced Vocabulary Bank

Elevation, geographical, kilometer, relief, scale, sea level, harvested, independence, missionaries, ranching, settlers, sharecroppers.