The Sunday News
Learn the following words for future use:
Character: a person though not necessarily a human being who takes part in the action of a literary work.
Characterisation: the act of creating and developing a character through narration, description, and dialogue.
Climax: the high point of interest or suspense in a literary work.
Coherence: a quality of written work in which all flows logically from one idea to the next. Complement: a word or group of words that completes the meaning of a verb.
Brainstorming: a pre-writing technique in which a group jots down as many ideas as possible about a given topic. Diction: a writer’s word choice.
Direct object: a noun or pronoun that receives the action of a transitive verb.
Transitive verb: is a verb that requires a direct object which is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that follows the verb and completes the sentence meaning by indicating the person or thing that receives the action of the verb.
Intransitive verb: an action verb that does not take a direct object. Interrogative pronoun: a word such as which and who that introduces a question. Interrogative sentence: a question that is punctuated with a question mark. I
ndefinite pronoun: a word such as anyone each, or many that refers to a person, place or thing, without specifying which one. Independent clause: a group of words that contains both a subject and a verb and that can stand by itself as a complete sentence.
Infinitive: the form of a verb that comes after the word to and acts as a noun, adjective, or adverb. Oxymoron: is a figure of speech that fuses two contradictory or opposing ideas, such as, “freezing fire”, or “happy grief” or “cold fire”.
Paradox: a statement that seems to be contradictory but that actually presents a truth. Personal pronoun: a word such as I, me, you, we, us, he, him, she, her, they, and them that refers to the person speaking, the person spoken to; or the person, place, or thing spoken about.
Onomatopoeia: words such as buzz and plop that suggest the sounds they name. Opinion: are beliefs that can be supported but not proved to be true whereas fact is a statement that can be proved true.
Five Ws: this is a pre-writing technique in which writers gather details about a topic by generating answers to the following questions: Who? What? Where? When? And Why? Connotation: the emotional associations that a word calls to mind.
Tone: this is a writer’s attitude toward the readers and toward the subject.
Remember topic sentence: a sentence that states the main idea of a paragraph. Topical paragraph: is a paragraph that develops, explains, and supports the topic sentence related to an essay’s theses statement. Subordinate clause: a group of words containing both a subject and a verb that cannot stand by itself as a complete sentence.
Statistics: facts presented in numerical form, such as ratios, percentages, or summaries. Theme: the central idea, concern, or purpose in a piece of narrative writing, poetry or drama. Symbol: something is itself and also stands for something else.
Allegory: a literary work with two or more levels of meaning — a literal level and one or more symbolic levels. Alliteration: the repetition of initial consonants sounds in accented syllables. Allusion: an indirect reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.
Functional paragraph: a paragraph that performs a specific role in composition such as to arouse or sustain interest, to indicate dialogue and to make a transition. Image is a word or phrase that appeals to o – sight, hearing, touch, one or more of the senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Imagery: the descriptive language used to recreate sensory experiences, set a tone, suggest emotions and guide readers’ reactions.
As stated before the terms listed here remain useless as long as they are not used correctly in writing. Their correct usage in sentences demonstrate full understanding.
A word of advice. In order to do well in the examinations is not a one-day thing. I would like to call it a process. You need to work hard all the time even if you are not in an examination class. Stay focussed. Widen your area of study.
There are many competitions which go along with learning such as public speaking or essay writing competitions. Many learners are afraid to take part in them yet they are open to all of them. Those who venture into them have benefited a lot. They might not have won but being part of the sessions has enlightened them.
So learners, get involved and take part in those activities, you will never regret having done so. Many learners have won prizes through those interactions. Fear of failure appears to be a hindrance to many learners whose potential remains untapped.
Temperatures have plummeted to unfavourable levels which calls upon learners to keep themselves warm at all times if we are to avoid falling victim to the dreaded Covid-19. Let us not be complacent about it if we are to reduce chances of getting it.
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