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RLA Writing/Grammar
RLA STAAR vocabulary Writing and Grammar
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Personal narrative | tells about a personal experience one has had (A time when...) |
Expository writing | informational writing, which EXPLAINS something or someone (Explain...) |
Subject of a sentence | who or what a sentence is about |
Predicate of a sentence | what the subject of the sentence is doing |
Simple sentence | one complete thought (The girl made a good grade on her tests) |
Compound sentence | more than one complete thought combined with a comma and a conjunction (The girl made a good grade on her test, so her parents rewarded her with ice cream.) |
Elaborate | to add detail using the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, why, & how) |
Conclude | to close or end (concluding paragraph; conclusion) |
Central idea | the overall idea that is carried throughout a composition |
Transitions | words and phrases that signal time or changes in writing (yet, for example, therefore, in conclusion, additionally, in the same way) |
Conjunctions | words used to connect clauses or sentences (examples: for, and nor, but, or, yet, so) |
Prepositions/Prepositional Phrases | words or phrases that indicate place, position, or direction (in, for, above, below, beside, into, outside, on, to, up, etc.) |
Adverbs | words that show how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent? (slowly, happily, yesterday, there, somewhere, quite, very) |
Pronoun | a word that takes the place of a noun (singular, plural, subject, object, and possessive) |
Use of apostrophes | ( ' ) punctuation used in contractions (can't) or to show ownership (the boy's chair) |
Use of commas | ( , ) represents a pause for a reader |
Use of end marks | ( . ? ! ) punctuation used at the end of a sentence or complete thought |
Subject-verb agreement | the subject and verb in a sentence must agree or make sense together |
Run-on sentence | a sentence with too many ideas, which need to be separated and correctly punctuated |
Incomplete sentence | a sentence that does NOT express a complete thought |
Choppy sentence | a sentence that is too short and would be better combined with another sentence (The boy ran.) |
Off topic sentence | a sentence that does not belong where it is or is off topic |
Writing Process | steps taken in writing a composition or essay |
Brainstorm | to gather ideas over a particular topic |
Organize | to sort one's ideas in order to plan out their writing before actually writing |
Rough Draft | one's first attempt at writing |
Revise | to correct the sentence structure as well as ideas and organization of a paper |
Edit | to correct the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of a paper |
Final Draft | one's final attempt at writing after it has been revised and edited |