The Action-Packed English 10
Final Exam Review Sheet!
This is a brief overview of things that we’ve talked about this year. It’s pretty
comprehensive, but by no means complete. Let me know if you’ve got any
questions. ¡Buena suerte!
The 6 Traits of Writing
ideas & content
voice
organization
sentence fluency
word choice
conventions
Well-written Essays
well focused
well organized
well supported
well packaged
Persuasive Writing
Ethos, Pathos, Logos
Thesis Statement
(What makes a good thesis
statement?)
Research Steps
Evaluating Online Sources
Basic Rules for Commas
and Semicolons
Annotation
Literary Terms
point of view
protagonist
antagonist
plot
conflict
setting
imagery
conflict
narrator
foil
tone
mood
dialect
connotation
denotation
hyperbole
onomatopoeia
satire
euphemism
simile
metaphor
personification
aesthetic
MLA Format
Presentation
Finding the Main Idea (How to organize information from a particular text.)
Some feedback information from The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and Fahrenheit 451, as well as some
ideas we tossed around from the The Allegory of the Cave and the
Transcendentalists. Don’t worry-I won’t ask you what name Huck used
when he was pretending to be a girl with Mrs. Loftus, or anything like
that. I’m more concerned with the Big Ideas from each story; things
associated with the Literary Terms (see exhaustive list above).
Essay Structure
(What are the components of an essay?)
Latin Roots
Root
bene
duct
flec
grade
grat
greg
junct
loqua
mal
mir
mot
phon
sens
seque
sol
spec
string
tact
vol
contra
Meaning
good
lead
bend
step
pleasing
group
join
talk
bad
wonder
move
sound
feel
to follow
alone
look
bind
touch
will
against
Examples
benefit, benevolent, beneficial, benefactor
conduct, induct, product, reduction, deduction, reproduction
reflect, inflection, deflect, reflection
gradual, grading, downgrade, degrading
gratitude, gratifying, grateful
gregarious, segregate, congregate
junction, conjunction, juncture, adjunct, injunction
eloquent, soliloquy, dialogue
malevolent, malcontent, malicious, malady, malign
mirage, miracle, mirror, admire
motion, motor, motivation, demote, emotion, promote, commotion
(Greek) phonograph, phonetic, symphony, telephone
sense, sensitive, sensory, sensation, dissension
sequence, sequel, consequence, subsequent, consecutive
solo, solitude, solitary, soliloquy, desolate, consolidate, solitaire
spectacles, specimen, specific, spectator, speculate, respect, inspect
stringent, string, stringy, astringent, stringer
tactile, contact, tactics, tactful, intact, intangible
volunteer, malevolent, benevolent, volition, involuntary
(prefix) contradict, contrary, contrast, contraband
Commonly Abused Words
affect/effect
to/too
you’re/your
their/there/they’re
it’s/its
Critical Thinking
Guidelines, media techniques
(as related to persuasion), etc.
Reading Strategies
Prediction, questioning, etc.
Literary Periods
Puritan/Colonial Period (1620-1765)
• Plain style of writing
• Didactic (designed or intended to teach something)
• Strong, simple language
Revolutionary/Age of Reason Period ( 1765-1830)
• Emphasis on rational thought
• Elegant, ornate language
• All truths of the world and human existence could be discovered through
scientific observation and the process of reasoning
• Optimistic about present and future
• Deep interest in science
• Desire to preserve cultural standards and traditions
• Belief in moderation and self-restraint
The Romantic Period (1830-1865)-The Scarlet Letter
• Emphasis on nature; all answers to be found in nature
• Importance of the individual
• Imagination versus reality
• Looseness of style
• Interest in the strange; beauty in the unusual
• Childhood innocence
• Sought to rise above dull realities by contemplation of the natural world
(Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Cooper, Melville, Whitman)
The Realistic Period (1865-1915)-Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Found meaning in the commonplace
• Stressed the actual as opposed to the imagined or fanciful
• Tried to write truthfully and objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary
circumstances
• Rejected heroic adventures and unusual or unfamiliar subjects
Offshoots of Realism:

Naturalism
o Viewed as the inescapable working out of natural forces
o One’s destiny decided by hereditary and environment, physical
drives, and economic circumstances
o Tended to be pessimistic

Regionalism
o
Local color movement
o
Use of regional dialect and descriptions of the landscape
o
Sought to capture the essence of life in various regions of
the growing nation
(William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather)
Modern Period (1915-1945)-The Great Gatsby
• Break with tradition
• Historical discontinuity
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sense of alienation, loss, despair- major themes
Rejects not only history, but also society which has created this history
Rejects traditional values and rhetoric by which they were communicated
Elevates the individual and the inward over the social and the outward
Prefers sub-conscious to self-conscious
Of the elements of the American Dream, only the importance of the individual
remains
Bare-bones writing, less concerned with plot than theme
Fragmentation (omitted exposition, transitions, resolutions, and explanations)
to reflect fragmentation of modern world
Stream of consciousness
The Jazz Age (1918-1929)
(John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis,
Eugene O’Neil, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Langston Hughes,
Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston)
Postmodern/ Contemporary Period (1946-Present)-Fahrenheit 451
• Building upon modernism, with exploration of new works, new literary forms
and techniques, blend of fiction and non-fiction
• Themes concern the complex, impersonal, and commercial nature of today’s
world.
(Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, Robert Penn Warren, Bernard Malamud, John Updike,
Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooke,
Theodore Roethke, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Ray Bradbury)
Almost everything on here can be found on the wiki (check past terms’
assignments and discussions.) Anything else that we’ve talked about this
year is fair game, too . . . mua ha ha . . . !