Do you know your English Language GCSE Terminology?
How any of these terms do you know?
- Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds (e.g., “wild winds whipped wildly”).
- Metaphor: Comparing two things by stating one is the other (e.g., “Time is a thief”).
- Simile: Comparing two things using like or as (e.g., “Her smile was as bright as the sun”).
- Personification: Giving human qualities to non-human things (e.g., “The leaves danced in the breeze”).
- Hyperbole: Deliberate exaggeration for effect (e.g., “I’ve told you a million times”).
Rhetorical Questions: Questions posed for effect rather than answers (e.g., “Isn’t it time we acted?”).
Rule of Three: Grouping ideas in threes for emphasis (e.g., “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”).
Repetition: Reiterating words or ideas for impact.
Direct Address: Speaking directly to the audience (e.g., “You have the power to change.”).
Noun: a word that represents a person, thing, concept, or place (e.g., ‘John’, ‘house’, ‘affinity’, ‘river’).
Pronoun: takes the place of a noun in a sentence. Pronouns are short words like ‘it’, ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘you’, ‘we’, ‘they’, ‘us’
Verb: a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicateof a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.
Adjective: a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase.
Preposition: a word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object
Connective: words or phrases that link sentences (or clauses) together.
Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithfulkept him falsely true ).
Pun: a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
- Juxtaposition: Placing contrasting ideas close together for effect.
- Flashback: Shifting to a previous time to provide context or depth.
- Foreshadowing: Hinting at events yet to come.
- Climax: The most intense or important point in a narrative.
- Shift in Focus: Changes in attention within a text, such as moving from setting to character.
The GCSE English Language exam tests not only your child’s ability to read and write but also their understanding of key terminology. A strong grasp of terminology helps students analyse texts effectively and demonstrate sophisticated insights in their responses.
