GACE English Review Grammar There wasnt really that much grammar in this test, but you might

t still want to be familiar with these bits of grammar. Comma Splice Run-On Sentence Subject-Verb Agreement Sentence Fragments Parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, adverb, conjunction, preposition, article, interjection) Literary Terms Colloquial language Dialogue Dramatic Irony Figurative Language Foreshadowing Imagery Irony When asked to analyze sample student work to point out its strengths and/or weaknesses, talking about it in any of the terms below will work almost every time. Sentence Structure Are there a lot of run-on sentences and/or comma splices? Are there sentence fragments? Do the sentence structures vary or are they all simple sentences or compound sentences? Organization Does the student use paragraphs? Does the student have a logical progression of ideas or do they jump from one idea to another? Do they follow any sort of structure? Do they support statements that they make with evidence from a text, source, etc. Imagery Does the writer use a lot of figurative language (metaphors, similes, hyperbole?) or use really descriptive words (strong adjectives) that appeal to thee senses (sensory words). Voice What does the student do to allow his or her personality to come through in the writing? Does the writer use rhetorical questions? Does the writer employ humor? What point of view does the writer use (first, second, third person, third person omniscient)? American Literature Mostly Post-Civil War Movements Perhaps a good way to brush up on this, especially pre-civil war stuff, would be to flip through a literature anthology from school. This especially helps to become familiar with more authors. Transcendentalism - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau Walden

Romanticism (1820 1865) - Emphasis on individual, I, the subjective experience - Harmony in nature - Use of looser poetic forms - Primitivism; noble savage - Sensual; embraces the sensory - Value placed on intuition/emotion - Rejected order in favor of wildness/boundlessness Writers: Walt Whitman Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), Herman Melville (Moby Dick) (considered the Dark Romantics) Walt Whitmans famous work Leaves of Grass (1955) is the bridge between Romanticism and Realism. Drum Taps is a famous section from Leaves of Grass about Whitmans experience in the Civil War. Realism (1865 1914) - Response to Civil War; other influencing factors were the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century and the development of new machinery and importance of science and empirical data over human subjectivity - Concerned with present life, not afterlife - Fading spirituality (Origin of Species, 1859) - Mimeticism / verisimilitude writing that mirrors real life - Absence of symbolic characters - Slice of Life - Resolution of conflict - Disillusionment - Emphasis on common man and common experience - Local color and psychological realism - William Dean Howells clearly defines for readers and writers what Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material. Defining texts: Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855) William Dean Howells Editha Criticism & Fiction Upton Sinclair Schools of Realism: local color associated with regionalism

faithful rendering of people / dialect / culture of a specific time and place Writers: Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn) and Kate Chopin (The Awakening) psychological realism dealt with the subtleties of the mind Writer: Henry James Most of Whitmans work can be characterized as being Romantic Civil War changed him William Dean Howells clearly defines for readers and writers what Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.

Naturalism - kind of branches off of Realism Defining texts/writers: Stephen Crane Red Badge of Courage (1895) Jack London A helpful chart for remembering the characteristics of these separate, but related movements might be: Questions that arose with the transition from Romanticism to Realism were how much control and free will humanity had the ability to exercise in determining ones destiny.
Genre Romantics Realists American Author Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry James William Dean Howells Mark Twain Stephen Crane Frank Norris Perceived the individual as... a god simply a person

Naturalists

a helpless object

Modernism (1914 1945) - Formal experimentation - Themes of isolation and alientation - Breakdown of language / failure to communicate - Loss of spirituality - Fragmentation (form and theme) - Presence of multiple narrators Defining texts: T. S. Eliot The Wasteland (1922) Jean Toomer Cane Ezra Pound Cantos James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Dubliners Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls

William Faulkner Sound and the Fury F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby Harlem Renaissance (kind of a subset of Modernism, but not really included) Alain Locke The New Negro Jean Toomer Cane (1922) Langston Hughes Zora Neale Hurston Post Modernism (1945 [65] present?) The Atomic Bomb - Black, cynical, twisted humor - Sometimes tends toward absurdity - Loss of identity - Uncontrollable fear of death - Explores commercialism/consumerism - Alienation / fragmentation - Complete breakdown of communication - Loss of faith Defining texts: Don Delillo White Noise (1985) Joseph Heller Catch 22 (1955) Thomas Pynchon Gravitys Rainbow (1973) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five (1969) Edward Albee The Zoo Story (1958) Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman (1966) Miscellaneous things to be familiar with Sources know the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Media Literacy basically what you will probably need to be able to do is read short scenerios (descriptions of commercials or ads and determine what it is the advertisers are wanting consumers to thinkfor example a commercial that has a very attractive woman drinking a Dr. Pepper might indicate that the advertisers are hoping to link the idea of being attractive with buying and drinking Dr. Pepper.) Important terms: Gate-keepers the individuals and corporations that control what information will be sent to the general public Inverted Pyramid structure used in newspaper articles where the most important is given in the headline and the first few sentences and the more insignificant the details, the farther along in the article it is going to appear

Bias the point of view of the arguer, advertiser and/or any other source of information takes to a certain idea/belief/concept, etc. Slant the subtle arrangement of words and use of word choice that puts forth or reveals a particular bias Ex. The headline Braves Win 5-0 over Padres vs. Atlanta Braves rejoice in Padre shut-out! The first headline seems rather neutral while the second headline seems to possess the bias of being written by a Braves fan. Rhetorical Fallacies to go along with knowing about media literacy, they really test whether or not you can identify common rhetorical fallacies, or errors in reasoning. Here are some really common ones. Attack ad hominem attacking the credibility or the character of the person making the argument instead of attacking their arguments Ex. You know that she cant have that great of an argument, shes a woman after all. Who is he to tell us about what is ethically right or wrong? His family made their money exploiting other people! Bandwagon Effect the argument that you should do or think something because everyone else is Ex. The majority of people in America believe that abortion is murder. So many people cannot be wrong. False Causality the argument that A causes B just because A came before B Ex. You only started failing classes since you met HIM. Thats how I know that he is the cause of your bad report card. Red Herring a complete divergence from the issue/topic; a diversion Ex. There have been allegations that I stole money from the clubs treasury; but, look at how many events we have been able to participate in. Obviously, there was plenty of money. Slippery Slope saying that one action will lead to another which will lead to another in a snowball effect; usually talking about negative things Ex. If I let you go to the bathroom now, then you will miss VERY important information, if you miss this information then youll fail your test and if you fail this test youll fail this class. You wont get into a good college, which means you wont be able to get a good job. Strawman creating a weak outline of your opponents beliefs/stance/argument so you can easily tear it down Ex. Senator Kennedy is opposed to the military spending bill, saying that its too costly. Why does he always want to slash everything to the bone? He

wants a terrorists, let along a

pint-sized military that couldnt fight off a crazed band of rogue nation.