Vocabulary used to discuss language conventions and use (for example, language used to talk about grammatical terms such as ‘sentence’, 'clause’, 'conjunction').
A type of figurative language that describes something in a way that ,literally, it is not.(for example He is a couch potato.)
Modality
An area of meaning having to do with possibility, probability, obligation and permission. In the following examples, the modal meanings are expressed by the auxiliary verbs ‘must’ and ‘may’:
- Sue may have written the note. (possibility)
- Sue must have written the note. (probability)
- You must postpone the meeting. (obligation)
- You may postpone the meeting. (permission)
Modality can also be expressed by several different kinds of words:
- adverbs (for example, ‘possibly’, ‘necessarily’, ‘certainly’, ‘perhaps’)
- adjectives (for example, ‘possible’, ‘probable’, ‘likely’, ‘necessary’)
- nouns (for example, ‘possibility’, ‘necessity’, ‘obligation’)
- modal verbs (for example, ‘permit’, ‘oblige’).
See text complexity
The smallest meaningful or grammatical unit in a language. Morphemes are not necessarily the same as words. The word ‘cat’ has one morpheme, while the word ‘cats’ has two morphemes: ‘cat’ for the animal and ‘s’ to indicate that there is more than one. Similarly, ‘like’ has one morpheme, while ‘dislike’ has two: ‘like’ to describe appreciation and ‘dis’ to indicate the opposite. Morphemes are very useful in helping students work out how to read and spell words.
A knowledge of morphemes, morphemic processes and different forms and combinations of morphemes (for example, the word ‘unfriendly’ is formed from the stem ‘friend’, the adjective-forming suffix ‘-ly’ and the negative prefix ‘un-’).
Morphemes are words or parts of words which are the smallest units of meaning or grammatical function. A morphemic word family is a group of words which share a common morpheme and usually have a related meaning (for example pay, repay, payment)
A combination of two or more communication modes (for example, print, image and spoken text, as in film or computer presentations).
A word with a number of syllables. Also known as polysyllabic