advance organizer
an instructional tool in which brief written text is presented prior to other text for the purpose of enhancing the comprehension of that text.

affix
a bound (nonword) morpheme that changes the meaning or function of a root or stem to which it is attached, as the prefix ad- and the suffix -ing in adjoining. See also derivational affix; prefix; suffix.

alphabet book
a book for helping young children develop the concept and sequence of the alphabet by pairing given letters with pictures of objects that begin with the sounds they represent. Also ABC book.

alphabetic principle
the assumption underlying alphabetic writing systems that each speech sound or phoneme of a language should have its own distinctive graphic representation.

analogy
1. a partial similarity, as the computer is like the brain.
2. a general comparability or likeness, as Your analogy of verbs as operators is useful.
3. a vocabulary development game designed to elicit associations between a concept and students' background knowledge.

analysis
1. the process or result of identifying the parts of a whole and their relationships to one another. Ant. synthesis.
2. the use of this process as a method of study, as word analysis.

analytic phonics
a whole-to-part approach to word study in which the student is first taught a number of sight words and then relevant phonic generalizations, which are subsequently applied to other words; deductive phonics. See also whole-word phonics. Cp. synthetic phonics.

antagonist
a character that opposes the hero (-ine); villain.

archetypal criticism
the study of apparently perennial images, themes, symbols, stories, and myths in literature, including narratives that unite the seasons with literary genres. Note: Apart from its association with anthropology, religion, and psychoanalysis, archetypal criticism is best known through the work of Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism, 1957). Such criticism favors mythic and religious figures over realistic and naturalistic characters. The nature of the archetypes themselves remains open to substantial dispute.

argumentation
a type of discourse in speech or writing that develops or debates a topic in a logical or persuasive way. Cp. description.

authentic text
1. text materials representative of the real world; nonacademic text; as bus schedules, directions for assembling a computer, etc.
2. in student programs, text that has not been altered in form or content, as original publications of children's literature.

automaticity
fluent processing of information that requires little effort or attention, as sight-word recognition. adj. automatic.

ballad
1. a narrative poem, frequently of unknown authorship, composed of short verses intended to be sung or recited. Note: "In Scotland, Hungary, and elsewhere in Europe, the ballad is a very old type of poem that contains elements of the epic, lyric, and drama, and is often tragic in tone" (Adamik-Jaszo, 1994).
2. a popular type of folksong, as Mexican "Corridos."

basal reading program
a collection of student texts and workbooks, teachers manuals, and supplemental materials for developmental reading and sometimes writing instruction, used chiefly in the elementary and middle school grades.

base word
a word to which affixes may be added to create related words, as teach in reteach or teaching.

big book
an enlarged version of a beginning reading book, usually illustrated and with very large type, generally used by a group of students to read together and learn about concepts of print and various reading strategies. bilingual education the use of two languages in part or all of an instructional program. Several types of bilingual programs exist, including a. transitional bilingual programs, in which a student's primary language is used for instruction until some prescribed proficiency level in the second language is reached. b. maintenance bilingual programs, in which a student's primary language is first used, with a gradual transition toward use of the primary language in some subjects and the use of the second language in others. c. immersion programs, in which the second language is used for all instruction in a supportive environment that includes teachers who speak the student's primary language.

Black English Vernacular (BEV)
a term sometimes used to refer to a type of American English spoken by many African Americans.

blend
1. to combine the sounds represented by letters to pronounce a word; sound out.
2. the joining of the sounds represented by two or more letters with minimal change in those sounds, as /gr/ in grow, /spl/ in splash; consonant cluster. Cp: digraph, cluster.
3. a word made by combining elements of other words, as in combining /br/ in breakfast and /unch/ in lunch to make brunch.

bound morpheme
a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word, as re-, -tain, and -er in retainer; formative. Cp. affix; free morpheme; root.

brainstorming
a learning technique involving open group discussion intended to expand the range of available ideas, as to solve a problem, clarify a concept, etc. Cp. clustering, brainstorm.

canon
in literature, the body of major works that a culture considers important at a given time; ie., works that express cultural values and artistic excellence.

chapter book
a book long enough to be divided into chapters but not long or complex enough to be considered a novel, as books in Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge series.

children's literature
writings specifically intended for children, or that children have made their own. Cp. young adult literature.

choral reading
group reading aloud. Note: Choral reading may be used with a group to develop oral fluency or to make a presentation to an audience. It may also be used by two people, one of whom usually is a better reader and serves as a model during the reading.

cinquain
a stanza of five lines; specifically, one that has successive lines of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables.

closed syllable
a syllable ending with one or more consonants, as in mat, hand; blocked syllable; checked syllable. Cp. open syllable.

closed vowel
a vowel in a syllable or morpheme that precedes one or more consonants, as /a/ in hat, hand; checked vowel; blocked vowel. Cp. open vowel.

cloze procedure
1. any of several ways of measuring a person's ability to restore omitted portions of an oral or written message by reading its remaining context, as in the Degrees of Reading Progress tests.
2. the completion of incomplete utterances as an instructional strategy to develop reading or listening comprehension with respect to sensitivity to style, attention during extended passages, etc.
3. in second-language instruction, focusing on specific grammatical features by careful selection of omitted words.

cluster
a linguistic sequence: a. of sounds, as the consonant cluster /sp/ in spell. b. of parts of speech, as the verb cluster might have been.

cognate
1. a language with the same historical source as another language or languages, as the Romance languages, which are each derived from Latin.
2. a word related in meaning and form to a word in another language or languages because the languages have the same ultimate source, as mother (English), moeder (Dutch), moder (Danish), mater (Latin), matr (Sanskrit), etc.
3. referring to languages or words with common historical sources.

cohesiveness in text
the links or ties that connect text elements to provide unity and clarity within or between sentences and contribute to the reader's impression or text coherence.

colloquial
1. referring to an expression or language use that is appropriate in informal situations but not in formal ones.
2. referring to an expression or style that is considered old- fashioned or folksy, as Aw, shucks. n. colloquialism. combining form
a bound base or root designed to be combined with another combining form or word to form a new word, as bio- and -graphy of biography. Note: Combining forms are most commonly found in words derived from Latin and Greek. Through the linguistic process of clipping, some combining forms become words in themselves, as bio, metro, and porno.

comparative literature
a field or course of study that examines the interrelationships of literature from two or more cultures or languages.

comprehension monitoring
in the act of reading, the noting of one's successes and failures in developing or attaining meaning, usually with reference to an emerging conception of the meaning of the text as a whole, and adjusting one's reading processes accordingly.

concept load
1. the proportion of different ideas presented in a text in relation to the text's length.
2. a factor incorporated into some early readability estimates determined by examining the number of abstract words, the degree of abstractness of the words or ideas presented, or the proportion of items of information in relation to the length of the passage. Also concept density.

concrete poetry
poetry in which the physical arrangements of words are used to help suggest the author's meaning or theme, as in some poetry of Dylan Thomas and e.e. cummings.

configuration clue
a shape or outline that aids in word identification; especially, the pattern the letters make above and below the main body of the word, as in jolly, general, reading.

considerate text
text that the writer has made easily comprehensible, as by clarity of organization, appropriate vocabulary, and supplemental explanatory features.

consonant
1. a speech sound made by partial or complete closure of part of the vocal tract, which obstructs air flow and causes audible friction in varying amounts.
2. an alphabet letter used in representing any of these sounds.
3. referring to such a sound or letter.

consonant cluster
in a syllable, a sequence of two or more distinguishable consonant sounds before or after a vowel sound, as /skr/ and /mz/ in screams. Also consonant blend. Note: The term refers only to sounds, not to letters representing sounds. Cp. blend.

consonant digraph
a combination of two consonant letters representing a single speech sound, as gn for /n/ in gnat or gh for /f/ in rough. Cp. blend.

consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC)
one of the commonest sequences of sounds in syllables, as in cat, red, dog.

constructivism
1. a philosophical perspective derived from the work of Immanuel Kant which views reality as existing mainly in the mind, constructed or interpreted in terms of one's own perceptions. Note: In this perspective, an individual's prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs bear upon how experiences are interpreted. Constructivism focuses on the process of how knowledge is built rather than on its product or object. Cp. social constructivism; transactional theory.
2. Piaget's view that "the child must make and remake the basic concepts and logical thought forms that constitute his intelligence" (Gruber & Voneche, 1977).

content standard
statements of what students should know and be able to do.

context
1. the sounds, words, or phrases adjacent to a spoken written language unit; linguistic environment.
2. the social or cultural situation in which spoken or written message occurs. contextual.

controlled reading
reading done under any of a wide variety of conditions designed to guide eye movements, fixations, or rate, as in the use of a reading pacer.

convention
1. an accepted practice in a spoken or written language.
2. an accepted way of creating an effect, as the soliloquy in drama, the flashback in fiction.
3. a set of rules for group behavior; custom.

core vocabulary
the basic words and meanings needed to understand a special field, textbook, topic, etc.

couplet
a stanza of two rhyming lines; especially, such lines of the same length, as "The learn'd is happy nature to explore, / The fool is happy that he knows no more" (Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man).

creative dramatics
1. informal dramatization of a story using simple staging and few, if any, sets and costumes.
2. creation of an original story idea through dramatic play, usually in an informal setting.

critical analysis
a study of a literary or other artistic work according to formal principles and standards of criticism. See also literary criticism (def. 1).

critical theory
an ongoing sociological examination of the ideas and influence of Karl Marx, especially as they apply to the values and institutions of capitalist societies and to the role of an ideology designed to foster economic, political, and social change.

cuing system
any of the various sources of information that may aid identification of a word unrecognized at first glance, as phonics, structural analysis, and semantic and syntactical information.

cumulative tale
a story with many details repeated until the climax, as in "The House That Jack Built"; one type of predictable text.

curriculum-based assessment
the appraisal of student progress by using materials and procedures directly from the curriculum taught. Cp. content-referenced assessment.

decode
to analyze spoken or graphic symbols of a familiar language to ascertain their intended meaning. Note: To learn to read, one must learn the conventional code in which something is written in order to decode the written message. In reading practice, the term is used primarily to refer to word identification rather than to identification of higher units of meaning.

deconstruction
a philosophical method influential in literary criticism that demonstrates the inherently ambiguous and unavoidably repressive nature of language. Note: Opposed to structuralism, deconstruction dismantles Western tradition by showing that language does not correspond to nature or the external world. It also argues that all literary texts contain contradictions. By revealing what texts assume, suppress, and ignore, it produces skeptical responses to major works, freeing the reader to substitute personal for public meaning. See also structuralism.

deep structure
in transformational-generative grammar, the meaning to which a spoken or written sentence refers; the result of deep cognitive processing; deep meaning. Note: The meaning of a sentence may not be apparent from its surface structure until verified by sentence transformation. For example, while the surface structure of John is eager to please and John is easy to please is the same, the deep structure or meaning is different. Cp. surface structure.

derivational affix
a prefix or suffix added to a root or stem to form another word, as un- in unread, -ness in likeness. Note: A derivational suffix changes the word to which it is added into another part of speech, as -ness forms nouns from adjectives. Cp. inflectional suffix.

derivational morpheme
a word created by the addition of affixes to a base word, as de- + -con- + -ion to the base -struct- to make deconstruction.

description
a composition in writing or speech that gives a verbal picture of character and event, including the setting in which they occur. Cp. argumentation.

developmental reading
1. reading instruction, except remedial, for students at all levels.
2. reading instruction, except remedial, for all students beyond the elementary school level. Note: According to Smith (1965), this is the earliest meaning of the term in the reading literature.
3. a comprehensive school program of remedial and nonremedial reading instruction for all students.

diagnostic teaching
the use of the results of student performance on current tasks to plan future learning activities; instruction in which diagnosis and instruction are fused into a single ongoing process. Cp. assumptive teaching.

dialogue journal
written conversations in which students exchange ideas, including responses to literary works, with peers and teachers.

digraph
two letters that represent one speech sound, as ch for /ch/ in chin or ea for /e/ in bread. Cp. blend.

diphthong
a vowel sound produced when the tongue moves or glides from one vowel sound toward another vowel or semivowel sound in the same syllable, as /_/ in buy and the vowel sounds in bee, bay, boo, boy, and bough.

directed reading activity (DRA)
1. a step-by-step process for presenting a reading lesson; developmental reading lesson, especially in the content fields.
2. a reading lesson plan involving: a. preparation and motivation for reading. b. silent reading. c. vocabulary and skills development. d. silent or oral rereading. e. follow-up or culminating activities.

discourse analysis
the study of meaningful language units larger than a sentence.

dyslexia
a developmental reading disability, presumably congenital and perhaps hereditary, that may vary in degree from mild to severe.

efferent reading
a type of reading in which "the attention is focused on abstracting out, analyzing, and structuring what is to be retained after the reading, as, e.g., information, logical argument, or instructions for action" (Rosenblatt, 1991).

emergent literacy
development of the association of print with meaning that begins early in a child's life and continues until the child reaches the stage of conventional reading and writing; "the reading and writing concepts and behaviors of young children that precede and develop into conventional literacy" (Sulzby, cited in Barr et al., 1991).

emergent reading
the course of a child's early interaction with books and other print, as from pretend reading to genuine efforts to understand the nature and meaning of print.

encode
1. to change a message into symbols, as encode oral language into writing, encode an idea into words, encode a physical law into mathematical symbols. See also decode.
2. to give a deep structure to a message.

environmental print
print and other graphic symbols, in addition to books, that are found in the physical environment, as street signs, billboards, television commercials, building signs, etc.

epic
1. a long narrative poem, usually about the great deeds of a folk hero, stated in lofty, elevated language, as Homer's Iliad. Cp. saga.
2. a similar long narrative poem, more sophisticated in literary style and less heroic in content, as Vergil's Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost.

essay
a relatively brief literary composition, usually in prose, giving the author's views on a particular topic.

etymology
the study of the history and development of the structures and meanings of words; derivation.

euphemism
1. a socially acceptable word or expression used to replace unacceptable or taboo language, as words or expressions for bodily functions.
2. a substitution for straight-forward language that tactfully conceals or, in the extreme, falsifies the meaning of that which it replaces.

exposition
one of the four traditional forms of composition in speech and writing, intended to set forth or explain. Note: Good exposition is clear in conception, well organized, and understandable. It may include limited amounts of argumentation, description, and narration to achieve this purpose.

expressive vocabulary
the vocabulary used to communicate in speaking and writing. Cp. receptive vocabulary.

extrinsic phonics
phonics taught as a supplemental learning aid rather than as an integral part of the program of reading instruction, often in separate workbooks during special time periods. Cp. intrinsic phonics.

eye-voice span (EVS)
the average number of words by which the eye is ahead of the voice in oral reading. Note: Good oral readers have a wide eye-voice span that allows them to anticipate meaning, phrase in thought units, adjust intonation and breathing, and check pronunciation before speaking.

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