Grade 6: Literary Terms, Unit 1

A memoir is a type of autobiography that focuses on a particularly meaningful period or series of events in the author's life.

Prose is the ordinary form of written language.

A stanza is a group of lines of poetry that are usually similar in length and pattern and are separated by spaces.

Sensory language is writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses.

Imagery is the use of vivid word pictures writers use to appeal to one or more of the five senses.

Nonfiction is prose writing that presents and explains ideas or that tells about real people, places, objects, or events.

The tone of a literary work is the writer's attitude toward his or her audience and subject.

A dialogue is a conversation between characters.

Writers use pacing to slow down or speed up the action in a scene.

An essay is a short nonfiction work about a particular subject.

Onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate sounds.

One way to better understand a word is to find synonyms, or words that have a same or similar meaning, and antonyms, words that have an opposite meaning.

One way to better understand a word is to find synonyms, or words that have a same or similar meaning, and antonyms, words that have an opposite meaning.

In biographical writing, an author tells the story of another person's life.

The theme is a central idea, concern, or purpose in a literary work.

Figurative language is writing or speech that is not meant to be taken literally.

A summary is a concise, complete, and accurate overview of a text.

A simile is a figure of speech that uses like or as to make a direct comparison between two unlike ideas.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which something is described as though it were something else.

Personification is a type of figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics.