The following list of definitions is words you should study and know as you prepare to take your GED.

Language Arts -- Reading Definitions

Prose - Anything written in ordinary spoken language

Novel - A long book-length story

Short Story - A work of fiction shorter than a novel that typically focuses on fewer characters and on one event. This narrower focus achieves a single effect.

Setting - The time and place in which a story's action occurs.

Infer - To read between the lines, or look for clues, to identify a specific time, place, or event.

Characterization - The method by which a writer makes fictional people seem lifelike and believable.

Dialogue - Conversation among characters in a story.

Plot - The events that occur in a story.

Exposition - Background information that sets the stage for a story.

Conflict - Friction between opposing characters or forces in a story.

Climax - That point in a story where the conflict comes to a head. It usually is the point of highest intensity in the plot.

Resolution - The outcome of the conflict usually the ending of the story.

Point of view - The person through whose eyes the story is being told

Main Character - The character whom the action affects the most

Narrator - The person who tells the story.

First-person narration - The narrator speaks directly to the reader and the first person pronoun, I, is used.

Third-person narration - The story is told by a person not involved in the action. It uses third person pronouns such as: he, she, and they, to tell the story.

Theme - The main idea or central meaning of a story.

Tone - The overall attitude the author conveys toward his or her subject.

Dialect - Regional speech characteristics. An example would be a western drawl.

Simile - A comparison that shows a likeness between two unlike things. "He is hard as iron."

Metaphor - A comparison that implies one thing is something else. "The room was one giant cobweb."

Personification - Attributes human activities or qualities to an animal or thing. "The blooming flowers greeted the new spring."

Criticism - The evaluation of a work of art or literature.

Critic - Someone who expresses an opinion or comments on a work of art or literature. This individual is sometimes called a reviewer.

Commentary - writing about literature or the arts.

Poetry - the expression of ideas and emotions in a tightly controlled, structured form.

Imagery - Word pictures that appeal to all the senses.

Free verse - Poetry without a regular rhythmic pattern and usually without rhyme

Rhyme - The repetition of certain stressed sounds in two or more words.

Rhythm - The rise and fall of stressed words and syllables.

Meter - Regular, strictly ordered rhythm.

Alliteration - The repetition of consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words. "She sells sea shells at the sea shore."