The passive voice is a style of writing where what would be the object of a sentence becomes the subject of the sentence. The passive writing voice occurs when something that is ordinarily “done by” the subject of a sentence is “done by” the object of a sentence. ( For example, The song was sung by Julie. The Tempest was written by Shakespeare.)
The smallest unit of sound in a word (for example, the word ‘is’ has two phonemes: /i/ and /s/; the word ‘ship’ has three phonemes: /sh/, /i/, /p/).
Involves making a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word (add /c/ to the beginning of lock to form new word - clock).
Involves forming a different word by removing a phoneme (for example, take the /t/ away from the word ‘train’ to make a new word ‘rain’).
Involves students manipulating spoken words by substituting certain phonemes for others (for example, changing the /r/ in the word ‘rat’ to /b/ to make new word ‘bat’.) Phoneme substitution can occur with middle and final phonemes (for example, changing the /a/ in ‘cat’ to /o/ to make new word ‘cot’.
An ability to hear, identify and manipulate separate, individual phonemes in words.
Sound (phoneme) and letter (grapheme) relationships Making connections between the sounds in words and the letters that represent those sounds.
Phonics is the system of relationships between letters and sounds in a language. Phonics teaches the correspondence between the sounds of English (phonemes) and the letter patterns which represent these sounds (graphemes)
Information about the sounds of language and letter–sound relationships when comprehending a text (for example, single sounds, blends).
Converting sounds that are heard into letters that are written.
A group of words often beginning with a preposition but without a subject and verb combination (for example, ‘on the river’; ‘with brown eyes’).
More than one. ‘Dog’ is singular (one dog). ‘Dogs’ is plural. (more than one dog). ‘Loaves’ is the plural of ‘loaf’.
The possessive form shows a relationship of belonging between one thing and another. To form the possessive, add apostrophe + s to the noun. If the noun is plural, or already ends in s, just add an apostrophe after the s.(for example a book belonging to Kim : Kim’s book. The house belonging to the girls. The girls’ house.)
See ‘possessive’ and ‘apostrophe’.
A text that is easily navigated and read by beginning readers because they contain highly regular features such as familiar subject matter, a high degree of repetition, consistent placement of text and illustrations, simple sentences, familiar vocabulary and a small number of sight words.
An informed presumption about something that might happen. Predicting at the text level can include working out what a text might contain by looking at the cover, or working out what might happen next in a narrative. Predicting at the sentence level is identifying what word is likely to come next in a sentence.
A meaningful element (morpheme) added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning (for example, ‘un’ to ‘happy’ to make ‘unhappy’).
A word class that usually describes the relationship between words in a sentence. Prepositions can indicate:
- space (for example, ‘below’, ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘to’, ‘under’. 'She sat on the table.')
- time (for example, ‘after’, ‘before’, ‘since’. 'Í will go to the beach after lunch.')
- those that do not relate to space and time (for example, ‘of’, ‘besides’, ‘except’, ‘despite’, ’He ate all the beans except the purple ones').
Prepositions usually combine with a noun group/phrase to form a prepositional phrase (for example, ‘in the office’, ‘besides these two articles’).
Typically consists of a preposition followed by a noun group/phrase. Prepositional phrases occur with a range of functions, including:
- adverbial in clause structure (for example, ‘on the train’ in ‘we met on the train’)
- modifier in noun group/phrase structure (for example, ‘with two children’ in ‘a couple with two children’)
- modifier in adjective group/phrase structure (for example, ‘on golf’ in ‘keen on golf’).
A word that takes a place of a noun (for example, I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, few, many, who, whoever, someone, everybody, and many others).
There are different types of pronouns:
- personal pronouns represent specific people or things (for example, I, he, she, it, they, we, you,me him, her, them). Example of personal pronoun use: David and Max (proper nouns) went to school. They went to school. Personal pronouns can also be objective (for example, David kicked the ball to Max. David kicked the ball to him.)
- demonstrative pronouns represent a thing or things (for example, this, these, that, those).Example of demonstrative pronoun use: ‘Who owns these?’
- possessive pronouns to refer to the belonging of one thing or person to another person or thing (for example, mine, hers, his, ours, yours, theirs). Examples of possessive pronoun use: ‘Max looked for the book. He could not find his own book but he did find yours.’
- reflexive pronouns refer back to the subject of a sentence or clause. Reflexive pronouns end in ‘-self’ (singular) or ‘-selves’ (plural) (for example, myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself,ourselves, yourselves themselves). Example of possessive pronoun use: ‘David looked at himself in the mirror.’
reciprocal pronouns refer to two subjects acting in the same way toward each other. There must be two or more subjects involved and they must be doing the same thing (for example, each other, one another). Example of reciprocal pronoun use: David and Max like each other.
- relative pronouns introduce a relative clause. They are called relative because they relate to the words that they modify. There are five relative pronouns: who, whom, whose, which, that.Example of relative pronoun use: ‘The car, which was in the garage, was damaged.’
- interrogative pronouns represent things that we do not know and are asking the questions about (for example, who, whom, whose, which, what). Some interrogative pronouns can also function as relative pronouns. Examples of interrogative pronoun use: ‘Who told David?’ ‘Which of these would David like?’
- indefinite pronouns do not refer to any specific person, thing or amount (for example, all, another, anybody, anyone, anything, each, everybody, everyone, everything, many, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody, someone). Example of relative pronoun use: ‘Have you taken anything from the cupboard?’
A clear reference from a pronoun to a noun (for example, ‘Mary lost her phone’).
Note definition of noun:
A word class that includes all words denoting physical objects such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘diamond’, ‘car’, ‘window’ etc. These are called ‘concrete nouns’. ‘Abstract nouns’ express intangibles such as ‘democracy’, ‘courage’, ‘success’, ‘fact’, ‘idea’. The most important grammatical property of nouns concerns their function. A noun group/phrase, which contains a noun as its major element, can function as:
- subject (for example, ‘(the sun) was shining’)
- object (for example, ‘I'd like (an apple)’)
- a part of a prepositional phrase (for example, ‘they arrived (on time)’).
Most nouns can be marked for plural (for example, ‘dog’–‘dogs’, ‘woman’–‘women’), and for possessive (for example, ‘dog’–‘dog’s’, ‘woman’–‘woman's’.
There are three major grammatical types of nouns: common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns.
- common nouns include words such as ‘hat’, ‘phone’, ‘pollution’ that do not name a particular person, place, thing, quality and so on. They can be concrete or abstract nouns.
- proper nouns include words such as ‘Australia’, ‘Mary Smith’, ‘October’, which serve as the names of particular persons, places, days/months and festivals. They usually occur without a determiner, such as ‘the’.
Humorous use of a word to bring out more than one meaning; a play on words.