1. Expository Vocabulary
English 10
Mr. Ritenour

2. Audience The person who the essay or writing is intended for.
It’s very important to know your audience so you can adjust your tone, vocabulary, and writing style to more effectively reach them.

3. Bias Showing favor to one side or another. Losing objectivity.
Bias in expository writing is considered a bad thing.

4. Cite
Giving credit to someone else’s quotation or idea inside of an essay.
Prevents accusations of plagiarism.

5. Coherence
Everything in a paragraph or essay belongs there. It all follows the same idea.
This prevents long paragraphs that smash together too many ideas or off topic anecdotes.

6. Elaboration
Expanding upon your answer to include all the necessary details needed to achieve understanding.
Usually involves adding the why to a theory or opinion and backing it up with evidence.

7. Evaluation
Judging an idea, a piece of work, or a concept for it’s merit and quality with an explanation why. Breaking things down to their individual parts.
Considered the highest form of thought under Bloom’s Taxonomy of thought.

8. Narrative
A type of expository writing where someone tells a life story. It is not a full biography, but rather covers a segment or segments of someone’s life that revolve around a theme.
The type of writing that college application essays are.

9. Modern Language Association
MLA is the governing body of Grammatical usage and essay format.
One of the two major forms of essay formatting that will be used in college (the other is APA).
Mandatory formatting for all English essays.
Includes rules on grammar, citations, and paragraph style.

10. Objective
For something to be without bias or opinion. Entirely fact based.
The type of writing that newspapers strive for.

11. Paraphrase
To present someone else’s idea or thoughts in your own words without directly quoting them.
That person still needs to be cited.

12. Perspective The point of view that an essay is taking.
In fiction, it involves:
First Person
Third Person Limited
Third Person Omniscient

13. Primary Source
The main text that an essay is referencing or responding too.
If writing a play about Romeo and Juliet, than the play itself is your primary source.

14. Secondary Source
A piece of literary criticism or outside information that will be used to support your main idea, but is not the main document itself.
Used in more sophisticated writing.

15. Relevant
Does the information in the paragraph or essay have anything to do with the main idea being expressed?

16. Synthesize
Merging together two perspectives or ideas in order to create a new idea.
Prefix Syn = Together, With
Get ready to practice this a lot this semester.

17. Thesis Statement
The sentence in your introduction where you express your main idea.
Most important part of an essay. Automatic fail if you do not have one.
Synonyms: Main Idea, Theme
Made up of two parts:
Assertion: Your opinion or main idea
Rational: The major reason why