Abstract: Difficult to fully or easily understand because it is intangible or theoretical and is not associated with a particular instance or concrete example. The concept of "hope" is more abstract than the concept of "house."

Background knowledge: A personal reservoir of information on a variety of topics; information retained in one's long-term memory.

Causal event chain: A string of occurrences laid out in a sequence indicating how one occurrence leads to another.

Cause-effect text: A type of expository text that gives reasons for why something happened.

Cohesive ties: Linguistic devices that link structures within or between sentences so that relationships among ideas are clear to the reader.

Collocation: The placement of words close to each other to provide cohesion and promote comprehension.

Concept development: Stages in the process of forming an understanding of an abstract idea.

Descriptive text: A type of expository text that tells what something is.

Ellipsis: Omission of one or more words that can be inferred from reading the content in the preceding text. Example: "Are you all packed for the trip?" "Yes, I am." [ready for the trip]

Enumerative text: A type of expository text that gives a list related to a topic.

Explicit: Completely and clearly expressed without ambiguity or vagueness; fully developed. Example: Explicit instructions would leave no doubt in your mind about what you were to do. Every part would be "spelled out."

Expository text: A collection of written words that gives information, explains something, or seeks to persuade. Most classroom textbooks are expository - science, social studies, health, etc.

Genre: A type or kind of text. There can be broad categories, such as expository and narrative, or more specific categories, such as novels, poetry, fables, plays, etc.

Implicit: Within the context of reading, implicit describes an idea that can be understood from reading even though it is not expressed directly, as opposed to explicit, which directly states the idea.

Inconsiderate text: Text that is poorly written, poorly organized, or both, thereby making it difficult to understand.

Language connection: The process of setting up and building an association among the differing processes of language; namely, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Linguistics: Relating to languages or the study of human speech and speech sounds.

Macrostructure: The overall organizational pattern of a text.

Metacognition: A person's reflection on his or her own thinking processes. By using metacognitive skills, readers are able to make judgments about whether or not they understand what they read.

Narrative text: A collection of written words that seeks to entertain, display knowledge or skill, teach, organize, and plan behavior, most frequently involving imaginative stories with a setting, characters, and a plot. Examples of narrative writing: Little Women, A Tale of Two Cities.

Paradigm: A pattern or framework intended as a model.

Passive voice: Sentence structure where the subject is being acted upon by something else, as opposed to active voice where the subject is doing the acting. For example, "The players were chosen by the coach" (passive voice); "The coach chose his players" (active voice).

Persuasive text: A type of expository text that takes a position on some issue and justifies it.

Problem-solution text: A type of expository text that states a problem and offers solutions.

Propositions: Ideas contained within a sentence. A simple sentence would present one idea, but as the sentence becomes more complex, several ideas, or propositions, would be presented in various independent and dependent clauses.

Reading comprehension: The process or result of gaining intended and personal meaning from written material.

Relative clause: A clause in which a relative pronoun introduces the clause that refers to an antecedent. Example: The student who spelled all the words correctly won the spelling bee. Who is the relative pronoun, which refers to the antecedent student.

Schemata: The plural of schema; a network of many schema; the structures, frames, units, or scripts into which all knowledge is packed and organized.

Sequential/Procedural Text: A type of expository text that tells what happened or how to do something.

Signal words: Words that alert the reader to connections and relationships in sentences or paragraphs. Examples include "first," "then," "next," "because," "so," etc.

Signaling device: A text structure that clues the reader to the macrostructure and relationships among specific ideas. Visual cues, such as headings, and signal words are examples of signaling devices.

Story grammar: A schema or framework, for the components of a story. In Western cultures, story grammars have the following elements: setting (time, place and character introduction); plot (problem is identified); reaction of protagonist and attempts to solve the problem; and the resolution. Understanding the main character and his/her actions is integral to understanding the story's plot and theme.

Strategic instruction: An educational approach aimed at providing rules or guidelines to help individuals approach tasks more effectively, efficiently, and independently.

Strategy: An individual's approach to a task; how a person thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating the performance of a task and its outcomes.

Structural cue: Cues in written material that clearly mark the organizational pattern of the text.

Syntactic: Relating to rules of syntax, or orderly arrangement of phrases, clauses, and sentences.

Temporal clause: Adverbial clauses, which distinguish time in sequence. For example, "When darkness fell upon them, the travelers sought shelter."

Text structure: Characteristics of written material; the way ideas in a text are constructed and organized. Includes overall framework or macrostructure as well as the structure of smaller segments of text related to the macrostructure (e.g., visual cues, signal words, cohesive devices, and sentence level factors).

Text structure awareness: Being able to use the author's construction and organization of printed material as a guide to understand and remember the content.

Visual cue: A signaling device or distinctive feature in text structure that helps the reader comprehend the material. Examples include introductory statements, headings and subheadings, and signal words.

Visual depiction: Graphic structures used to organize information in a manner that makes the information easier to connect, learn, and remember.

World knowledge: Labels, concepts, ideas, and facts about the world in general; general information shared by people in a given culture.