Clause: An arrangement of words containing a subject and verb that creates part, but not all, of a sentence. Clauses can be independent or dependent.

Cognition: The process of knowing by thinking, comprehending, analyzing, or evaluating. Examples"> Students use cognition to gain meaning from spoken or written material by reasoning, making inferences, seeing relationships, etc.

Concept development: The process of gaining an understanding of an idea.

Decoding: The ability relating a sequence of letters in print to their corresponding sounds, allowing the reader to translate the sequence into a word.

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.

Goal-specific strategies: Procedures readers use to process specific material. Examples include predicting the outcomes, self-questioning, analyzing the text, visual imagery, using graphic organizers, paraphrasing, and summarizing.

Hierarchical relationships: The order of relationships among ideas, determined by degree of inclusiveness. An understanding of the hierarchical relationships that exist in textual material can aid in the comprehension of that material. For example, when a student is reading expository text, he might determine the relationships among the ideas presented by looking at the headings, subheadings, and then noting the details.

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

Metalinguistic skills: Referring to language awareness; skills that enable us to reflect consciously on the nature and properties of language; the process of being able to think and talk about the use of language.

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.

Paraphrasing: A process that involves taking information from reading or listening and rephrasing the information in one's own words in a way that personalizes the information. This can facilitate one's ability to understand and remember the information.

Proficient readers: Individuals who effectively and independently use skills and strategies to construct meaning from print.

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

Semantics: Part of the structure of language, along with phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics, which involves understanding the meaning of words, sentences, and texts.

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.

Summarization: The process of concisely restating the essential ideas of a text or passage, and synthesizing the ideas into an overarching, or superordinate, idea.

Superordinate: As used in this lesson, a larger, more inclusive concept or category, to which subordinate concepts or ideas belong.

Syntax: The ordering of words within phrases, clauses, and sentences whereby the relations among the words are indicated. For example, in English, verbs usually follow nouns, and adjectives usually precede nouns.

Vocabulary deficit: A gap in the number of words which one knows in comparison to peers; problems with learning new words fast enough to serve well in acquiring new information.