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English · Grade 9

Vocabulary, Syntax and Style

Learners treat words and sentences as a writer's tools. They unlock unfamiliar words with context clues, roots and even sentence structure (using Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky”), weigh connotation to describe tone and mood in Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher,” analyze Dickens's famous parallel opening, and interpret figurative language in Carl Sandburg's “Fog.” The quiz applies these tools to unseen sentences and to Tennyson's “The Eagle.”

  • 4 lessons
  • About 125 minutes
  • Words, sentences and style check: 10 questions
  • Ways to answer: fill in the blanks, choose an answer, highlight a text, match pairs, sort into groups and arrange tiles
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What learners will discover

  • Determine the meaning and function of unfamiliar words using context clues, Greek and Latin roots and affixes, and sentence structure.
  • Distinguish denotation from connotation and explain how word choice creates tone and mood.
  • Identify simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences, parallelism and antithesis, and explain their effects.
  • Interpret figurative language (metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, oxymoron, euphemism) and explain its effect as a style choice.

Lessons

  1. Unlock unfamiliar words 8 steps5 practiceabout 32 min
  2. Connotation, tone and mood 7 steps4 practiceabout 30 min
  3. Sentence shapes: structure, parallelism and antithesis 7 steps4 practiceabout 30 min
  4. Figurative language as a choice 6 steps3 practiceabout 25 min
  5. Words, sentences and style check 10 questions at the end

Keep exploring

More 9th grade reading

Guide for grown-ups