english central vocab

Question 1

Mirror

Answer 1

With reference to a story, this is a narrative that displays or engages with ideas, events, identities or concerns that are familiar to readers from their own lives.

Question 2

Window

Answer 2

With reference to a story, this is a narrative that displays or engages with ideas, events, identities or concerns that are different or unfamiliar to readers from their own lives.

Question 3

Oral tradition

Answer 3

When knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to another.

Question 4

Aetiology

Answer 4

The cause or reason for a thing. As a story it explains why things are the way that they are.

Question 5

Trickster

Answer 5

Mischievous characters throughout stories that use their knowledge and power to play pranks, break the rules and make trouble.

Question 6

Te ao Māori

Answer 6

The Māori world view including language, community, cultural practices and beliefs.

Question 7

Hero / Heroine

Answer 7

A main character in a story whose special abilities, characteristics and achievements make him/her appear noble and ideal.

Question 8

The Fool

Answer 8

A common Shakespearean character type who is funny and irreverent, and whose use of humour allows him to speak truths where others cannot.

Question 9

Social class

Answer 9

A system of grouping or categorising people into a hierarchy, based on social and economic status.

Question 10

5-Act Structure

Answer 10

When a play is organised into five main acts, which are structured to show the rising and falling tensions in the play, as well as the climax.

Question 11

Comedy*

Answer 11

With reference to Shakespeare’s plays, this is a genre of narrative identifiable by commonalities in character and narrative structure often including deception, misunderstanding, mistaken identity and, ultimately, resolution through marriage.

Question 12

The Globe Theatre*

Answer 12

A round, open-air theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were performed

Question 13

Protagonist*

Answer 13

The central or leading character in a narrative.

Question 14

Character Development*

Answer 14

The process through which a character’s personality, attitude and/or behaviour changes over the course of a narrative.

Question 15

Hero’s Journey*

Answer 15

An extremely common story structure that involves a protagonist who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

Question 16

Ordinary World*

Answer 16

The world of a hero before the journey begins, allowing us to identify with and understand the hero and giving us something to compare/contrast with once the journey begins.

Question 17

The Extraordinary World*

Answer 17

A world that contrasts with the hero’s Ordinary World in terms of its physical characteristics, its rules, its inhabitants and/or its dangers (literal or figurative).

Question 18

The Ordeal*

Answer 18

The part of the narrative which is the most difficult moment of the hero’s journey, when s/he comes most close to death.