English poetic techniques

    Cards (48)

    • Alliteration
      Where words that are close together start with the same sound
    • Caesura
      A pause in a line of poetry
    • Colloquial Language
      Informal language that sounds like ordinary speech
    • Contrast
      When two things are described in a way which emphasises how different they are
    • Dialect
      A variation of language spoken by people from a particular place or background
    • Direct Address
      When the narrator speaks directly to the reader or another character in the poem
    • Dramatic Monologue

      A form of poetry that uses the assumed voice of a single speaker who is not the poet, to address an implied audience
    • End stop line
      Finishing a line of poetry with the end of a phrase or sentence, usually marked by a punctuation
    • Enjambment
      When a sentence or phrase runs over from one line or stanza to the next
    • Figurative Language
      Language that is used in a non literal way to create an effect
    • Form
      The type of poem, eg a sonnet or a ballad, and the overall way it is written
    • Free Verse
      Poetry that doesn't rhyme and has no regular rhythm or line length
    • Hyperbole
      The use of exaggeration to emphasise a point
    • Iambic Pentameter
      Poetry with a metre of ten syllables – five of them stressed, and five unstressed, The stress falls on every second syllable
    • Iambic tetrameter
      Like iambic pentameter but with a metre of eight syllables – four stressed and four unstressed
    • Imagery
      Language that creates a picture in your mind. It includes metaphors, similes and personification
    • Internal Rhyme
      When two or more words rhyme, and at least one of the words isn't at the end of a line. The rhyming word can be in the same line or nearby lines
    • Irony
      When words are used to imply the opposite of what they normally mean. It can also mean where there is a difference between what people expect and what actually happens
    • Juxtaposition
      When a poet puts two ideas, events, character or description close to each other to encourage the reader to contrast them
    • Language
      The choice of words used by the poets. Different kinds of language have different effects
    • Metaphor
      A way of describing something by saying that it is something else
    • Extended Metaphor
      A metaphor that is carried on throughout a whole poem
    • Metre
      The arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables to create rhythm in a line of poetry
    • Monologue
      One person speaking for a long period of time
    • Mood
      The feel or atmosphere of a poem
    • Narrative
      Writing that tells a story
    • Narrative viewpoint

      The perspective that a text is written from
    • Narrator
      The person speaking the words
    • Onomatopoeia
      A word that sounds like the thing it's describing
    • Oxymoron
      A phrase which appears to contradict itself
    • Personification
      Describing a non-living thing as if it's a person
    • Plosives
      A short burst of sound made when you say a word containing the letters b,f,g,k,p or t
    • Refrain
      A line or stanza in a poem that is repeated
    • Repetition
      The technique of repeating words, phrases, images or ideas
    • Rhyming couplet
      A pair of rhyming lines
    • Sensory language
      Language that appeals to any of the five senses
    • Sibilance
      Repetition of the 's' and 'sh' sounds
    • Simile
      A way of describing something by comparing it to something else, usually by the words 'like' or 'as'
    • Stanza
      A group of lines in poetry
    • Structure
      The order and arrangement of ideas in a poem
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