Glossary (Version 8.4)

A word class that describes a kind of situation such as a happening (for example, ‘climbed’ in ‘she climbed the ladder’) or a state (for example, ‘is’ in ‘a koala is an Australian mammal’).

  • verbs are essential to clause structure: all clauses contain a verb, except in certain types of ellipsis (for example, ‘Sue lives in Sydney, her parents, in Melbourne’, where there is ellipsis of ‘live’ in the second clause).
  • virtually all verbs have contrasting past and present tense forms. Some are signalled by inflections such as ‘-s’ and ‘-ed’. For example:
    • walk/walks (present tense)
    • walked (past tense).
  • other verbs have irregular forms that signal a change in tense. For example:
    • present – ‘am/is/are’ and past – ‘was/’were’
  • present participle ‘being’ and past participle ‘been’.

Auxiliary verbs and modal verbs are two types of verbs:

  • auxiliary verbs are also referred to as ‘helping’ verbs. They precede the main verb – for example, ‘draw’ (main verb) ‘has drawn’ (auxiliary verb assisting)
  • modal verbs express a degree of probability (for example, ‘I might come home’) or a degree of obligation (for example ‘You must give it to me’, ‘You are not permitted to smoke in here’).

Consists of a main verb, alone or preceded by one or more auxiliary or modal verbs as modifiers.

Verb groups/phrases:

  • create tense, as in ‘He [was running]’, ‘She [is working] at home’, ‘I [have seen] him before’
  • express modality using modal verbs such as ‘can’, ‘may’, ‘must’, ‘will’, ‘shall’ and so on, as in ‘You [must be] mad’, ‘He [will have arrived] by now’, ‘She [may know] them’
  • create passive voice, as in ‘A photo [was taken]’

Observe with purpose, understanding and critical awareness. Some students participate in viewing activities by listening to an adult or peer describing the visual features of text, diagrams, pictures and multimedia.

Visual components of a text include placement, salience, framing, representation of action or reaction, shot size, social distance and camera angle.

Choices that contribute to the meaning of an image or the visual components of a multimodal text and are selected from a range of visual features like placement, salience, framing, representation of action or reaction, shot size, social distance and camera angle.

A speaker selects and uses particular vocal qualities including volume, tone, pitch, pace and fluency to engage and impact upon their audience.

Voice, in a grammatical sense, applies to verbs. Voice expresses the relationship of the subject to the action. Voice can be active or passive. Active voice places the subject before the verb so the subject does the action (for example, Max drew the picture). Passive voice places the receiver of the action before the verb (for example, The picture was drawn by Max).

Voice, in a literary sense, is the distinct personality of a piece of writing. The writer's voice is the individual writing style of the composer, created through the way they use and combine various writing features including syntax, punctuation, vocabulary choices, character development and dialogue (for example, a scientific explanation may be written in ‘expert voice’).

Letters of the alphabet (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y) that represents a speech sound created by the relatively free passage of breath through the larynx and oral cavity. Letters that are not vowels are consonants.

Two successive vowels that represent a single phoneme (for example, /ai/ in the word ‘rain’; /ea/in the word ‘beach’; /ee/ in the word ‘free’).