Character Types, Adverbs, and Explanatory Texts
Characters in Literature
Characters are beings of paper, meaning they are fictional, invented. Nevertheless, they must be characterized as if they exist, so that the reader can imagine them and understand the story and their lives.
Complex or Round Characters
These characters change their way of thinking and acting throughout the narrative. They are unpredictable and may surprise the reader. They are called dynamic characters.
Simple or Flat Characters
These characters always act and think the same way throughout the narrative. They are called static characters, as their conduct does not change or evolve. They are predictable and do not surprise the reader.
Main Characters
- The protagonist is the character who performs the majority of actions, usually having a goal to achieve or a problem to solve.
- The antagonist is the character who puts obstacles in the protagonist’s path and conditions their performance, for example, by creating difficulties so that they do not achieve what they set out to do.
Secondary Characters
These are the other characters that can be grouped around the main characters.
- Allies: Those who help the protagonist.
- Opponents: Those who put obstacles in the protagonist’s path or move them away from their goal.
The Adverb
The adverb is an unchanging word or part of speech whose basic function is to modify a verb, another adverb, or an adjective.
Simple forms: I have patiently endured. (Endured… verb) (Patiently… adverb) Adverbial phrase: We arrived rather late. (Rather… adverb) (Late… adverb)
Adverbs are classified into four groups: manner, place, time, and quantity.
Explanatory Texts
Explanatory texts expose information about a particular topic in order to expand the recipients’ knowledge. They must be well-documented and capable of transmitting information in a comprehensible way, and this requires an orderly, clear, and consistent explanation. Explanatory texts are most typical of the school or academic setting.
Explanatory texts usually have a structure consisting of three parts: introduction, development, and conclusion. In an explanatory text, we can find several sequences or parts:
- Descriptive sequence: Describes an object, a fact, or a concept, detailing its parts and properties.
- Problem-solution sequence: Reports a problem to be solved and then explains the solution.
- Causality sequence: Establishes a relationship of cause and effect.
Language Specialty
Each specialty has a scientific/technical vocabulary to name the concepts, phenomena, and items that are included in the field of Natural Sciences. Part of the specific terminology are terms pertaining to this matter. (Term: A lexical unit that uniquely designates a concept, a phenomenon, or something in a specific area of specialty).
Past Tense
- Past Anterior: any, any, had, any, any, any.
- Past Perfect Periphrastic: I had, you had, he/she had, we had, you had, they had.
Grammar Standards
- Standard 1: The palatal sound is represented with the letter ‘g’ before ‘i’, ‘e’, ‘a’, with the letter ‘j’ before ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘u’.
- Standard 2: The voiceless palatal sound is rendered with the letter ‘sh’ at the beginning of a word and after a consonant; with the digraph ‘ix’ after a vowel.
- Standard 3: The affricate sound at the end of a word is written with ‘-tx’ in words from families that have ‘-tx-‘ in the middle of the word.
- Standard 4: The affricate sound at the end of a word is spelled with ‘-g’ (only written after ‘i’ and ‘g’) in words from families that have ‘-j-‘ or ‘-g-‘ in the middle of the word.