Adult Literacy Core Curriculum - Nationally developed Skills for Life ...

Glossary
turn-taking one of the most widely recognised conventions of conversation in English-speaking cultures, with people
speaking one at a time, taking turns to speak. Speakers develop (consciously or unconsciously) ways of signalling
the wish to speak and of indicating to another person that it is their turn.
upper case a term used to describe capital letters. In print, in any given font and font size, all upper case letters will be the
same height.
verb a word that expresses an action, a happening, a process or a state. It can be thought of as a ‘doing’ or ‘being’
word. In the sentence Mark is tired and wants to go to bed, ‘is’ ‘wants’ and ‘go’ are verbs. Sometimes two or
more words make up a verb phrase, such as are going, didn’t want, has been waiting.
voice choice of voice enables the writer or speaker to place the focus on the ‘doer’ of the action (active voice) or on the
action itself and its recipient (passive voice): e.g. The dog bit Ben. Ben was bitten by the dog. (See also active
and passive, subject.)
vowel a phoneme produced without audible friction or closure. Every syllable contains a vowel. A vowel phoneme may
be represented by one or more letters. These may be vowels (maid), or a combination of vowels and consonants
(start; could).
writing frame a structured prompt to support writing. A writing frame may take the form of opening phrases of paragraphs, and
may include suggested vocabulary. It often provides a template for a particular text type.
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