Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Language and literature

Journalistic Language: Key Principles

Journalistic language should always be concise, precise, and clear. Avoid excessive adjectives, long sentences, and overloaded paragraphs. A standard register is commonly used. It is important to create a narrative of current events written with the intention of informing in an objective way. The content of a story should usually answer the questions: who, what, when, where, how, and why.

Structure of a News Story

• Headline: Captures the reader's attention with the most important and powerful data.
• Subheading: Develops the ideas contained in the headline.
• Body: Presents the facts in descending order of importance.

Journalistic Genres

• Chronicle: A story about recent events, often told in chronological order by a

Norms and Instructions

Norms are rules established to determine how something or a specific behavior should be.

Highway code regulations or laws contain rules.

Novel Subgenres

Historical, Detective, and Learning Novels

In some novels, the events recounted are fictitious but plausible, i.e., they did not actually occur but could have happened.

• Detective Novel: Narrates a crime whose author is unknown and the inquiry that leads to the clarification of the case.
• Historical Novels: Recreate past events.
• Novels of Apprenticeship: Feature a child or a teenager whose personality is formed throughout the story.

Chivalry, Terror, and Science Fiction

In other novels, the events recounted are unlikely or wonderful, that is, they did not happen or could not happen...

Sentence Types and Moods

Types of Predicative Sentences:

• Transitive
• Intransitive
• Active
• Passive
• Reflexive
• Reciprocal
• Impersonal (no subject: e.g., "It is raining")

Sentence Modality (Mood):

• Declarative (Enunciativa)
• Interrogative
• Exclamative
• Tentative/Dubitative
• Desiderative (Expressing desire)
• Imperative (Command)

Verbs and Tenses

Examples of tenses:

• Past Simple: I ate.
• Perfect: I have eaten.

Polyphony in Communication

Polyphony refers to the set of voices participating in the development of any communicative situation. We can distinguish between:

1. External Reality: The actual author of the text (the issuer who truly produces the text) and the actual reader (the real receptor).
2. Model: The model or image of each participant that the other creates. The author has a

Process of Structural Engineering

The construction of structures, such as bridges, roads, buildings, dams, and stadiums, requires careful consideration of various factors. Engineers must propose the most convenient criteria, ensuring the structure is functional, strong, durable, and economical, while also considering environmental and aesthetic aspects. The realization of a work begins with stating the problem and ends with execution, following this order:

1. Planning: This stage involves examining the program, analyzing needs and resources, and establishing the general approach to construction.
2. Project: This stage proposes the general geometry and distribution, including the structural system, according to the services the structure will provide

Mercè Rodoreda's Broken Mirror: Narrative and Themes

Mirall Trencat (Broken Mirror) belongs to the narrative genre. It is a novel that reflects the lives of several characters belonging to the wealthy Valldaura family. This novel, characteristic of 20th-century literature, aims primarily to entertain the reader, offering simple enjoyment without attempting to indoctrinate or impose a specific message.

Narrative Structure and Lexicon

The lexicon used by the author, Mercè Rodoreda, is simple yet clear and precise. The primary narrator of this novel is omniscient, although this perspective is sometimes inconsistent across certain chapters. Rodoreda masterfully alternates between the omniscient voice and internal monologues in various episodes,...

Nouns

Definition: A noun is a grammatical category that represents things belonging to a class. It designates realities conceived as existing or potential entities, not qualities applicable to other entities. Nouns have inherent gender and can function alone or with a determiner, often as the subject of a sentence. A noun consists of a root (lexeme), morphemes of gender (masculine/feminine), and morphemes of number (singular/plural).

Classifications

Philosophical:

• Abstract: Not tangible realities, not appreciated by the senses.
• Concrete: Realities that materialize.

Semantic:

• Individual
• Collective
• Common
• Proper
• Animate
• Inanimate
• Countable
• Uncountable

Grammatical Gender:

• Heteroclitic: Different lexical roots for gender variations.
• Ambiguous: Undefined grammatical

Written Communication Characteristics

Adequacy

Ensure your writing is well-presented, respects spelling conventions, uses simple language, and is concise.

Consistency

Be clear and organized, highlighting the main idea(s). Use a single paragraph to develop each idea.

Cohesion

Connect sentences within each paragraph to maintain clarity and prevent information loss.

Steps to Develop a Written Document

1. Analyze the situation
2. Generate ideas
3. Select information
4. Organize content
5. Write the text
6. Review the letter
7. Revise the text

Letterhead

The letterhead of a letter identifies the sender (individual, company, or corporation). Stationery with a pre-printed letterhead is called letterhead stationery.

Written Communication Skills

These are practical rules that facilitate...

Foundational Software Quality Models: McCall, Boehm, and ISO 9126

McCall Software Quality Model (1977)

The McCall model breaks down the concept of quality into three capacities (or uses) important for a software product, from the standpoint of the user:

• Each use is decomposed into a number of factors that determine the quality of these capabilities. Since a factor is an abstract concept, it cannot be directly measured or evaluated.
• Each factor is decomposed into a set of criteria or basic properties, which in most cases are internal properties of software that do not depend on the observer (e.g., modularity, fault tolerance, ease of training, etc.).
• For most software developers, these criteria directly influence software quality.

Boehm Software Quality

Education and Describing People

Education Vocabulary

• Behave: Behavior
• Cheat: Copying
• Fail: Suspend
• Learn: Learn
• Leave: Leave
• Pass: Approve
• Review: Review
• Start: Go
• Study: Study
• Take: Take
• Boarding School: Internal
• Graduate: Graduate
• Head Teacher: Head
• Nursery School: Nursery
• Primary School: Primary School
• Private School: Private School
• Pupil: Student
• Professor: Professor
• Religious School: Religious School
• Secondary School: Secondary School
• Student: Student
• Uniform: Uniform

Describing People Vocabulary

• Tall: High
• Slim: Delgado
• Short: Low
• Overweight: Gordo
• Height: Height
• Well Built: Good Body
• Blonde: Blonde
• Pony Tail: Coleta
• Long Wavy Hair: Long Wavy Hair
• Gray Hair: Gray Hair
• Beard: Beard
• Curly: Curly
• Shoulder Length: Shoulder Height
• Bald: Calvo
• Mustache: Bigote
• Straight Dark Hair:

Asyndeton or Juxtaposition: Connecting without connectors.

Parataxis: Joining two clauses without a hierarchical relationship. Includes coordination and asyndetic sentence connection at the beginning, middle, or end of the second clause.

Hypotaxis: Joining two clauses with a hierarchical relationship.

Pseudo-Coordination (Greenbaum and Quirk 1997): Coordinating conjunctions with an idiomatic sense. Intensification, Continuation/Repetition, Different Classes (Identical Coordination Elements), Quantity.

Cohesion II: Lexical Mechanisms

A. Iteration

Repetition (can include structural variations), Synonymy, Hyponymy, General Word

B. Semantic Associations Between Words

1. Opposition (Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics)
   1. Complementary: male/female,