Technical and Figurative Meaning in Nonfiction
Aligned to RI.11-12.4 — Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts.
What this lesson teaches
Nonfiction words work on three levels at once — literal, figurative, and technical — and an author may refine a term across a whole text so its meaning shifts as the argument builds. Track how usage in one passage reshapes a word first met elsewhere.
Worked example
An essay opens by calling attention a 'resource,' a loose metaphor, then later defines it technically as a fixed daily budget that every notification spends; by the end the casual metaphor has hardened into the argument's central unit, so the same word carries more weight than it did on page one.
Practice questions
- Find a key term a text uses more than once and note how its sense changes between appearances.
- Distinguish whether each use is literal, figurative, or technical.
- Explain how the author's refinement of that word advances the overall argument.
Watch the lesson
Every lesson comes with a video taught in English and Spanish — the same video the QR code in the printed workbook opens.
▶ Watch this lessonEn español
Sentido Técnico y Figurado en la No Ficción
Las palabras de la no ficción funcionan en tres niveles a la vez — literal, figurado y técnico — y un autor puede afinar un término a lo largo de todo un texto para que su sentido cambie mientras se construye el argumento. Rastrea cómo el uso en un pasaje remodela una palabra vista antes.
Ejemplo: Un ensayo empieza llamando a la atención un 'recurso', una metáfora suelta, y luego la define técnicamente como un presupuesto diario fijo que cada notificación gasta; al final la metáfora casual se endureció en la unidad central del argumento, así que la misma palabra carga más peso que en la primera página.
More Reading: Informational lessons
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