Sau đây là 22 biện pháp từ cho môn Văn Học Quốc Tế và Ngữ Văn Anh trong chương trình IGCSE, lớp 9 và lớp 10. Hãy đọc qua cùng Jenny Doan English Tutoring nhé.

📎 Anaphora: Anaphora is the repetition of a word or sequence of words at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences to emphasize their message or to make their words memorable. Example: In the poem “Still I Rise,” Angelou repeats “I’ll rise” and “I rise” a number of times, culminating in her final anaphoric lines, which read: “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise / Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave. / I rise / I rise / I rise.”

📎 Alliteration: Alliteration is the literary technique of using a sequence of words that begin with the same letter or sound for a poetic or whimsical effect. Example: Many of Stan Lee’s iconic comic book characters have alliterative names: Peter Parker, Matthew Murdock, Reed Richards, and Bruce Banner. 

📎 Allusion: An allusion is an indirect reference to another figure, event, place, or work of art that exists outside the story. Allusions are made to famous subjects so that they don’t need explanation—the reader should already understand the reference. Example: The title of Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 is itself an allusion to George Orwell’s novel 1984. The Japanese word for the number nine is pronounced the same as the English letter Q. 

📎 Anthropomorphism: Anthropomorphism is when non-human things like animals or objects act human, exhibiting traits such as speech, thoughts, complex emotions, and sometimes even wearing clothes and standing upright. Example: While most fairy tales feature animals that act like humans, the Beauty and the Beast films anthropomorphize household objects: talking clocks, singing teapots, and more.

📎 Chiasmus: The literary technique of chiasmus takes two parallel clauses and inverts the word order of one to create a greater meaning. Example: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” —John F. Kennedy adapted from Khalil Gibran.

📎 Circumlocution: Circumlocution is when the writer deliberately uses excessive words and overcomplicated sentence structures to intentionally convolute their meaning. In other words, it means to write lengthily and confusingly on purpose. Example: In Shrek the Third, Pinocchio uses circumlocution to avoid giving an honest answer to the Prince’s question.  

📎 Euphemism: A euphemism is a soft and inoffensive word or phrase that replaces a harsh, unpleasant, or hurtful one for the sake of sympathy or civility. Example: Euphemisms like “passed away” and “downsizing” are quite common in everyday speech, but a good example in literature comes from Harry Potter, where the wizarding community refers to the villain Voldemort as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in fear of invoking him. 

📎 Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing is the technique of hinting at future events in a story using subtle parallels, usually to generate more suspense or engage the reader’s curiosity. Example: In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker’s vision of himself wearing Darth Vader’s mask foreshadows the later revelation that Vader is in fact Luke’s father.  

📎 Hyperbole: Hyperbole is using exaggeration to add more power to what you’re saying, often to an unrealistic or unlikely degree. Example: “I had to wait in the station for ten days—an eternity.” —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

📎 Imagery: Imagery refers to writing that invokes the reader’s senses with descriptive word choice to create a more vivid and realistic recreation of the scene in their mind. Example: “The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell­ as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.” —E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web.

📎 Metaphor: Similar to an analogy, a metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things to show their similarities by insisting that they’re the same. Example: “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players / They have their exits and their entrances / And one man in his time plays many parts . . .” —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

📎 Mood: A story’s mood is the emotional response the author is targeting. A writer sets the mood not just with the plot and characters, but also with tone and the aspects they choose to describe. Example: In the horror novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, the literary mood of vampires is scary and ominous, but in the comedic film What We Do In Shadows, the literary mood of vampires is friendly and light-hearted. 

📎 Motif: A motif is a recurring element in a story that holds some symbolic or conceptual meaning. It’s closely related to theme, but motifs are specific objects or events, while themes are abstract ideas. Example: In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s obsession with washing her hands is a motif that symbolizes her guilt.  

📎 Onomatopoeia: Fancy literary term onomatopoeia refers to words that represent sounds, with pronunciations similar to those sounds. Example: The word “buzz” as in “a buzzing bee” is actually pronounced like the noise a bee makes. 

📎 Oxymoron: An oxymoron combines two contradictory words to give them a deeper and more poetic meaning. Example: “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

📎 Paradox: Similar to an oxymoron, a paradox combines two contradictory ideas in a way that, although illogical, still seems to make sense. Example: “I know only one thing, and that is I know nothing.” —Socrates in Plato’s Apology 

📎 Personification: Personification is when an author attributes human characteristics metaphorically to nonhuman things like the weather or inanimate objects. Personification is strictly figurative, whereas anthropomorphism posits that those things really do act like humans. Example: “The heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care . . .” —Emily Dickinson

📎 Portmanteau: Portmanteau is the literary device of joining two words together to form a new word with a hybrid meaning. Example: Words like “blog” (web + log), “paratrooper” (parachute + trooper), “motel” (motor + hotel), and “telethon” (telephone + marathon) are all portmanteaus in common English. 

📎 Satire: Satire is a style of writing that uses parody and exaggeration to criticize the faults of society or human nature. Example: The works of Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) are well known for being satirical. A more modern example is the TV show South Park, which often satirizes society by addressing current events. 

📎 Simile: Like metaphors, similes also compare two different things to point out their similarities. However, the difference between similes and metaphors is that similes use the words “like” or “as” to soften the connection and explicitly show it’s just a comparison. Example: “Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.” —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

📎 Symbolism: Closely related to motifs, symbolism is when objects, characters, actions, or other recurring elements in a story take on another, more profound meaning and/or represent an abstract concept. Example: In J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (and The Hobbit), it is said the ring of Sauron symbolizes evil, corruption, and greed, which everyday people, symbolized by Frodo, must strive to resist. 

📎 Tone: Tone refers to the language and word choice an author uses with their subject matter, like a playful tone when describing children playing, or a hostile tone when describing the emergence of a villain. If you’re confused about tone vs. mood, tone refers mostly to individuals, while mood refers to the entire piece of work. 

Nguồn: grammarly.com

Cô Jenny Q. Doan chuyên cung cấp khóa hỗ trợ cho các môn Ngữ Văn Anh, Văn học Thế giới, Triết học và Nghiên cứu Kinh doanh cho các học sinh đang theo học chương trình quốc tế International Baccalaureate IB, AS và A Level, ATAR, IGCSE, và Key Stage. Tìm hiểu thêm tại đây.