Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective jocular. While not a word in particularly common usage these days, it is a good word to know nonetheless.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“The rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to make another word or phrase. Anagrams are a common feature of crossword puzzles and are sometimes used by authors to conceal proper names. Drab is an anagram of bard; the name of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) is an anagram of nowhere.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun mainstay. It’s a commonly used word, maybe even a mainstay of the English language. But very, very few of my students over the years have known it; they should.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“I finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire…. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky.”
Virginia Woolf, in her diary
“That the book possesses literary importance, except as a tour de force, is hard to believe. If we are to have the literature of mere consciousness there are numerous examples from the later Henry James to Virginia Woolf which import to consciousness a higher intrinsic value and achieve the forms of art.”
Springfield Republican reviewing the American edition 1934
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
Here are two context clues worksheets on the adjective mediocre and the noun mediocrity. I probably shouldn’t own up to this, but I wrote these so my students in Manhattan would have words to describe their experience as students in the New York City Department of Education.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“A traditional term for a VERBAL NOUN, in English a word ending in –ing: visiting in They appreciate my visiting their parents regularly. Like a noun, it can be introduced by the genitive my (compare I visit their parents). Some object to the non-genitive usage and avoid at least for names and pronouns, preferring They appreciate Bill’s visiting their parents to They appreciate Bill visiting their parents and They appreciate my visiting their parents to They appreciate me visiting their parents.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Here are five worksheets on the homophones two, too, and to, which I am confident you have noticed that are frequently confused–sometimes to hilarious effect (i.e. Dumb and Dumber To), but more often just, well, confusing effect.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“One morning, finding a self-analysis questionnaire on his desk, Broun included some of the questions in that day’s column:
‘What is my occupation? Newspaperman.’
‘Am I making a success of it? There seems to be a decided difference of opinion.’
‘What is my character and reputation? Unreliable and charming.’
‘What do other men think of me? Unreliable.’
‘What do I think of myself? Charming.’
‘Am I cleanly? Very much so in the summer.’
‘Punctual? No.’
‘Courteous? To a fault.
‘Have I any object in life? Yes, I want to be a writer.’
‘Am I on my way? Not precipitately.'”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, questioning/inquiry
Here’s a learning support for differentiating between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses that I use when I teach this particular element of good style in writing.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun euphemism, which I think high school students, particularly in the media environment which we currently occupy, really ought to know and be able to use.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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