“Georgian Style: Style of architecture, furniture, and interior decoration developed in the reigns of the four English King Georges (1714-1830). In England the three phases are Palladian, Neoclassical, and Regency. In the United States: Georgian, Federal, and Roman Classicism. All forms show classical inspiration and Renaissance spirit and motifs.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
OK, last but not least this humid morning, here is a reading on Cotton Mather and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. United States history teachers take note.
And I’ll keep my snarky comments about aggressively militant Calvinists to myself. Likewise Reverend Mather’s role in the Salem Witch Trials.
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.
“Independent Clause: A group of words with a subject and verb that can stand alone as a sentence. Raccoons steal food.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Worksheets
Alright, continuing with recently finished projects, here are five worksheets on the homophones rack and wrack used, in both cases, as nouns and verbs. Both of these words are complicated in their usage, and in fact rarely used in their full range of meanings–which is probably why I never finished this several years ago when I was developing a series of homophone worksheet.
In any case, in these worksheets, both words are used as nouns and verbs. Rack, as a verb, is used both intransitively and transitively; wrack as a verb is used only transitively and really has only one meaning: “to utterly ruin : WRECK.”
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.
Catch-22: “A novel (1961) by Joseph Heller (1923-1999) about the experiences of Captain Yossarian of the 256th (Army) bombing squadron in Italy during the Second World War. Yossarian’s main aim is to avoid getting killed. ‘Catch-22’ has become part of everyday speech to indicate a ‘no-win’ situation. Heller originally defined Catch-22 in chapter 5 of the novel:
‘There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified the concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was to ask; and as soon as he did. He would no longer be crazy have to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to’
Heller’s original title had been Catch 18, but his editor Robert Gottlieb pointed out that they were publishing Leon Uris’s Mila 18 in the same season. Heller later recalled:
‘I thought of Catch-Eleven, because it’s the only other number to start with an open vowel sound, I guess we doubled that.’
A film version (1970) with Alan Arkin as Yossarian was directed by Mike Nichols. Heller’s novel Closing Time (1994) features some of the same characters in later life.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
If Joseph Heller is accurately quoted in the passage above, he understood on some level that the title of his novel Catch-22 would show up in the American vernacular as a designator of bureaucratic absurdity. It turns up everywhere in discourse in the United States, and as I sat down to write this context clues worksheet on the noun catch-22 (it’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today), I wondered whether or not there are users of this noun who don’t realize that it derives from the title of an esteemed American novel.
It’s a difficult locution to work into a context clues worksheet, because, while its meanings are interrelated, there are enough of them (“a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule”; “an illogical, unreasonable, or senseless situation”; “a measure or policy whose effect is the opposite of what was intended”; “a situation presenting two equally undesirable alternatives” and “a hidden difficulty or means of entrapment”) that this is arguably a polysemous word.
Anyway, catch-22 also sufficiently abstract that if I use this worksheet at all, it will be with somewhat more advanced students.
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.
“Censor, n. A person of certain governments, employed to suppress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
Alright, last but not least today, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose name you surely recognize as a blight on a period of United States history that in fact bears his name, the “McCarthy Era,” and describes a particular style of political paranoia, McCarthyism.
This is a full-page worksheet, so it has a number of uses, including independent practice (i.e. homework).
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.
“Antecedents for Personal History. Antecedents are predecessors.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Here’s a worksheet on the Latin word root arbor, which as you probably know means tree. This is a relatively productive root in English, though its words tend to be somewhat specialized in the life sciences. Nonetheless, word roots are one way to build vocabulary very quickly if that’s what you need to do.
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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