Monthly Archives: August 2020

The Devil’s Dictionary: Demagogue

Demagogue, n. A political opponent.” 

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

Cultural Literacy: Lunatic Fringe

I don’t necessarily mean to editorialize with this post, but if there is a better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a lunatic fringe I’m not sure when that would be.

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.

Term of Art: Main Clause

“Main Clause: An independent clause, which can stand alone as grammatically complete sentence. Grammarians quibble.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Exhort (vi/vt)

Because it’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb exhort, which is used both intransitively and transitively. Like many of the words Merriam-Webster’s has posted lately, exhort comes from solid Latin stock.

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.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 Slaughterhouse-Five: A novel (1969) by the US writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1922-2007), drawing on his experience of witnessing, as a prisoner of war, the Allied destruction of Dresden by fire bombs during the Second World War. The framework of the book concerns Billy Pilgrim, who is transported by aliens through a time warp, enabling him to witness events in the past of which he has foreknowledge. So it is that, with other US prisoners, he finds himself shut up in a slaughterhouse (Slaughterhouse-Five) in Dresden when the city is bombed. An interesting film version (1972) was directed by George Roy Hill.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

The Weekly Text, August 21, 2020: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Roots Man, Mani, and Manu

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word roots man, mani and manu, all three of which mean hand. Even a cursory glance at these three words divulge their productivity in the English language: manicure, manufacture, and manual all come immediately to mind.

I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun digit in its meaning as “any of the divisions in which the limbs of most vertebrates terminate, which are typically five in number but may be reduced (as in the horse), and which typically have a series of phalanges bearing a nail, claw, or hoof at the tip — compare FINGER 1, TOE.” I wanted this do-now exercise to hint for students what the word roots in this lesson might mean.

And, at last, here is the worksheet that is the primary work of this lesson.

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.

Raymond Chandler on Chess

“As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”

Raymond Chandler

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Harvard

Anyone I’ve known who has dealt with the institution reported to me that its cachet is hypertrophied, but since it remains a brand in higher education around the globe, here is a reading on Harvard University and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As for the school’s cachet, I have no experience there (other than walking around on its leafy, mellow campus), so I can’t speak to, well anything about it.

Nota bene that this is a short history of the university and its role in the development of colleges and universities in the United States.

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.

Term of Art: Teacher Talk

“Teacher Talk: A semi-technical term in educational research and applied linguistics for the characteristic (often simplified) style of speech of teachers. In general terms, this may be prompted by the social setting of the classroom, with repetition, rephrasing for the sake of clarity, and patterns of stereotyped interaction with learners, such as question, response, and evaluation. For teachers of English as a foreign language, speech may be slower and clearer than is usual, avoiding and minimizing elided usages such as must’ve/musta and ‘sno good y’-know, repeating the same thing in several ways, and using expressions particularly associated with education, classrooms, and textbooks.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Common Errors in English Usage: Subject to and Subjected to

As I think these are two locutions high school students should understand and be able to use properly before they graduate, here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of subject to and subjected to in declarative sentences and expository prose.

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.