Yearly Archives: 2020

Teaching and Learning Support: The Serial Comma

[The Oxford Comma is a fairly contentious issue among writers, and this squib doesn’t address that issue in punctuation usage. If you want this material in typescript form click on that hyperlink.]

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

Red, white and blue

Gold, silver, of copper

He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents.

This comma is often referred to as the “serial” comma.

In the names of business firms the last comma is usually omitted. Follow the usage of the individual firm.

Little, Brown and Company

Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette

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

Cultural Literacy: Zeitgeist

If there was ever a time for kids to learn this German noun, one of those abstractions that the Germans are good at contriving in compounds, it is now. To that end, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the word and concept zeitgeist.

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: Reciprocal Pronoun

“Reciprocal Pronoun: A term sometimes used for the compound pronouns each other and one another, which express a two-way interaction: Romeo and Juliet love each other/one another )Romeo loved Juliet and Juliet loved Romeo). In meaning, reciprocal pronouns contrast with reflexive pronouns: The Montagues and the Capulets loved themselves (The Montagues loved the Montagues, and the Capulets loved the Capulets). Reciprocal pronouns are, however, like reflexives in not normally being used as subjects: not They wondered where each other/one another was.”

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

A Lesson Plan on Anxiety

Here’s a lesson plan on anxiety with its work, to wit this short reading and vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If you’d like slightly longer versions of these documents, they are available here.

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.

Write It Right: Aggravate for Irritate

“Aggravate for Irritate. ‘He aggravated me by his insolence.’ To aggravate is to augment the disagreeableness of something already disagreeable, or the badness of something bad. But a person cannot be aggravated. Even if disagreeable or bad. Women are singularly prone to misuse of this word.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Autobiography (n), Autobiographical (adj)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the noun autobiography and the adjective autobiographical.

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.

Jean Piaget and Pedagogy and the Pedagogue

“The most admirable of reforms cannot but fall short in practice if teachers of sufficient quality are not available in sufficient quantity…Generally speaking, the more we try to improve our schools, the heavier the teacher’s task becomes; and the better our teaching methods, the more difficult they are to apply.”

Jean Piaget

Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (1970)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Richard Lederer’s Famous History of the World in Student Bloopers

House cleaning continues at Mark’s Text Terminal. Over 12 years of storing material inevitable redundancies occur, as do good intentions never realized–i.e. material planned, even begun, but never executed. For the next week or so, I’ll post materials that might be useful to you, readers and colleagues. In so doing, I’ll drive to separate the precious metals from the dross and the wheat from the chaff–and try not to waste your time with dross and chaff (shall I continue to beat these overworked metaphors?).

Somewhere along the line, most college students, I hope, encounter Richard Lederer’s famous (or infamous, I suppose, depending on one’s sense of humor) “The World According to Student Bloopers.” If you can use it, here is a typescript of that hilarious compendium.

Should you find typos in this document, they can be easily corrected by consulting Professor Lederer’s original under the middle of the three hyperlinks (“The World…”) above.

Term of Art: Attribution

“attribution: The ways in which an individual understands the sources of success, difficulty, or failure. Often, people with learning disabilities attribute their successes and failures to factors they do not control, such as luck, the nature of the task, or their own inadequacies. By contrast, successful learners tend to attribute failure or success to their own level of effort and perseverance, and see themselves as having control over the outcomes of their work.

Attribution theory provides an approach to understand the difficulties with motivation experience by some people with learning problems, and also suggests that direct guidance in changing attribution styles may be helpful to those with learning disorders.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Al Capone

Alright, let’s finish out the day with this high-interest reading on Al Capone and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. When I hand out my list of high-interest readings to students, this is one of the first things many of the boys choose.

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.