Here is a worksheet on the Greek word root bio. It means, simply, life.
There is no need to belabor the productivity of this root–it forms the basis of a lot of basic words in English: biography, biology, and biodegradable, to name just three.
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.
Rotten Reviews: Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel
“…almost pure gingerbread. It has bite, a certain flavor, but it turns into a gluey mess when chewed.”
San Francisco Examiner
Excerpted from: Barnard, 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, humor, literary oddities, poetry
OK, folks, I’m taking the the rest of the day off from computing in all forms. But before I do, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb mediate. It is used both intransitively and transitively. You surely see the noun media inside this verb. Moreover, you may see the Latin word root medi, meaning middle.
So, unsurprisingly, in its transitive form, this verb means “to bring accord out of by action as an intermediary,” “to effect by action as an intermediary,” “and to act as intermediary agent in bringing, effecting, or communicating,” and “to transmit as intermediate mechanism or agency .” In the third and fourth definitions, teachers will see the work they do: to mediate between instructional content and students to create a situation where the most deep, broad, and therefore effective learning occurs.
Intransitively, mediate means “to interpose between parties in order to reconcile them.” In other words, mediate here describes what goes on, say, in a divorce mediation, or in a negotiation for a labor contract.
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.
“-Onym: [Through Latin from Greek onuma/onoma name]. A word base or combining form that stands either for a word (as in synonym) or a name (as in pseudonym). Words containing -onym have two kinds of adjective: with –ous as in synonymous (having the nature or quality of a synonym: synonymous words) or with –ic, as in synonymic (concerning synonyms: synonymic relationships). The form –onymy indicates type, as with synonymy (the type sense relation in which words have the same or similar meaning) and eponymy (the category of word-formation that concerns words derived with people’s names). Because –onym begins with o (the commonest Greek thematic vowel, as in biography), the base form is sometimes taken to be -nym, an assumption reinforced by the initial n of the equivalent terms nomen in Latin and name in English. As a result, some recent technical terms have been formed on –nym: for example, characternym and paranym. See acronym, antonym, eponym, heteronym, homonym, hyponym, retronym.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Here is a learning support on using hyphens and dashes. If you scroll down about 17 posts below this one, you’ll find another learning support simply on hyphenation. As always, Paul Brians does a nice job of presenting the key issues on these forms of punctuation.
Incidentally, if you like Paul Brians’ work, stay tuned here for more of it; I drafted a little over one hundred worksheets using text from his book Common Errors in English Usage–which Professor Brians, amazingly, has made available in its entirety on the Washington State University website. Just punch that hyperlink–and you’re there!
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.
“Did Arthur Conan Doyle write any other books besides those featuring Sherlock Holmes? Yes, more than ten others, including science fiction and historical fiction. They include Micah Clarke (1889), The White Company (1891), and The Lost World (1912).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research
Here is a reading on robotic surgery along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is an Intellectual Devotional reading, so the worksheet is a two-pager with the standard (for Mark’s Text Terminal) eight vocabulary words, eight comprehension questions, and three “Additional Facts” questions.
If memory serves, I wrote this for a colleague who was running an after-school robotics program at a school in which I served in the North Bronx. I’m fairly certain I’ve never used it.
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.
“Etruscan Art: The tomb painting, sculpture, pottery, and bronze ware produced by the people of Etruria in northern Italy (who were originally from Asia Minor) from the 7th to the 3rd centuries B.C. Strongly influenced by Greek art, Etruscan culture was eventually absorbed by the Romans.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on carbon. This is a half-page worksheet with three questions. In other words, the barest of introductions to the topic. I believe I wrote this to accompany a lesson on carbon dating for a co-taught freshman global studies class in New York City.
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.
“But what. ‘I did not know but what he was an enemy.’ Omit what. If condemnation of this dreadful locution seems needless bear the matter in mind in your reading and you will soon be of a different opinion.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, humor, literary oddities
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