Monthly Archives: August 2021

Ambiguity

“Ambiguity (noun) The state or quality of having more than one possible meaning; unclear or unresolved sense; a double meaning or equivocal word or expression. Adjective: ambiguous; adverb: ambiguously; noun: ambiguousness

‘Disraeli has a standard reply for diplomatic ambiguity for people who sent him unsolicited manuscripts to read: “Many thanks; I shall lose not time in reading it.”’ Robert Hendrickson, The Literary Life.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Not that demand for it is likely to be great, but here, nonetheless, is a reading on Friedrich Nietzsche along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

I wrote this material for a student I worked with at the very beginning of my teaching career. After he used it, I don’t believe I ever printed another copy of it. I have some history with Nietzsche, so I can tell you that this is a workmanlike, mostly superficial account of his philosophy. But how, really, to deal with a thinker of Nietzsche’s range, depth, and insight in one page? Impossible, I say.

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: Clever for Obliging

“Clever for Obliging. In this sense the word was once in general use in the United States, but is now seldom heard and life here is less insupportable.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Extra-, Extro

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots extra and extro. They mean outside and beyond. This two roots are at the base of a lot of high-frequency words in English, including two adjectives commonly used in your own school–extracurricular and extramural.

Or how about the strong expository verb extrapolate? Surely something we want students to be able to do. Then of course there is always the old standby, extraordinary, literally “beyond ordinary.” Enough said.

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.

Nighthawks

“Nighthawks: A painting (1942) by the US artist Edward Hopper (1882-1967), showing people at an all-night coffee stand. A nighthawk is the same as a ‘night owl,’ i.e. someone who likes to stay up all night. A nighthawk—also called a mosquito hawk or bulbat—is also the name for any of a group of American nightjars. Nighthawks has also been used as the title of two films, one (1978) about the night-time cruising of a gay British schoolteacher, and the other (1981) about American policemen pursuing a terrorist.”

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

Cultural Literacy: The Great Gatsby

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Great Gatsby. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. In other words, the sparest of introduction what many people regard as the Great American Novel.

If you’re looking for something a bit longer on Gatsby, you’ll find it here. Likewise, if you need a reading on F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, you’ll find one here.

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.

Tour de Force

“Tour de Force: (French, ‘Turn of Force’) As a literary term it may be applied to a work which provides an outstanding illustration of a writer’s skill and mastery; a sort of ‘one-off’ brilliant display. Among modern examples one might suggest: Hemingway’s short story The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1938); Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon (1940); Orwell’s fable Animal Farm (1945); Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962); Daniel Keyes’s short story Flowers for Algernon (1965); and Vikram Seth’s extraordinary ‘novel’ The Golden Gate (1986)—a narrative which consists of 590 sonnets in rhyming tetrameters.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Desultory (adj)

It’s the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster today, so here is context clues worksheet on the adjective desultory. It means, for the purposes of making meaning on this document, and in the vernacular as well, “marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose.”

However, it can also mean “not connected with the main subject” and “disappointing in progress, performance, or quality.” This is not a high-frequency word in English, and in any case, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen or heard it used to mean “not connected to the main subject.” On the other hand, “disappointing in progress, performance, or quality” is a close enough corollary to “marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose that one might say the first definition is the outcome of the second in this sentence.

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.

Alan Simpson on the Educated Person

“An educated man…is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself, and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.”

Alan Simpson on becoming president of Vassar College (1963)

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

Erasmus

Here is a reading on Erasmus along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

I don’t know if anyone teaches Erasmus of Rotterdam, as he was and is known, at the secondary level. He is by any measure an exemplary Northern Renaissance humanist. Now that I have this set of documents, I might add it to my list of biographical research assignments for global studies–provided that I ever use those materials again. Whatever the case in your classroom, this document is–as is virtually everything on Mark’s Text Terminal–formatted in Microsoft Word. In other words, these are open-source documents for you to do with what you will.

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.