Monthly Archives: October 2021

Blog Post 5,000: A Tentative Beginning to a Unit on Writing Reviews

In six years plus of this blog, I have finally reached the 5,000-post mark. Post Number 5,000 is a set of documents that I began toward developing a unit on writing reviews some years ago while working in an ill-fated middle school in the North Bronx.

For now, however, here are the basic, undeveloped documents for this unit. Here is a a tentative unit plan, which is still mostly in template form. Likewise this lesson-plan template and this worksheet template. Here is a a glossary of critical terms  for writing film reviews. This is a start on the first worksheet of the unit.

Finally, here is a list of aesthetic criteria for evaluating cultural products. Let me mention in passing that this is for teacher use; the one time I taught kids to write reviews, I made sure that they made, with proper guidance, their own lists of aesthetic criteria for the media or event they were criticizing.

You may want to check back here later, as I am in the process of developing this long-neglected unit.

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.

Foreshadowing

“Foreshadowing: The technique of arranging events and information in a narrative in such a way that later events are prepared for or shadowed forth beforehand. A well-constructed novel, for instance, will suggest at the very beginning what the outcome may be; the end is contained in the beginning, and this gives structural and thematic unity.”

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

Spontaneous (adj)

Last but not least on this dark Friday morning, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective spontaneous. This is a high-frequency word in English, so it is one students should know, at the bare minimum (if you’ll indulge me while I ride on my high horse this morning), but the time they graduate high school.

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.

Write It Right: Essential for Necessary

“Essential for Necessary. This solecism is common among the best writers in the country and England. ‘It is essential to go early’; ‘Irrigation is essential to the cultivation of arid lands’ and so forth. One thing is essential to another thing only if it is part of the essence of it—an important and indispensable part of it, determining its nature, the soul of it.”

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

Common Errors in English Usage: Group

Once again, from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on subject-verb agreement when using the noun group. Did you know you know it is used as both a plural and singular, depending on what one needs to say about a group? I did not before preparing this worksheet.

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.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

“Nineteen Eighty-Four: A dystopian novel (1949) by George Orwell (1903-50). The book comprises a prophecy of the totalitarian future of mankind, portraying a society in which government propaganda and terrorism destroy human awareness of reality. It is generally thought that Orwell named the novel by reversing the last two figures of the year in which it was written, 1948, but an article by Sally Coniam in the Times Literary Supplement of 31 December 1999 proposed another theory. In 1934 Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, published a poem, ‘End of the Century 1984,’ in The Chronicle, the school magazine of Sunderland Church High School, where she had been a pupil in the 1920s. The poem was written to mark the school’s 50th anniversary, looking back then forward to the future and to the schools centenary in 1984. It seems likely that Orwell could have adopted the year accordingly, although for him it was a random date. Support for this lies in the poem’s mention of ‘telesalesmanship’ and ‘Telepathic Station 9,’ terms strangely modern for their time, which seem to prefigure Orwell’s own ‘Newspeak,’ teleprogrammes,’ and ‘telescreen.’

Following the publication of Orwell’s novel, the year 1984—until it came and went—was long regarded as apocalyptic, and as such was even entered in the Oxford English Dictionary. Appropriately enough, a film version entitled 1984 starring John Hurt and Richard Burton was released in 1984.”

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

Lyndon B. Johnson

Here is a reading on Lyndon B. Johnson along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet . I was a child when Johnson was president; I remember seeing on live television his announcement that he would not stand for reelection in 1968. The newscast impressed my parents, but at at the age of seven, it meant very little to me.

Over time, and all the published volumes of Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Johnson, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, I have come to appreciate the fascination with Johnson. He was, it seems to me, the last great president the Democratic Party produced. He accomplished great things, more often than not through dubious and even devious means. In any case, these documents are a solid introduction to Johnson’s accomplishments–both the triumphs and the failures.

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.

Analogy

“Analogy (noun) A theoretical comparison or point-by-point correspondence between particulars of two different things, rather than a categorical likeness; resemblance in certain parallels; logical inference that if two things are alike in some respects, they will be alike in others. Adj. analogical, analogous; adv. analogously; n. analogousness; v. analogize.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Fus

Linguistically, I am at somewhat of a loss in trying to understand the Latin word root fus, which means “pour.” It’s a productive root in English, growing a number of high-frequency words such as confuse, as well as the less frequently used but arguably essential diffuse and transfuse (not to mention profuse). How these words relate or apply to the concept of pouring escapes me. Perhaps, kind reader, you can enlighten me and the other users of this blog.

Whatever the case, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root fus if you can use it.

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.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Connoisseur

“Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured upon his lips to revive him. ‘Pauillac, 1873,’ he murmured and died.”

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