Monthly Archives: October 2021

Temperance (n), Temperate (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun temperance. I’m fairly confident I wrote this for a United States history class to help students understand the word as an adjective in the historical term Temperance Movement. You will note in these sentences that I tried to write context that also defines temperance to mean “habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions.”

And here also is another context clues worksheet on the adjective temperate. This is a moderately complicated word whose essential meaning is “marked by moderation, “keeping or held within limits,” and “not extreme or excessive.” It’s worth remembering that this adjective attaches to nouns dealing with everything from drinking alcohol (as above), to climates, to one’s habits.

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.

Minimal Art

“Minimal Art: The most reductive of all the Post-Painterly Abstraction movements. Minimal painting—rejecting space, texture, subject matter, and atmosphere—relies solely on simple form and flat color for effect. Minimal sculpture, usually of monumental size, is equally free of personal overtones, relying on the simplest geometric forms and the power of its presence for effect. Artists identified with minimal art include Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, and Larry Bell.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Common Errors in English Usage: Gone, Went (v)

OK, last but not least on this cool Sunday morning, here is an English usage worksheet on understanding the difference between gone and went and how to use, respectively, this past participle and simple past tense of the verb go. This is a full-page worksheet with a short reading and ten modified cloze exercises. But, as it is formatted in Microsoft Word, it is yours to modify as you wish.

Like all the documents under the above header, this one is based on text from Paul Brians’ excellent book Common Errors in English Usage, which he has posted on the Washington State University website for free.

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.

Willa Cather on Human Stories

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

Willa Cather, O Pioneers! Pt. 2 ch. 4 (1913)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Term of Art: Perceptual-Motor Skills

“perceptual-motor skills: In everything children do, the look, listen, and touch, and then make a perceptual judgment about the things they see, hear, and feel. It is this perceptual judgment that dictates the way they react to their world (what is seen, what is heard, what is felt). When perceptions are well developed, then reactions are more likely to be appropriate for each given situation.

Thre are six perceptual systems that take in information from the environment: visual (light), auditory (sound), tactile (touch), kinesthetic (muscle feeling). Olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste). Perceptual-motor skills or behavior generally will involve perceptual input through more than one of these systems, and a complex sequence of motor activities.

Motor learning is an important part of childhood development. There is a natural developmental sequence of perceptual motor skill development, beginning very early with skills such as rolling over and sitting up, and proceeding to activities such as crawling, standing, walking, running, and jumping. As development progresses, the requirements for integration of perceptual systems and motor behavior grow more steadily subtle and complex.

Delays in the development of age-appropriate perceptual-motor skills may have significant and sometimes pervasive effects on school and social performance.”

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

Summary (n)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the noun summary. Why I produced two of them, I can’t say. I need not belabor the importance of this noun in the vocabulary of high school students, so I won’t. Incidentally, since I haven’t mentioned it lately, these documents, like almost everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, are formatted in Microsoft Word. Thus they are easily exportable into a word processor of your preference, and you may edit them for the needs of your students.

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: Coat for Coating

“Coat for Coating. ‘A coat of paint, or varnish.’ If we coat something we produce a coating, not a coat.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Crypt/o

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word root crypt-o. It means, as you probably already know, “secret” and “hidden.” In fact, given the need for the encryption on the digital devices that are now ubiquitous and even omnipresent in the lives of most people, this is a word root very much in common parlance in English.

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.

Leave It to Beaver

OK, for some reason, here is a reading on “Leave It to Beaver” along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I haven’t the faintest idea why I produced these documents on this late-1950s and early 1960s television show. A friend of mine extolled its virtues in the past; the one episode I saw nauseated me–a sitcom vision of a placid, indeed complacent, ultra-White America produced during the depths of Jim Crow–and I never watched another episode.

So again, I can’t imagine why I wrote this worksheet other than, perhaps, to help students understand how often popular media, particularly fictional narratives, are at variance with reality.

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.

Emilio Aguinaldo

“Emilio Aguinaldo: (1869-1964) Philippine independence leader. Of Chinese and Tagalog parentage he was educated at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, and became a leader of the Katipunan, a revolutionary society that fought the Spanish. Philippine independence was declared in 1898 and Aguinaldo became president, but within months Spain signed a treaty ceding the islands to the United States. Aguinaldo fought U.S. forces until he was captured in 1901, After taking an oath of allegiance to the U.S., he was induced to retire from public life. He collaborated with the Japanese during World War II; after the war he was briefly imprisoned; released by presidential amnesty, he was vindicated by his appointment to the Council of State in 1950. In his later years he promoted nationalism, democracy, and improvement of relations between the U.S. and the Philippines.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.