On a cool, gray morning in Brooklyn, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on feudalism. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences, four of them longish, but relatively uncomplicated compounds, and six comprehension questions. This is one of the more cogent readings from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Hirsch, E.D., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), and that’s saying something, because the editors of this book are experts in concision.
It is this sentence, though, that brings home the conceptual bacon (so to speak) on feudalism: “Under feudalism, people were born with a permanent position in society.”
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.
Mark's Text Terminal 