Monthly Archives: September 2023

William Hazlitt on Hypocrites

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”

William Hazlitt

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Learn

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the verb learn when it is used with an infinitive. The teacher learned to think more carefully about what constitutes rigorous, cogent, curricular materials.

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.

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Rotten Reviews: A John O’Hara Omnibus

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Sermons and Soda-Water

“The novellas represent no change in Mr. O’Hara’s method. He normally puts everything into a novel, including the kitchen sink complete with stopped drain, plumber, and plumber’s mate, and does this not once, but four or five times per book. The novella form has merely limited the author in a statistical way; one kitchen sink is all he can fit into his predetermined space…

Atlantic Monthly

 The Big Laugh

When O’Hara is good he is very, very good; when he is bad he is writing for Hollywood…an exercise in tedium.”

New York Herald Tribune

The Horse Knows the Way

“One might suggest…that the inhabitants of hell be condemned to an eternity reading stories behind the headlines in American tabloids….John O’Hara’s new collection of short stories brings the whole realm uncomfortably close. It is a punishment to read….”

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

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Cultural Literacy: John Dos Passos

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

While I can’t imagine there could be much call for it, I must have produced this Cultural Literacy worksheet on John Dos Passos for some reason, though now I don’t remember why. Perhaps an independent study on Jazz-Age authors? Your guess is as good as mine. In any case this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence–which at 34 words might require some paring or judiciously placed punctuation for emergent readers and English language learners.

Incidentally, does anyone read Dos Passos any more? I took a crack at Manhattan Transfer about 30 years ago and found it relatively tough sledding. I’ve been meaning to return to it, and perhaps The U.S.A. Trilogy as well. His books remain in print, and he has been designated, by virtue of his inclusion in The Library of America, as one of this nation’s great authors. So someone must still be reading him. His books, I would think, are solidly midlist titles.

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.

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Vowel

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

“vowel: Speech sound in which air from the lungs passes through the mouth with minimal obstruction and without audible friction like the f in fit. The word also refers to a letter representing such a sound (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). In articulatory phonetics (see articulation), vowels are classified by tongue and lip position; for example, high vowels like the i in machine and the u in flute are both pronounced with the tongue arched high in the mouth, but in u the lips are also rounded. Single vowel sounds are monophthongs; two vowel sounds pronounced as one syllable, like the ou in round, are diphthongs.”

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

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The Weekly Text, 8 September 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 7, Emphatic Appositive at End, after a Colon

Posted on September 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text offers the seventh lesson plan in the Styling Sentences unit (and as I look at these lessons, one after another, as I post them, I am once again skeptical of their worth, as I was before I undertook a major revision and expansion of this unit during the COVID pandemic), this one, as heralded above, on a sentence form with an emphatic appositive at the end, after a colon.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences for nouns. The primary work of this lesson is this worksheet with explanatory and mentor texts. I want to point out, again, that this worksheet contains no sentence stems or cloze exercises, or really any kind of supportive apparatus. There are mentor texts for students to emulate. I think I could write some supported material for this worksheet, but I don’t know how useful it would be.

But what do you think?

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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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