Category Archives: English Language Arts

This category contains domain-specific material–reading and writing expository prose, interpreting literature etc.–designed to meet the Common Core standards in English language arts while at the same time being flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse and idiosyncratic learners.

James A. Michener on Dark Ages

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“An age is called Dark not because light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”

James A. Michener (1907-1997)

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

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Common Errors in English Usage: Historic (adj), Historical (adj)

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

From Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he generously allows full access at no charge at the Washington State University website), here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the adjectives historic and historical. This is a full-page worksheet with Professor Brians’ four-sentence reading augmented with some definitional text I worked up to complement it. There are ten modified cloze exercises for students to complete.

However, this worksheet, like most others on Mark’s Text Terminal, is formatted in Microsoft Word. So you may do as you wish with this document.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

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Casuistry

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Casuistry (noun): The determining of right and wrong in matters of conduct or conscience, or the applying of principles of ethics, particularly in instances that are complex or ambiguous; false, deceptive reasoning about law or morals; sophisticated persuasion. Adjective: casuistic, casuistical; adverb: casuistically.

‘After you strip this prose of its casuistic caveats, distinctions and reservations, there still remains the “needs to be taken seriously as studiously”; there remains the “structural” identity that, at least for this high culture illiterate, means flagrant gilding by association.’ John Simon, Reverse Angle”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Mercantilism

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on mercantilism. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and five comprehension questions. In general, upon review, this worksheet’s reading wants a bit for an explanation and analysis of the trade strategies mercantilist states use to keep their treasuries full. If you want to take your students on a deeper dive into this essential topic in the social studies (yeesh to that term incidentally) curriculum, this lesson plan on mercantilism might be more useful.

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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Write It Right: Colonel, Judge, Governor, etc., for Mister

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Colonel, Judge, Governor, etc., for Mister. Give a man a title only if it belongs to him and only while it belongs to him.”

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

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Fanciful (adj)

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective fanciful. The context in these sentences seeks to elicit the definition “marked by fancy or unrestrained imagination rather than by reason and experience.” This is not, I stipulate, a high-frequency word in English. At the same time, when you’re reaching for its definition when writing prose, few other words will do.

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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The Algonquin Wits: Harold Ross on Henry Luce

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“On hearing that Time editor Henry Luce objected to a profile of himself published in The New Yorker—on the grounds that not one nice thing was said about him in the whole piece—Ross told him, ‘That’s what you get for trying to be a baby tycoon.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

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Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference

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Saturday Night Live

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you or your students can use them, here is a reading on Saturday Night Live along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The show is soon to arrive, amazingly, at its fiftieth anniversary. As a friend of mine once put it, it gave us a reason to stay home on Saturday nights when we were young–which was probably a good thing in terms of our financial and physical (and perhaps moral) health. The reading, for all that, is relatively short.

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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W. Somerset Maugham on Principles

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“You can’t learn too soon that the the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Common Errors in English Usage: Humanism (n), Humanist (n/adj)

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

OK, last but not least today, here is a worksheet on using humanism and humanist adapted from the pages of Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he allows free access at his Washington State University website). This is a full-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises. Professor Brians nicely explains the caution one should use when using these words (e.g., they are not synonymous atheism and atheist). The worksheet is a simple usage exercise, with the context of the cloze exercises indicating which noun to use, or if the adjective humanist is called for by the 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

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