“Line engraving: An intaglio engraving process in which the design is drawn by incising lines directly into a metal plate with a burin; the burr is removed, leaving a clean groove to receive the ink, which is transferred to paper under the pressure of the press.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Here is a worksheet on the Latin roots ig, il, in, im, ir; they mean not and without. These are though of in English language arts classes as prefixes, which they are for the purposes of this worksheet. You’ll find these root at the beginning of many high-frequency words in English adjectives in English such as ignorant and illegal. And while words like illegible, immutable, incongruous, and irrefutable (all present in this document) are less frequently used in common discourse, they are quite useful in academic prose.
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.
“theme schools: Schools that emphasize a particular set of activities or ideas that they think will appeal to students. For example, some schools are dedicated to technology, whereas others focus on the performing arts or on specific vocations. As the movement for small schools accelerated in the 1990s and the early 21sst century, there was a large increase in the number of theme high schools, some with esoteric or highly specialized themes (e.g., the sports professions or world architecture).”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on D-Day. This is a half-pager, with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. The sparest of introductions, I imagine this document has only specific uses in a classroom. Review? It’s a Microsoft Word document, so you can copy and paste out of it as you like.
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.
“Had better for Would better. This is not a defensible as an idiom, as those who always used it before their attention was directed to it take the trouble to point out. It comes of such contractions as he’d for he would, I’d for I would. These clipped words are erroneously restored as ‘he had,’ ‘I had.’ So we have such monstrosities as ‘He had better beware,’ ‘I had better go.’”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, humor, literary oddities
Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective two-bit. I wonder if anyone knows these days that two bits means twenty-five cents. Two-bit, therefore, means “cheap or trivial of its kind,” “petty, and “small-time”; this document is keyed to those definitions as well.
Unless you plan to teach a reading unit on Damon Runyon, or cast a production of Guys and Dolls, I can’t imagine why any student needs to learn this vanishing adjective. I can, however, imagine, that this was the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster at a moment in life when I had some time on my hands.
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 history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion
Here is a reading on the Ku Klux Klan along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have almost posted these documents a number of times over the years, but always hesitated and returned them to the warehouse. I think, or at least hope, that the entirety of this blog exposes my attitude toward the KKK–I think they are a dangerous group of racists and hatemongers who bear watching–hence this reading.
Once again, the editors of the Intellectual Devotional series have not equivocated and in one page detailed the crimes of the Klan and its threat to the civil rights of people it hates. I think students really deserve the plain facts of this hate group’s existence and its aims. This short reading serves as a good general introduction to the KKK.
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.
“Ehninger and Brockreide introduced debaters to the informal logical model of Stephen Toulmin, a British philosopher of science. Now almost every modern debate text uses the Toulmin Model as the method of teaching argument. Toulmin first explained this model in his 1958 book The Uses of Argument.
Toulmin argued that every argument (if it deserves to be called an argument) must consist of three elements: data, warrant, and claim.
The claim answers the question ‘What are you trying to get me to believe?’—it is the ending belief. Consider the following unit of proof: ‘Uninsured Americans are going without needed medical care because they are unable to afford it. Because access to health care is a basic right, the United States should establish a system of national health insurance.’ The claim in this argument is that “the United States should establish a system of national health insurance.”
Data (sometimes also called evidence) answers the question ‘What have we got to go on?’—it is the beginning belief. In the foregoing example of a unit of proof, the data is the statement that ‘uninsured Americans are going without needed medical care because they are unable to afford it.’ In the context of a debate round, a debater would be expected to offer statistics or an authoritative quotation to establish the trustworthiness of this data.
Warrant answers the question ‘How does that data lead to the claim?’—it is the connector between the beginning belief and the ending belief. In the unit of proof about health care, the warrant is the statement that ‘access to health care is a basic human right.’ A debater would be expected to offer some support for this warrant. Such support might come from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, or by quoting a statement from a health care expert.
The most common argumentative inadequacy is the unwarranted claim—a debater merely makes a claim without attempting any type of support without attempting any type of support. Suppose a debater attacks the national health insurance proposal by declaring that ‘the cost of a national health insurance system would cause the U.S. deficit to skyrocket.’ This is a claim, but it is not an argument because there is neither data nor warrant.
Sometimes a debater will offer data and claim but omit the warrant. Suppose the debater reads evidence that the U.S deficit now stands at $8.9 trillion and then makes the claim that ‘the cost of a national health insurance system would cause the U.S. deficit to skyrocket.’ Now that statement has data and claim, but the warrant is mission—there is nothing connecting the current sizable U.S. deficit to a claim that national health insurance will make this deficit substantially worse. Accordingly, the statement does not meet the definition of an argument.
Occasionally, a debater will present data without offering either a warrant or a claim–the debater simply presents an ‘interesting fact.’ Suppose in our national health insurance debate, a student reads a piece of evidence showing that Hillary Clinton, when she was first lady, proposed national health insurance in 1994. This data may well be accurate, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. There is no argument unless the data is connected to a claim through a warrant.”
Excerpted from: Edwards, Richard E. PhD. Competitive Debate: The Official Guide. New York: Penguin, 2008.
“Merchant, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
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