“The notion ‘grammatical’ cannot be identified with ‘meaningful’ or ‘significant’ in any semantic sense. Sentences (1) and (2) are equally nonsensical, but…only the former is grammatical.
(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.
Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures ch. 2 (1957)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Here is a reading on Louis Pasteur and pasteurization along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Given the current ascendance of germ theory denialism, this reading, from the Intellectual Devotional series, is particularly timely
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.
“Conducting a survey for a question-and-answer book he was editing, George Oppenheimer once quizzed Kaufman on geography—a subject that thoroughly bored G.S.K. One of the questions read: ‘What is the longest river in South America?’
After a moment. Kaufman queried, ‘Are you sure it’s in South America?’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the Freudian Slip. This is a half-page worksheet with a single-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I wrote this. Usually, that means I put some together in response to student interest; that is all but certainly the case here.
This might be too abstract or advanced an idea for some students–and, depending on one’s thoughts about such things, it might also be a bit risque. I don’t know. I do know that it’s worth mentioning that there is a more clinical term for the Freudian Slip, to wit, parapraxis. This worksheet, as it is in Microsoft Word, could easily be recast to call upon students to understand the concept of parapraxis.
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.
“Rotten Reviews: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
‘I have never seen frogs in Virginia ‘shout and glare’…”
Loren Eiseley, Washington Post Book World
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Here is a worksheet on differentiating between the verbs flounder and founder, informed by Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (which he makes available at no charge on the Washington State University website). This worksheet contains a single-paragraph reading from Professor Brians’ book, with ten modified cloze exercises. However, since it is a Microsoft Word document, you can manipulate it to meet the needs of your classroom.
These are two intransitive verbs (founder has a transitive use, “to disable (an animal) especially by excessive feeding,” of which I was unaware, clearly because this word is seldom used in American English to convey this ghastly meaning) which are frequently confused. Once again, Professor Brians summarizes them elegantly: “If you’re sunk, you’ve foundered. If you’re struggling, you’re floundering.”
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.
“thinking skills: The way in which an individual acquires, interprets, organizes, stores, retrieves, and applies information, also known as cognitive skills.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Here is a worksheet on the Latin roots du and duo. They mean two. These are very productive roots in English (indeed, duo stands on its own, meaning “pair” and “duet”), providing the basis of high-frequency words like dual, duplex, and duplicate–and less high-frequency words like duodenum and duodecimal, which do turn up on things like the SAT.
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.
“Events in our classrooms today will prompt world events tomorrow.”
J. Lloyd Trump (1908-1985) As quoted in The Teacher and the Taught (1963)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the verb tousle. It means “dishevel” and “rumple.” It’s only used transitively, so don’t forget your direct object. You, or someone or something else, must tousle something.
This is one of those words that yields a pair of definitional words that students, particularly English language learners, may not know. Since I just wrote this document this morning, I haven’t used it in a classroom (and may never, since this isn’t a high-frequency or essential academic word). But if I did, I would look for students to be able to articulate from context–which is relatively strong in this worksheet–a general sense of “wrinkle,” or “mess up,” or “tangle,” or something along those lines.
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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