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.

Novel (n/adj)

It’s now fall in Vermont, and simply beautiful. Here, first thing on a Monday morning, is a pair of context clues worksheets on novel as both a noun and an adjective. These offer a nice, I hope cogent, to teach a point of usage while introducing students to a word in very common usage in educated and even casual discourse in English.

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.

Scarface

Scarface: A gangster film (1932) directed by Howard Hawks, with a screenplay by Ben Hecht and others. The 1983 remake was directed by Brian de Palma and had a screenplay by Oliver Stone. The name of the eponymous anti-hero is Tony Camonte (played by Paul Muni) in the 1932 version; in the 1983 version he is called Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino). The character is based on the real-life gangster Al Capone (1899-1947), who acquired the name Scarface from the scar on his left cheek caused by a razor slash in a Brooklyn gang fight in his younger days.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Drag Racing

Last but not least today, here is a reading on drag racing and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I wrote this when I was working with a group of students in a rural high school who were interested in all manner of fast cars. It was high-interest material for those students, which leads me to suspect it will be of high-interest elsewhere as well. If that turns out to be the case in your classroom, could you leave a comment?

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.

Write It Right: Avoirdupois for Weight

Avoirdupois for Weight. Mere slang.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Bar/o

This  worksheet on the Greek word root bar/o yields in English, as Greek roots tend to, a number of words related to the physical sciences. In this case, bar/o means pressure and weight. You find it at the base of weather-related words like barometer and millibar.

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.

Term of Art: Sentence Fragment

“Sentence Fragment: A group of words that is not grammatically a complete sentence but is punctuated as one: Because it mattered greatly.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Common Errors in English Usage: Renumeration and Remuneration

Here’s an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of renumeration and remuneration. In reality, since neither renumeration nor the verb from which it would spring, renumerate, are words that have disappeared under the much crisper recount (although renumerate can also mean to renumber–also crisper than renumerate) this is a worksheet on the meaning and use of the noun remuneration.

To remunerate simply means “to pay an equivalent for.” When you receive your paycheck, your employer remunerated for your labor.

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.

Style

“Style: The characteristic manner and appearance of the works of an individual artist, school, or period. Stylistic elements comprise qualities resulting from both form and content. Artistic styles emerge from individual and collective interpretations in social, political, and economic contexts.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Cultural Literacy: Liberalism

Because it presents an extremely narrow, time-bound (it restricts the refers to liberalism only in its manifestation in the twentieth century) definition of the ideology, I almost trashed this Cultural Literacy worksheet on liberalism.

Talk radio hosts and social media have reduced liberalism, a complicated political and moral philosophy to a caricature of itself. This worksheet, while narrowly useful, doesn’t generally help much in clearing up misconceptions about this Enlightenment ideology.

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 Devil’s Dictionary: Incorporation

“Incorporation, n. The act of uniting several persons into one fiction called a corporation, in order that they may be no longer responsible for their actions. A, B and C are a corporation. A robs, B steals, and C (it is necessary that there be one gentleman in the concern) cheats. It is a plundering, thieving, swindling corporation. But A, B and C, who have jointly determined and severally executed every crime of the corporation, are blameless, It is wrong to mention them by name when censuring their acts as a corporation, but right when praising. Incorporation is somewhat like the ring of Gyges: it bestows the blessing of invisibility—comfortable to knaves. The scoundrel who invented incorporation is dead—he has disincorporated.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.