“Avocation for Vocation. A vocation is, literally, a calling; that is, a trade or profession. An avocation is something that calls one away from it. If I say that farming is some one’s avocation I mean that he practices it, not regularly, but at odd times.”
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
OK, last but not least this morning, here is an English usage worksheet on reknown and renown. The first word is simply a misspelling of the second; put another way, reknown is not a word in English.
Renown, however, is, both as a noun and a verb–and the verb is used only transitively. In this English usage worksheet it is used only, in five cloze exercises, as a noun. Given how short this worksheet is, I’ll suggest that there is plenty of room for helping students understand renown as a verb by asking them to write some sentences using it that way.
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.
“Expressionism: Art in which the emotions of an artist are paramount and take precedence over a rational and faithful-to-life rendering of subject matter. Expressionist compositions and forms therefore tend toward distortion and exaggeration, as in the art of El Greco. In modern art, expressionism is associated with German movements of the early 20th century, especially in Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter, which are usually referred to as German expressionism. In the Americas expressionism was embraced by Mexican muralists searching for a national style that incorporated European and pre-Columbian elements. See neo-expressionism.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
OK, moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root cerebro. It means, I expect you’ve gathered by now, brain. Most of the words that grow from this root–it’s very productive in English–denote brain but also connote mind and intellect. But again, you probably already know that.
Like many Greek roots on this blog, this Latin root will be useful, indeed necessary, for students interested in the healthcare professions.
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.
“Academic problem: A learning difficulty, usually in a schoolchild, that does not amount to a learning disability.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
National Public Radio ran a story this morning on airlines–among them Qantas and Royal Brunei–are offering “Flights to Nowhere.” People suffering travel withdrawal can board a plane and fly…back to the airport where they started!
I can’t pretend to understand anyone’s desire to do something like that, but at the same time, to each his or her own. In any case, I found this reading on jet travel and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet in the warehouse. You can see why I post it now.
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.
“Balance of payments Macroeconomic term to denote the balance between a nation’s expenditure on imports and its receipts from exports, including invisible imports and exports. If the receipts from exports exceed the cost of imports, the balance is said to be in surplus: if vice versa it is in deficit. It is possible, and is often the case in the UK, to have a deficit balance on visible trade and a surplus balance on invisible trade. The sum of the two balances is known as the ‘balance on current account.’
A deficit can be financed by loans from abroad or by using national gold and foreign currency reserves to finance foreign payments which cannot be met any other way. However, if a deficit persists a government has to readjust permanently the pattern of trade. This may be done: (1) by reducing the value of its currency, making exports cheaper to foreigners and imports dearer, thereby discouraging demand for them; (2) by exchange controls, making it difficult to convert its own currency into foreign currency, thereby restricting investment of capital and spending abroad; (3) by import controls and tariffs to place foreign competitors at a disadvantage in competing with home producers, thereby decreasing demand for imports; (4) by deflating the home economy, by cutting employment and income and reducing the demand for both home-produced and imported goods.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research, term of art, united states history
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on class structure to complement another post, seven below this, on class consciousness. My guess? This stuff wouldn’t fly in most schools and school districts. We Americans actually believe all the nonsense we tell ourselves about opportunity and the American meritocracy; we fancy ourselves above or immune to class distinctions.
I have bad news: we’re not. I think poor kids have a right to know that, and I think teachers have a moral and intellectual obligation to help students understand the way the edifice of class circumscribes students’ lives.
Just sayin,.
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.
“Proper Noun: The name of a particular person (Frank Sinatra), place (Boston), or thing (Moby Dick). Common nouns name classes of people (singers), places (cities), or things (books) and are not capitalized.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, punctuation, term of art
It popped up at Merriam-Webster yesterday, and I can’t think of a better time, in a world where nothing is sacred and everything is for sale, to compose and publish this context clues worksheet on the verb shill. It’s only used intransitively. Shill is also a noun: someone who shills is, naturally, a shill.
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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