“Appropriated for Took. ‘He appropriated his neighbor’s horse for his own use.’ To appropriate is to set apart, as a sum of money, for a special purpose.”
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, esteemed colleagues, last but not least today, here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of spoke and said. In writing this document, I used the text–from Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage (Sherwood, OR: William James & Co., 2013)–quite broadly. Students will deal with both of the past tense forms of the verbs that title the worksheet, but also their present tense and the present tense of several other verbs listed in the reading.
There is, in other words, a lot of room to expand this worksheet–easily done because it is in Microsoft Word for your convenience in revising for your classroom’s needs.
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.
“Media Art: When ‘media’ refers to the mass media rather than to a particular art medium, this term refers to a trend in art production that involves the representation of representations, i.e., the depiction or deconstruction of mainstream images of those societal groups traditionally marginalized and depicted as stereotypes (e.g., African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, gays and Lesbians). It has also come to include works appearing in mass media spaces, such as those usually reserved for advertising. Jenny Holzer’s fake television commercials on MTV are directed to an audience that might never enter a museum.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Alright baseball fans, this hasn’t been an exciting season, has it. With chagrin, I admit that I have barely paid attention.
It’s not much, but here is a reading on Yankee Stadium and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that have tended to be of high interest to the students I’ve taught over the years.
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.
“Mrs. Parker taught for a time at Los Angeles State College, where she found the students very ‘narrow.’ When reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, the students felt the book was too dirty. ‘But then Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize,’ Mrs. Parker recalled. ‘After that they behaved as if they had given it to him.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
Alright, here is another lesson plan on a Crime and Puzzlement case, to wit, “Stolen Bases.”
This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun and idiom raison d’etre, derived from the French, obviously, opens the lesson if you are inclined to use it. Otherwise, moving right along, to conduct your investigation you’ll need this scan of the illustration, reading, and questions that are the circumstances of the case. Finally, to solve the case and bring the accused to the bar of justice, you’ll want the typescript of the answer key.
Best of luck, inspectors!
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.
“Modifier: A word or phrase that qualifies, describes, or limits the meaning of a word, phrase or, clause. Frayed ribbon, dancing flowers, worldly wisdom.”
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
Over the years, I’ve set out several times to write a context clues worksheet for the noun forte, and then never finished. So when it popped up as Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day a few days back, I resolved to finally complete what should be a fairly mundane task. After all, forte is in fairly common use, isn’t it?
So I’m not sure why I heretofore struggled with writing this context clues worksheet on the noun forte. It means “one’s strong point” for the purposes of this worksheet and it’s the only way I use it in speech. But it has other meanings, including, as a noun, “the part of a sword or foil blade that is between the middle and the hilt and that is the strongest part of the blade.” Also as a noun, in the context of music, it means “a tone or passage played forte : a musical tone or passage played loudly.” So it is subtly polysemous.
I’ve always pronounced it “for-tay.” But there is contention about that. I’ll spare you the details, other than the topic sentence from a lengthy excursus from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, on pronouncing forte: “In forte we have a word derived from French that in its ‘strong point’ sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation.”
Whatever the case, this is a word educated people use in discourse, so our students should learn it for that reason alone.
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.
“affective: (Function, meaning) having to do with the speaker’s feelings. E.g. one might say, as a neutral statement, ‘I have finished it’; or one might say, with triumph or amazement, ‘I have actually finished it.’ What is said is in other respects the same, but the utterances differ in affective meaning. Also of the intonations themselves or of other individual units: e.g. beastly is an affective form in This is a beastly nuisance.
Also called ‘emotive,’ ‘expressive.’ Affective meaning has been distinguished variously from cognitive meaning, propositional meaning, or the representational or referential function of language.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, term of art
Since it will remain perennially relevant, I’m afraid, today is a good a day as any to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on terrorism. It’s a full-page worksheet, so it works of independent practice–i.e. homework.
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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