Here is a learning support on using pronouns with gerunds. This is a half-page reading from Paul Brians’ excellent book Common Errors in English Usage, which you’ll find available to you, at no cost, under that hyperlink.
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.
Here is a learning support on gerunds and infinitives that accompanies a raft of new material I’ll be posting in the next several months on mastering the use of gerunds and infinitives in English prose. This thing, as it should be, I suppose, is self-explanatory.
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.
Moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek word root pyr-o . It means, as you already know, fire; but it also means heat and fever. This root yields the high-frequency English word pyromaniac, which does not appear on this document. Lower frequency words in use by educated people, however abound here: you’ll find empyrean, as well as pyre, and the solid scientific adjective pyrophoric.
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.
Here’s something new from Mark’s Text Terminal: a worksheet on using the verb acknowledge with a gerund. This material (these materials, rather, as I have over a hundred of these documents) arrives here after rolling around in my current work folder for about 15 years.
I started developing these during state testing in June one year, and chipped away at them each year as I waited around at work to take my turn proctoring tests. Their source is a small book I purchased on Amazon, Mastering Gerunds and Infinitives (Honolulu: Focus on English, 2008) by someone named Tom Celentano. On several occasions, I almost tossed this enterprise into the digital dumpster. But each time I opened the folder, I ended up working further with them. So, when I opened it last January, while quarantining for COVID (the second time), I opened the folder and finished these.
Anyway, for more on these, see their section in the About Posts and Texts page, where a fuller explanation of these, with supporting documents, is available.
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.
Once again, from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he generously allows access at no cost at the Washington State University website, and which has now also become a podcast), here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of the adjectives impertinent and irrelevant in prose. This is a full-page document with a reading of two longish (both containing clauses separated by a semicolon) compound sentences and ten modified cloze exercises.
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.
Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root semi. It means “half” and “partly.” This root finds its way into common discourse in English–it can be used as a prefix to just about any adjective or noun to attenuate the full force of a word. So, in addition to the number of words this root grows in casual discourse (i.e. being attached to nouns and adjectives in everyday conversation), this root yields such high-frequency English words as semiannual, semicolon, semiconductor, and semifinal.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Once in a Blue Moon.” This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading followed by three comprehension questions. As the reading explains that a blue moon occurs only “about every thirty-two months,” students will be able to understand that this expression means the same thing, where people are concerned, as “Long time, no see,” or “I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays.” Where events are concerned, students will infer that something that happens “once in a blue moon” doesn’t happen very often, and is, arguably, a rare event.
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.
This week’s Text is a reading on sound waves along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Over the years, I’ve crossed paths with several students interested in careers as recording engineers or producers. I know that music is played on instruments that have evolved over centuries by persons with enviable talent; that, however, is the extent of my knowledge of music production. I hoped these documents would help students gain some understanding about the actual physics of sound. These materials have been of sufficiently high interest in my classroom that I have tagged them as such.
So this might be thin gruel where the subject is concerned. As with many of the documents I prepared over the years to engage alienated students, these were prepared in haste. So they are very likely, uh, less than perfect. Fortunately, they are both formatted in Microsoft Word, so exporting them to a word processor of your preference and tailoring them to your students’ needs will be relatively effortless.
May is Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I’ve already prepared a batch of posts for the month, so if you need material on topics related to American of Asian and Pacific Island descent, or Asia and the Pacific Islands themselves, trundle on by the site.
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.
Here a pair of Cultural Literacy worksheets that I hope are timely. The first is on Vladimir Putin. This is a full-page worksheet with a five-sentence reading and six comprehension questions. The second is on national self-determination; its a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. Nota bene, please, that this second document at its end asks the reader to “See Fourteen Points.” If you want students to follow up on that point, you’ll find a credible reading under this hyperlink.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This pithy apercu comes to us from the pen of Ben Franklin. He was a master of these kinds of phrases–many of which we still use in both colloquial and formal English.
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.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.