“As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in the English language.”
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man ch. 1 (1943)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Paradigm: [From Greek paradeigma, a pattern, an example, a basis for comparison. Stress: ‘PA-ra-dime’]. In grammar, a set of all the (especially inflected) forms of a word (write, writes, wrote, writing, written), especially when used as a model for word forms in Latin and Greek (in which key words represent the patterns of numbered groups in nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) and to a lesser extent for such other languages as French and Spanish (principally for verbs). Their use is limited in English, because it is not a highly inflected language.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“Appreciate for Highly Value. In the sense of value, it means value justly, not highly. In another and preferable sense it means to increase in value.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating than and then in prose and speech. This relatively minor area of usage is nonetheless sufficiently thorny to have warranted a surprisingly lengthy exchange on it between two characters on The Wire. As the state’s attorney explains to the detectives seeking a court order for a wiretap (as does this worksheet), than is a conjunction and then is an adverb.
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.
“Many people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on indefinite adjectives. These are those words–any; each; either; every; many; several; few; all; and some–that we use in speech and prose regularly, often in grammatical error. Now, I do think it’s important that students learn how to understand grammar in general as an organizing structure in language (for future use in the study, of among other things, foreign languages), but I also think kids need to learn how to use grammar and usage manuals. Grammar and usage need not be memorized, but again, it should be understood and applied.
Why? Because if we are to have high expectations of and for our students, we need them to be able to write well. I worked my way through college and graduate school working in writing and academic study centers in which I mostly counseled students on expository writing. In those years, a number of patterns in what professors would suffer in lapses in grammar, usage, and style emerged, and the most salient of those patterns was in agreement: subject/verb, antecedent/pronoun, and modifiers and nouns. So, this is a lesson about agreement in number when using any; each; either; every; many; several; few; all; and some.
I use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the non sequitur; if the lesson goes into a second day (it’s fairly complicated, so I more often than not took it into a second day by design), then here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on the Tuskegee Airmen to carry you along (and incidentally, if you’d like more Everyday Edit worksheets, the good folks at Education World give away a yearlong supply of them).
Here is the learning support in the form of a graphic organizer for sorting out these adjectives and the numbers of nouns they modify and therefore govern. This is a learning support, in other words, that students play a role in developing. This scaffolded worksheet is the mainstay of the lesson. Here is the teacher’s copy of all the materials that will help you execute this lesson.
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.
“Indirect Object: A noun or pronoun that indicates to whom or for whom, to what or for what the action of a transitive verb is performed. I asked her a question. Ed gave the door a kick.”
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
“When did critic and write C.S. Lewis marry Joy Davidman? In 1956. She died of cancer in 1960, three years before Lewis’s own death in 1963. Their story is told in Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Retrograde amnesia: Loss of memory for events or experiences before a traumatic event or incident that causes the amnesia. The memories are generally recovered gradually over time, starting with early memories, and the traumatic event itself is often, though not always, recalled eventually.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“Georgian Style: Style of architecture, furniture, and interior decoration developed in the reigns of the four English King Georges (1714-1830). In England the three phases are Palladian, Neoclassical, and Regency. In the United States: Georgian, Federal, and Roman Classicism. All forms show classical inspiration and Renaissance spirit and motifs.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
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