Cultural Literacy: Euphemism

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on euphemism, which I think might be useful in writing reviews, especially since reviews often use euphemisms so soften harsh judgments. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences (the first of which is a compound separated by a semicolon, and may be best shortened for emergent readers and users of English as a second language) and three comprehension questions.

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 Doubter’s Companion: Bees

Bees: In his Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire points out that bees seem superior to humans because one of their secretions is useful. Nothing a human secretes is of use; quite the contrary. Whatever we produce makes us disagreeable to be around.

The bee’s social organization also invites comparisons. If the queen were to be removed and the drones were able to convince the worker bees to go on working while they stepped in as managers, what would happen to our supply of honey?

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

The Weekly Text, 4 July 2025: Lesson Two of the Writing Reviews Unit

The second lesson plan of the Writing Reviews Unit is about argumentation, which any review will need to do well to convince its readers. In fact, when I first began working on these materials in 2006 or so, I conceived them as an introduction to the kind of academic writing kids really need to know how to do before they graduate high school.

So this scaffolded worksheet seeks to assist students in developing their own understanding of the difference between a quarrel and an argument in order to clarify the rhetorical and epistemological purpose of an argument. You might find the the teacher’s copy of the worksheet useful.

This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of to damn with faint praise, the use of which in a review I will take as a given.

Happy Fourth of July! I bid you a restful day and evening.

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: Depot for Station

“Depot for Station. ‘Railroad depot.’ A depot is a place of deposit; as, a depot of supply for an army.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Conciseness

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on conciseness. This is a full-page worksheet, although it could certainly be made more, uh, concise by turning it into a half-page worksheet by removing a question or two–there are four, total. Especially because the reading is only two sentences.

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.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

“Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: (April 19-May 16, 1943) Revolt by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation against deportation to Treblinka. By July 1942 the Nazis had herded 500,000 Jews from surrounding areas into the ghetto in Warsaw. Though starvation killed thousands each month, the Nazis began transferring over 5,000 Jews a week to rural ‘labor camps.’ When word reached the ghetto in early 1943 that the destination was actually the gas chambers at Treblinka, the underground Jewish combat group ZOB attacked the Nazis, killing 50 in four days of street fighting and causing the deportations to halt. On April 19, Heinrich Himmler sent 2,000 SS men and army troops to clear the ghetto of its remaining 56,000 Jews. For four weeks the Jewish ZOB and guerillas fought with pistols and homemade bombs, destroying tanks and killing several hundred Nazis, until their ammunition ran out. All the Jews were either killed or deported, and on May 16 the SS chief declared ‘The Warsaw Ghetto is no more.’”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000

Cultural Literacy: Caricature

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on caricature. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is a word and concept that would be useful in certain kinds of reviews, either as a noun (a caricature of) or a transitive verb (The critic caricatured the intentions of the author).

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: Self-Correction

“self-correction: A student’s ability to detect and correct errors. The term is often used while students read aloud and hear themselves make errors but correct it. Some reading tests consider a self-correction to be an error, which can result in a misleading oral reading score.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

The Weekly Text, 27 June 2025: Lesson One of a Unit on Writing Reviews

OK, moving right along with this Writing Reviews unit, here is the first lesson plan, which aims to introduce students to the concept of the review. The do-now exercise for this lesson is this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom having an axe to grind. I think any reviewer has by definition an ax to grind, hence this document. Finally, here is the structured analytical worksheet on the concept of reviews that is the mainstay of 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.

Fred Allen on the Decline of Discourse

“During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.”

Fred Allen

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.