The Weekly Text, 15 September 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 8, Introductory or Concluding Participles

Today marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month 2023, which continues to 15 October. With considerable chagrin, I now report that I have nothing substantial to post as Weekly Texts in observance this month: I understand (and this has a great deal to do with Hispanic students at my school reporting that they often feel unnoticed) that I need to develop more materials for my students and this blog. Last year, while developing and teaching a sociology course, I began a unit on the Zoot Suit Riots, a race riot in Los Angeles provoked by the Sleepy Lagoon murder and perpetrated by U.S. servicemen. I do have a sizeable inventory of short exercises–Cultural Literacy worksheets–that I can and will post during the month, as well as plenty of quotes to publish.

So, this week’s Text is the eighth lesson plan of the Styling Sentences Unit, this one on sentence forms featuring an introductory or concluding participle. This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on irregular verbs. Finally, here is the worksheet with explanatory and mentor texts that is the primary work of this lesson. Please take note that this document contains no supported content, i.e. no sentence stems or cloze exercises. Students use mentor texts to model their own sentences in this form.

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.

William Hazlitt on Hypocrites

“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”

William Hazlitt

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

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Learn

Here is a worksheet on the verb learn when it is used with an infinitive. The teacher learned to think more carefully about what constitutes rigorous, cogent, curricular materials.

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.

Rotten Reviews: A John O’Hara Omnibus

Sermons and Soda-Water

“The novellas represent no change in Mr. O’Hara’s method. He normally puts everything into a novel, including the kitchen sink complete with stopped drain, plumber, and plumber’s mate, and does this not once, but four or five times per book. The novella form has merely limited the author in a statistical way; one kitchen sink is all he can fit into his predetermined space…

Atlantic Monthly

 The Big Laugh

When O’Hara is good he is very, very good; when he is bad he is writing for Hollywood…an exercise in tedium.”

New York Herald Tribune

The Horse Knows the Way

“One might suggest…that the inhabitants of hell be condemned to an eternity reading stories behind the headlines in American tabloids….John O’Hara’s new collection of short stories brings the whole realm uncomfortably close. It is a punishment to read….”

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

Cultural Literacy: John Dos Passos

While I can’t imagine there could be much call for it, I must have produced this Cultural Literacy worksheet on John Dos Passos for some reason, though now I don’t remember why. Perhaps an independent study on Jazz-Age authors? Your guess is as good as mine. In any case this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence–which at 34 words might require some paring or judiciously placed punctuation for emergent readers and English language learners.

Incidentally, does anyone read Dos Passos any more? I took a crack at Manhattan Transfer about 30 years ago and found it relatively tough sledding. I’ve been meaning to return to it, and perhaps The U.S.A. Trilogy as well. His books remain in print, and he has been designated, by virtue of his inclusion in The Library of America, as one of this nation’s great authors. So someone must still be reading him. His books, I would think, are solidly midlist titles.

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.

Vowel

“vowel: Speech sound in which air from the lungs passes through the mouth with minimal obstruction and without audible friction like the f in fit. The word also refers to a letter representing such a sound (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). In articulatory phonetics (see articulation), vowels are classified by tongue and lip position; for example, high vowels like the i in machine and the u in flute are both pronounced with the tongue arched high in the mouth, but in u the lips are also rounded. Single vowel sounds are monophthongs; two vowel sounds pronounced as one syllable, like the ou in round, are diphthongs.”

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

The Weekly Text, 8 September 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 7, Emphatic Appositive at End, after a Colon

This week’s Text offers the seventh lesson plan in the Styling Sentences unit (and as I look at these lessons, one after another, as I post them, I am once again skeptical of their worth, as I was before I undertook a major revision and expansion of this unit during the COVID pandemic), this one, as heralded above, on a sentence form with an emphatic appositive at the end, after a colon.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences for nouns. The primary work of this lesson is this worksheet with explanatory and mentor texts. I want to point out, again, that this worksheet contains no sentence stems or cloze exercises, or really any kind of supportive apparatus. There are mentor texts for students to emulate. I think I could write some supported material for this worksheet, but I don’t know how useful it would be.

But what do you think?

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.

Mezzotint

Mezzotint: A process of intaglio engraving commonly practiced in the 18th century to reproduce the tonal effects of painting. A metal plate, usually copper or steel, is roughened with a rocking tool which makes indentations and raises a burr. The burr is scraped away where lighter tones in the design are desired.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Intend

If I have flogged this material too much, please advise. Here, nonetheless, is a worksheet on the verb intend when used as an infinitive. I intend to persist in publishing this group of documents on a weekly basis until they are gone.

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: Propaganda

“Propaganda: The means by which the thousands of organizations in a corporatist society communicate with each other and with the general public.

From its origins in the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregati de propaganda fide), a body devoted to spreading the Christian doctrine in foreign lands, the idea of substituting propagation for explanation was seized upon by the heroic national leaders of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Propaganda married romanticism with facts, which seemed to replace any need for understanding. With the invention of marketing tools such as the press release, advertisements, sound bites, PR firms and press officers, this rather exclusive way of influencing people was quickly available to anyone with a budget.

Where once a government minister had a press officer, now every section in a ministry has one. Private corporations have whole communications departments. The American army alone has a corps of some 5,000 press officers.

The purpose of these several hundred thousand communications experts is to prevent communication or any generalized grasp of reality. Their job is to propagate the faith.”

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