Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Taipei. It is, of course, the capital of Taiwan. This is half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. Short and to the point, as the best of these documents tend to be.
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.
“Akiko Yosano: (1878-1942) Japanese poet. Akiko’s first volume of tanka, Midaregami (1901; tr Tangled Hair, 1935), startled her contemporaries with its bold affirmation of female sexuality and exerted an immense influence on later poets who sought release from semifeudal morality as well as from conventional idioms of tanka. Akiko’s translation of Japanese classics, such as the Tale of Genji, into the modern vernacular were highly influential, as were her pioneering and passionate essays on woman’s rights.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Tajikistan. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences–and beware the first one, which is a doozy of a compound with with a series of geographical place names separated by commas. My guess? This will need to be modified for struggling and emergent readers.
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.
“Mesopotamia: Region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in western Asia, constituting the greater part of modern Iraq. The region’s location and fertility gave rise to settlements from c.10,000 BC, and it became the cradle of some of the world’s earliest civilizations. Its seat was the city of Mesopotamia, founded in the 4th millennium BC by the Sumerians. It was ruled by the third dynasty of Ur, and later by Babylon, which gave its name to the southern portion of Mesopotamia. The city declined under the Hurrians and the Kassites 1600-1450 BC. It was conquered by the army of Ashur. Mesopotamia was ruled by Seleucids from c.312 BC until the 2nd century BC, when it became part of the Parthian empire. In the 7th century AD the region was conquered by Muslim Arabs. The region’s importance declined after the Mongol Invasion of 1258. The Ottoman Turks ruled in the 16th-17th centuries. The area became a British mandate in 1920; the following year, Iraq was established there.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
This week’s Text, the fourth for Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2024, is a reading an Al-Ghazali (full name Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali– the diacritical marks are courtesy of a cool copy-and-paste from Wikipedia), the Persian Islamic theologian and polymath, along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,
No friends at hand, so I poured alone;
I raised my cup to invite the moon,
Turned to my shadow, and we became three.”
Li Po,“Drinking Alone in the Midnight” (eighth cent.) (translation by Elling Eide)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes
Tagged asian-pacific history, poetry, professional development
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Polynesia. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence–a long compound that might be best broken up for emergent and struggling readers–and two 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.
“Chingiz Aitmatov: (1928-2008) Kirghiz novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Born in the Central Asian republic of Kirghizia, Aitmatov inherited a love for Russian literature from his father (who died in 1937, a victim of Stalin’s terror) and for traditional Kirghiz folktales and customs from his mother. In 1952 he qualified as a veterinary technician and published his first story. After a period of study in Moscow, Aitmatov returned home to work as a journalist in 1958 and soon gained a national reputation with the publication in the journal Novy mir of ‘Jamilya’ (1959), a love story that challenged both traditional Kirghiz custom and the new ‘socialist’ morality. This and other short stories were followed by two thoughtful novels, Proschai, Gulsary! (1966; tr Farewell, Gulsari, 1970) and Bely parakhod (1970; tr The White Ship, 1972). Aitmatov is best known in the West for his play (written with Kaltai Mukhamedzhanov) Voskhozhdenie na Fudzhiamu (1973; tr The Ascent of Mount Fuji, 1975). A subtle treatment of the suppression of dissidents, it caused a sensation when first produced in Moscow in 1973. One of the few genuinely talented writers to emerge from the government’s drive to transform the non-Russian nationalities into parts of the total Soviet state, Aitmatov began increasingly to criticize the impact of Russification, collectivization, and a non-nomadic way of life on traditional Kirghiz society. A subsequent work to appear in English is the novel The Day Is Longer Than a Hundred Years (1980; tr 1983). One of this most recent works, Plaka (The Executioner’s Block, 1986) was received with much interest in Russia.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
He has been in the news recently for his new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which tells the story of the attack he suffered in August, 2022, while onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, so now is a good time to offer this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Salman Rushdie. This is a half-page document with a reading of two sentences, on relatively simple, the other a longish compound, and two comprehension questions. The reading does mention the Satanic Verses controversy (which may have motivated Mr. Rushdie’s attacker) and the fact that it necessitated that Mr. Rushdie go into hiding.
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.
“Shwe Dagon: Pagoda in Yangon (Rangoon) that is the center of Burmese religious life. A Buddhist temple complex begun in the 15th century, Shwe Dagon is constructed of brick in the form of a cone and is completely covered with gold. Raised over a relic chamber, it was rebuilt several times and was brought to its present height of 326 feet (99 meters) in 1841 by King Tharrawaddy. The pagoda sits atop a hill that rises 168 feet (51 meters) above the city.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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