Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Common Errors in English Usage: Militate/Mitigate

They’re not the most common or high-frequency words in English, but they’re worth knowing (especially mitigate), so here is a on the use of the verbs militate and mitigate. This is a full-page document with a reading of two sentences and ten modified cloze exercises.

This material, as I expect you’re tired of reading, but in the case of Paul Brians’ and his book Common Errors in English Usage (to which, I am always astonished to report, he allows free access at his Washington State University web page), I like to give credit where it is always due. All of the materials under the header above (i.e. Common Errors in English Usage) come from Professor Brians’s book.

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.

Disinformation

 “Disinformation (noun): False or misleading information or documentation contrived to deceive or subvert, especially deliberate fabrication by an intelligence agency. Verb: disinform.

‘If I say the US is intervening in El Salvador to help a gang of nun-raping cutthroats with no popular support, I may be misinformed, or I may be disinformed.’ Alexander Cockburn, Village Voice

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Cultural Literacy: Direct Object

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the direct object of verbs. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions.

You might want to take a look at the second sentence of this two-sentence reading: it is long and contains a plethora of colons, semicolons and quotation marks–exactly the kind of thing that, in my experience, trips up emergent or struggling readers, or students who are learning to use English as a second language. A light editing–breaking this sentence up into two independent clauses with some supporting explanation should do the job.

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 Weekly Text, 14 August 2026: Introduction to Writing Sentences Lesson 10, Avoid the Passive Voice!

Phew: It has been a lot of work (with more to come), but with this tenth lesson plan (of 17) of the Introduction to Writing Sentences unit published, I finally feel like I’ve made some progress on this endeavor. This lesson, as the header reports, is on avoiding using the passive voice in sentences. In my experience, students enjoy this lesson as it is about as straightforward an exercise in editing as they are likely to encounter. So it is satisfying. Also, students learn to write declarative sentences in the active voice, the gold standard for expository prose.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences to find pronouns. Finally, here is the scaffolded worksheet on dealing with the passive voice in sentences that is the gravamen 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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Might Ought, Might, Ought

This week’s adaptation from Paul Brians’ excellent reference manual Common Errors in English Usage (which, amazingly, he allows no-cost access to at his Washington State University web page) is this worksheet on the use of might and ought. In this reading, Professor Brians steers students away from the solecism might ought toward the proper use of these two auxiliary verbs; the worksheet calls upon students to write, extemporaneously, sentences using these auxiliaries properly.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Jurisprudence

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of jurisprudence. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three relatively comprehensible sentences and two comprehension questions. I must admit, until I reviewed this document prior to publication on this blog, I didn’t have quite the grasp of this concept that I thought I did.

Any student looking down the road at law school might benefit from a look at this material.

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.

Word Origins: Barbecue

“barbecue: [M17th] This word comes from Spanish barbacoa, perhaps from Arawak (West Indies) barbacoa which was a ‘wooden frame on posts.’ Barbecue is used in space in the phrases barbecue mode and barbecue maneuver describing the rotation of a spacecraft to allow the heat of the sun to fall on all sides.”

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

The Weekly Text, 7 August 2026: Introduction to Writing Sentences Lesson 9, Writing the Exclamatory Sentence

This week’s Text is the ninth lesson plan (in a 17-lesson cycle) of the Introduction to Writing Sentences unit. This one, as the header above heralds, is on writing the exclamatory sentence. This worksheet on parsing sentences to find verbs opens the lesson. This scaffolded worksheet on writing exclamatory sentences is the principal work of this lesson.

And if you and your students need it, here learning support on writing exclamations that goes some distance in explaining what one does in prose when one exclaims–and why one almost always needs an exclamation point at the terminus of one of these sentences.

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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Methodology/Method

Once more, from the pages of Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he–amazingly–allows free access on his Washington State University Web page), here is a worksheet on the use of the nouns methodology and method. This is a full-page document with a reading of three 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.

Discourse

“Discourse (noun): Verbal expression or interchange of ideas; discussion or conversation; a formal address or paper on a subject. Adjective: discoursive; adverb: discoursively; noun: discoursiveness; verb: discourse.

‘He is not so amused, however, at the disclosure of my having temporarily “lost” my papers in the forest. He gives me a discourse on carelessness. It is a short discourse, but it weighs about four tons.’ Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.