Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Common Errors in English Usage: Explicitly (adv), Implicitly (adv)

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of the adverbs explicitly and implicitly. This is a full-page worksheet with a short paragraph of text and ten modified cloze exercises. However, you may further modify this if you wish as it is formatted in Microsoft Word, therefore easily exported to a word processor of your choice, and otherwise adapted or differentiated for the needs of your students.

Like all of these materials on English usage, the basis of this worksheet is drawn from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, to which he allows unrestricted access on the Washington State University website. As usual, in a spare passage of text, Professor Brians carefully but economically distinguishes between the adjectives explicit and implicit, then guides the document’s user through a common mistake in using these words as adverbs, to wit, expressing the fact that one trusts one’s friends implicitly.

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.

Luddites

Here is a reading on the Luddites along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

The noun and adjective Luddite, as you surely know, is tossed around in American English, occasionally as a pejorative, to signify someone opposed to innovation and technological advances. I’ll hazard a guess that most people using this word aren’t aware of its origins in Ned Ludd, who destroyed a pair of stocking frames (an early technological advance in textile manufacturing) in 1779. The Luddites, who destroyed textile manufacturing equipment in England from 1811 to 1816 to protest the depredations of the Industrial Revolution, took him as their namesake. I’ve vastly simplified the story of the Luddites for this blog post, this reading is a good general introduction to the subject of the Luddites, and emphasizes how their name entered the political and social lexicon of our time.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Euthanasia

It’s not exactly the most pleasant topic, but here, nonetheless, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on euthanasia. This is a half-page worksheet with a one sentence (a compound) reading with two questions.

One need look very carefully to see this is an obviously a word derived from ancient Greek (i.e. eu, “good, well,” than, “death,” etc.), so people have been thinking about this concept and act for a very long time. Nonetheless, this a high-school word, it seems to me, as it its verb form, euthanize.

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.

Exemplary (adj)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective exemplary. It means, variously, “serving as a pattern,” “deserving imitation,” commendable,” “deserving imitation because of excellence,” “serving as a warning,” and “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.”

While this adjective can’t be characterized as a high-frequency word, a cousin of it, the noun example, can be characterized that way. What’s more, exemplar is a nice solid noun students would undeniably benefit from understanding and being able to use in expository prose.

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, 30 July 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Reflexive and Intensive Pronoun

This week’s text is a lesson plan on the reflexive and intensive pronouns–i.e. myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves–and their use in declarative sentences and expository prose.

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the bibliography and its function in scholarly writing. In the event the lesson goes into a second day due to whatever classroom exigencies you encounter, you might want to use this Everyday Edit worksheet on Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent…” etc.) that the United States Constitution guarantees people when they are arrested. (Incidentally if you like Everyday Edit worksheets, don’t forget that the good people at Education World offer a year’s supply of them at no charge.)

Here is a learning support on reflexive and intensive pronouns that I distribute with this scaffolded worksheet that is the primary work of this lesson. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet that eases delivery of this material.

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.

Plausible (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective plausible. It means, variously, “superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious (a plausible pretext)”; “superficially pleasing or persuasive, (a swindler…  then a quack, then a smooth, plausible gentleman —R. W. Emerson),” and “appearing worthy of belief (the argument was both powerful and plausible).”

For this worksheet, the first and last definitions are the one the context tries to elicit from students. Incidentally (and editorially as well, for which I ask forgiveness), I’ve long believed, and believe now more than ever, given the outhouse of misinformation that social media has become, that we should use at least some of our schools’ time teaching students about media literacy. If I designed a unit to address this perceived need, I would conduct a lesson on plausibility very early on in the cycle.

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.

Fiction

“Fiction: A vague and general term for an imaginative work, usually in prose. At any rate, it does not normally cover poetry and drama though both are a form of fiction in that they are molded and contrived—or feigned. Fiction is now used in general of the novel, the short story, the novella (qq.v) and related genres.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Word Root Exercise: Bi, Bin

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots bi and bin. They mean two and twice. But you already know that, and your students probably will before long as they work their way through this material.

Of course these are extremely productive roots in English, and this worksheet includes many of the most frequently used words containing bi or bin, to wit: biannual, bicameral (a useful social studies word), bilingual, bicycle, and bifocal.

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.

Ad Infinitum

“Ad Infinitum To infinity: without limit, endlessly or ceaselessly; forever.

‘Administrators expedited, finalized, implemented, processed ad infinitum, while social workers, already famed for euphemism, called their investigators case workers….’ Mary Dohan, Our Own Words.”

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

Palaver (n)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the noun palaver. It means, variously, “a long parley usually between persons of different cultures or levels of sophistication,”  “idle talk,” and  “misleading or beguiling speech.” The context in this worksheet calls for the latter two meanings.

I know this isn’t the most commonly used word in the English language, but I think it might make a reasonable surrogate for a commonly used epithet among many of the students I have served, to wit, bulls**t (please forgive me that vulgarism, even in its elided form, on this G-rated blog).

Incidentally, this word can also be used as a verb to mean, intransitively, “to talk profusely or idly,” “parley,” and transitively to mean “to use palaver to cajole.” The word has an interesting pedigree: it arrives in English from the Latin parabola (“parable,” “speech”) via the Portuguese palavra (“word,” “speech”).

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.