Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Outlandish (adjective)

OK, moving right along, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective outlandish.  This word is in common enough use in the vernacular that students should probably know it.

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 Root Exercise: Gyn/o, Gyne, and Gynec/o

OK, let’s begin the week with this worksheet on the Greek roots gyn/o, gyne, and gynec/o. If you know the words gynecologist (or perhaps an even more timely word, misogynist), then you know that these roots mean “woman” and “female.”

Once again, any student with an eye on a career on healthcare will need to know this root and the many medical words that spring from it.

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: Socioeconomic Status

It’s Friday afternoon. In the process of cleaning off desktops virtual and tangible, I found this Cultural Literacy worksheet on socioeconomic status. If there was ever a time in the history of the United States (or the world, I suppose, for that matter) that people ought to be cognizant of this term and the deep well of concepts attached to it, it’s now.

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, October 18, 2019, Hispanic Heritage Month 2019 Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Pueblo Civilization

This week’s Text, in the ongoing observation of Hispanic Heritage Month 2019 at Mark’s Text Terminal, is a reading on Pueblo Civilization and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.

As I am wont to do, I debated with myself the relevance of Pueblo Civilization to Hispanic Heritage. I’m confident that these first nation peoples were part of the same ethnic group as the Mayans–who of course became a subject population to the Spanish Empire. In any case, if anyone with the bona fides to do so could weigh in on this, I would of course be grateful.

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.

Orthography (n)

It’s probably not an essential word for high school students, but here, nonetheless, is a context clues worksheet on the noun orthography if you can use it.

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: Lexicon

“A lexicon is a collection, or stock, of words. This stock may be characteristic of an individual, a profession, a philosophy, or a ‘style’ (such as, say, a sermon), or it may be as unrestricted as an unabridged dictionary. A lexicon is usually to be distinguished from a glossary in being less focused and less restrictive. It could be argued, for instance, that this glossary need not, even ought not, contain the word lexicon in that, as is the case with many or the words discussed here, it is not a word with a special meaning within the analysis of rhetoric. I would respond that insofar as it is a word used to describe the range of vocabulary from which a given discipline or individual chooses, it is a word that can be useful to the rhetor. See ARGOT.”

Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.

Word Root Exercise: Uni-

This worksheet on the Latin word root uni should serve students well, particularly English language learners. It means, of course, one. This is an extremely florid root in English, showing up all over the place, and in words across the common branch curriculum.

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.

Assert (vt)

It turned up in a discursive lesson I taught in a personal development class yesterday (on, of all things, what’s “wrong” with Eric Cartman of “South Park”), so here is a context clues worksheet on the verb assert. It is used only transitively, apparently, which makes sense if one thinks about where and how to use it in speech and 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.

Paparazzi

Here is a reading on paparazzi and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This material is of high interest for some students in my experience using it. Don’t forget the paparazzi is a plural noun; the singular is paparazzo.

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.

Click (vt/vi/n) and Clique (n)

If one pronounces the noun clique in its French phonetic, it will sound like “kleek,” which renders these five worksheets on the the near homophones click and clique more or less inaccurate. However, if one pronounces clique as it is commonly done in the the United States, like click, then the five worksheets above will indeed serve as homophone worksheets.

In any case, these worksheets offer students–particularly English language learners–a chance to understand clique which is almost inarguably a word and concept students should know by the time they graduate high school.

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.