Here is a worksheet on the Greek roots phyt/o and –phyte. They mean “plant” and “to grow.” If you teach in the hard sciences, particularly biology, this might be a useful document for you: these roots yield words such as chrysophyte, hydrophyte, and phytochrome among others.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the oxymoron as a rhetorical device. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading, a relatively uncomplicated compound, with three comprehension questions. A simple introduction to this commonly used rhetorical move, even in everyday conversation.
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.
“Metonymy: (Greek ‘name change’) A figure of speech in which the name or an attribute or a thing is substituted for the thing itself. Common examples are The Stage’ for the theatrical profession; ‘The Crown’ for the monarchy; ‘The Bench’ for the judiciary; ‘Dante’ for his works. See also ANTONOMASIA; METALEPSIS; SYNECHDOCHE.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective assiduous. It means, as you probably know, “marked by careful unremitting attention or persistent application,” e.g. “an assiduous book collector,” “tended her garden with assiduous attention.” I stipulate that this isn’t exactly a high-frequency word in English. It is, however, a useful one.
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.
Here is a reading on time as a philosophical concept, along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading invokes Kant, Leibniz, and Newton; as I recall, I wrote this about ten years ago for a student interested in philosophy. I don’t know that I or anyone else as looked at it since. Here it is for your use. Remember that like everything else on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents, so you can tailor them to your students’ needs.
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.
On the first day of a very badly needed spring break, here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots ram and rami. They mean branch. This root does not produce a bumper crop of high-frequency English words: it gives us ramification, and therefore ramify–or vice versa, because there is a good chance the verb emerged first. This is a Latin root, and as we know from history, the Romans loved action. However, this root also sprouts biramous (“having two branches”) ramus (“a projecting part, elongated process, or branch,” “the posterior more or less vertical part on each side of the lower jaw that articulates with the skull,” and “a branch of a nerve”), which may actually have use for students interested in entering healthcare professions, and ramose (“consisting of or having branches”).
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.
“auxiliary: In grammar, a verb that is subordinate to the main lexical verb in a clause. Auxiliaries can convey distinctions of tense, aspect, mood, person, and number. In Germanic languages, such as English and Romance languages such as French, an auxiliary verb occurs with the main verb in the form of an infinitive or a participle.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
From Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on differentiating and using properly the adjectives ignorant and stupid. This is a full-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises.
Given the current state of American culture and society, I would think this would be timely, and therefore useful, material. But that’s just the perspective of my currently jaundiced eye. On a brighter note, and to give credit where it is so amply due, you should know that Professor Brians allows access to his usage manual at no cost; you can find the webscript (can I coin that portmanteau?) at the Washington State University website.
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 on this Tax Day (actually, Tax Day this year is on Monday, 18 April) is the penultimate lesson, a sentence writing review, of seven-lesson unit on the use of prepositions. Without further ado, then, here is the lesson plan.
I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on author Yoshiko Uchida; in the event the lesson stretches into a second day, here is another on Basketball’s Beginnings. (And to give credit where it is so deservedly due, the good people at Education World allow access at no cost to a calendar year’s worth of Everyday Edit worksheets, should you find these useful documents work well for your students.) Here is the sentence-writing review worksheet. If you need it, here is the learning support for commonly used prepositions that I work to keep by students’ sides throughout this unit. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet.
Next week I’ll publish as the Weekly Text the assessment lesson for this unit. Then Mark’s Text Terminal will be able to offer a complete seven-lesson unit on using prepositions in prose.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the organization man. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is a term coined, as a title of a 1956 book, The Organization Man by sociologist William H. Whyte. I don’t know what place, if any, this document might find in the secondary classroom. But if you are concerned about the increasing bureaucratization of everyday life (and if you’re a teacher and not concerned about this, I would like to suggest that you pay greater attention to what is happening in your school and school district–e.g. look for job titles like “assistant vice superintendent”).
I’m just about to finish the late David Graeber’s book on rapidly expanding bureaucracies, Bu****it Jobs, so I suppose this is on my mind–hence this post, even though this document has lain around at the Text Terminal warehouse for several years.
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.
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