Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

The Weekly Text, 25 March 2022, Women’s History Month 2022 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Julia Child

Posted on March 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

For the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2022, here is a reading on Julia Child along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Whatever one thinks of French cooking, which Ms. Child brought to American cuisine, she was by any measure an accomplished woman.

I confess ignorance where both French cooking and Ms. Child are concerned–my own palate, alas, is undeniably plebeian. In researching this post, I learned that she stood six feet, two inches tall; her height disqualified her from World War II service in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) or the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services). She joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked directly with OSS founder General William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan. According to Ms. Child’s Wikipedia page, in her service to the OSS, she took on the task of solving the problem of curious sharks setting off underwater explosives placed by the OSS. She experimented with recipes that would serve as shark repellent; her method is still in use today.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Victorian Period

Posted on March 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Victorian Period. The era is named, of course, for Queen Victoria and her outsized influence on British mores during her reign. This full-page worksheet leads with a four-sentence reading which includes two long compounds, and six comprehension questions. In other words, a decent summary of an important social, economic, diplomatic, and political period in Great Britain,

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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The Weekly Text, 18 March 2022, Women’s History Month 2022 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Queen Elizabeth I

Posted on March 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

For the third week of Women’s History Month 2022, here is a reading on Queen Elizabeth I with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Her reign was long–44 years. Queen Elizabeth II currently reigning, has held her throne for 70 years and 33 days as of this writing.

Elizabeth I was a powerful monarch, and the achievements of her age earned her the honorific of her era’s name, the Elizabethan Age. Like Elizabeth II, who had dealt with her share of family dysfunction: she was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; after Henry executed Anne (and I didn’t know this until I prepared the material above), Elizabeth I was declared “retroactively illegitimate.”

In my experience, and speaking generally, the salacious details of upper class idiocy, shame, and hypocrisy tends to interest secondary school students. After all, as the great Los Angeles punk band X (featuring Exene Cervenka) so elegantly put it, that’s “Sex and Dying in High Society.”

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.

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Nawal El Saadawi

Posted on March 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Nawal El Saadawi: (1931-2021) Egyptian writer. The foremost woman writer of Egypt and the Middle East, el Saadawi has published nearly thirty books of fiction and sociology. She is also an influential activist for woman’s rights and a medical doctor. About half of her work has been translated from Arabic into English, including several novels. Woman at Point Zero (1983) is about a young village girl forced into prostitution and condemned to die for murder. The novel, which has been translated into twenty-two languages, chronicles the sexual exploitation of women in Egypt and examine the narrow range of options available to women in a conformist society. Other novels include God Dies by the Nile (1987), The Fall of the Imam (1988), and The Innocence of the Devil (1992). El Saadawi’s fiction draws on indigenous Arabic narratives, and thus her prose often seems highly stylized and poetic. Death of an Ex-Minister and Other Stories (tr 1987) reveals her experiments with diction, with the various narrative voices usually speaking in a monologue. The Hidden Face of Eve (1980), a sociological work, was the first book to document the horrors of clitoridectomy in northeastern Africa. El Saadawi has also written a travel account and political tracts devoted to women’s causes.

As Health Minister under the Anwar Sadat regime, el Saadawi was imprisoned for her outspoken opposition to that government’s social policies, which produced Memoirs from a Women’s Prison (tr 1986). In 1982 she formed the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA), and international women’s organization which has a consultative status with the United Nations and combats state repression and censorship, The Cairo chapter of AWSA was forcibly closed in 1991, though it continues to operate without headquarters.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Cultural Literacy: Diana

Posted on March 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Diana, who is the Roman version of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and the moon. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. In other words, just the basics.

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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The Weekly Text, 11 March 2022, Women’s History Month 2022 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Sylvia Plath

Posted on March 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal for the second Friday of Women’s History Month 2022 is this reading on Sylvia Plath and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

I cannot think of Sylvia Plath, or hear her name for that matter, without thinking of the scene in Annie Hall  in which Woody Allen (and yes, I am well aware that Woody Allen is for good reason in bad odour these days, which, alas, does not change my assessment of Annie Hall as one of the great American films), playing comedy writer Alvy Singer and visiting Annie Hall’s apartment (Diane Keaton, whose real name is Diane Hall–probably not a coincidence–plays Annie). Alvy (Allen) picks up a copy of Ms. Plath’s Ariel and remarks, “Interesting poetess, whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.”

I’ve not read Ariel, published in 1965 two years after Ms. Plath’s death, which I’d wrongly assumed was her sole volume of verse. In researching this post, however, I learned that she published in 1960 The Colossus and Other Poems. Many years ago, while still possessed of callow literary sensibilities, I did read The Bell Jar, which I recall as at once humane, bitter, and mordant. Did you know Ms. Plath originally published this roman a clef under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas? I didn’t until I did the preliminary work for this post. In any event, if you happen to stumble across a first edition of the book with a dust jacket, it is worth relatively serious money, as the article under the foregoing link explains.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Rachel Carson

Posted on March 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

As we begin to see the effects of global warming on our biosphere, it might be time to reacquaint ourselves, by way of this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Rachel Carson, with one of the founders of the environmental movement. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions.

Incidentally, the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the United Nations reported this week that some changes to the earth’s climate are “irreversible.” But, as National Public Radio opined, there is still hope. For the sake of the students we presently teach, let’s, uh, hope so.

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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The Weekly Text, 4 March 2022, Women’s History Month 2022 Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Margaret Sanger

Posted on March 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

March is Women’s History Month. Mark’s Text Terminal observes the occasion with documents posts and quotes dealing with women’s myriad contributions to the world. To begin the month, here is a reading on Margaret Sanger and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

Incidentally, I am well aware that Margaret Sanger is a controversial figure–and so is the organization she founded, Planned Parenthood, which issued this manifesto on Ms. Sanger, addressing her involvement with the eugenics movement in the United State and analyzing whether or not she was racist. This is an extremely complicated topic; if you type “Margaret Sanger and eugenics” you will receive page after page of results, many of them highly ideologically charged.

What Margaret Sanger did accomplish, to the offense of many, was to make contraception available to couples who could then, literally, plan their parenthood. Contraception is a sin in the Catholic church, though many Protestants also take umbrage at the idea that a woman has the right to control her own body. Planned Parenthood at this point in its history has established a history of providing healthcare (and yes, the occasional abortion, still legal for now) to low-income patients. For these reasons, Planned Parenthood has become a target of choice for the anti-feminist right wing of the Republican party. Margaret Sanger’s poor choice of ideological fellow travelers has made her a tool of activists who seek to destroy Planned Parenthood.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Kwanzaa

Posted on February 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Kwanzaa. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and one comprehension question. In other words, it doesn’t exactly do justice to its topic.

However, there is a lot of open space in this document, which means there is room to ask more questions about Kwanzaa. Like almost everything else on this blog, this is a Microsoft Word document. You may download it and modify it for the needs of your students.

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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Cultural Literacy: Angola

Posted on February 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Angola. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four compound sentences and nine comprehension questions. This is a good general introduction to the country including its geography and its history, including the relatively recent history of the Angolan Civil War. Early on, during the 1970s the Angolan conflict was a proxy war pitting, essentially, the United States against the Soviet Union, i.e. a “war which came in from the cold,” as the late Hampshire College professor Eqbal Ahmad put it.

So, this would make a good independent practice (i.e. homework) assignment. Or, because it is formatted in Microsoft Word (as is the majority of material you’ll find on this site), you can revise it to suit the needs of your students.

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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