Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Common Errors in English Usage: Hero (n), Protagonist (n)

Once again, with material adapted from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on understanding the difference between a hero and a protagonist in a work of drama, fictional prose, or poetry. This is a full-page worksheet with a paragraph of reading from Professor Brians’ book followed by ten modified cloze exercises to help students distinguish these two words and the important concepts in English language arts that they represent.

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: Ig, Il, In, Im, Ir

Here is a worksheet on the Latin roots ig, il, in, im, ir; they mean not and without. These are though of in English language arts classes as prefixes, which they are for the purposes of this worksheet. You’ll find these root at the beginning of many high-frequency words in English adjectives in English such as ignorant and illegal. And while words like illegible, immutable, incongruous, and irrefutable (all present in this document) are less frequently used in common discourse, they are quite useful in academic 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.

Cultural Literacy: D-Day

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on D-Day. This is a half-pager, with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. The sparest of introductions, I imagine this document has only specific uses in a classroom. Review? It’s a Microsoft Word document, so you can copy and paste out of it as you like.

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.

Write It Right: Had Better for Would Better

Had better for Would better. This is not a defensible as an idiom, as those who always used it before their attention was directed to it take the trouble to point out. It comes of such contractions as he’d for he would, I’d for I would. These clipped words are erroneously restored as ‘he had,’ ‘I had.’ So we have such monstrosities as ‘He had better beware,’ ‘I had better go.’”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Two-Bit (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective two-bit. I wonder if anyone knows these days that two bits means twenty-five cents. Two-bit, therefore, means “cheap or trivial of its kind,” “petty, and “small-time”; this document is keyed to those definitions as well.

Unless you plan to teach a reading unit on Damon Runyon, or cast a production of Guys and Dolls, I can’t imagine why any student needs to learn this vanishing adjective. I can, however, imagine, that this was the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster at a moment in life when I had some time on my hands.

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.

Ku Klux Klan

Here is a reading on the Ku Klux Klan along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have almost posted these documents a number of times over the years, but always hesitated and returned them to the warehouse. I think, or at least hope, that the entirety of this blog exposes my attitude toward the KKK–I think they are a dangerous group of racists and hatemongers who bear watching–hence this reading.

Once again, the editors of the Intellectual Devotional series have not equivocated and in one page detailed the crimes of the Klan and its threat to the civil rights of people it hates. I think students really deserve the plain facts of this hate group’s existence and its aims. This short reading serves as a good general introduction to the KKK.

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.

J.P. Morgan

Here is a reading on J.P. Morgan along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehensionn worksheet. By the standards of other readings from the Intellectual Devotional series, this one is relatively short. But it is a solid general introduction to the biography of the financier and includes the basic information about his role in United States economic history.

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: Crusades

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Crusades. This is a half-page worksheet with a five-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. While it is a good general introduction to a complex series of events whose legacy remains very much with us today, it is obviously inadequate to the topic. Because, like almost everything else available for download at Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document, it can (and certainly should, in my estimation) be altered 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.

Unite (vi/vt), Unity (n)

Here are a pair of context clues worksheet, the first on the verb unite and the second on the noun unity. The verb is used both intransitively and transitively; this document is keyed to the definition of unite as “to put together to form a single unit” and “to become one or as if one.” Unity, in the second document, is keyed to the definitions “a condition of harmony” and “the quality or state of being made 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.

Term of Art: Homograph

“Homograph: (Greek ‘same writing’) A word written in the same way as another, but having a different pronunciation and meaning, e.g. row/row, tear/tear, lead/lead.

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