Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb perform and another on the noun performance. The verb is used both intransitively and transitively and means, respectively (and similarly), “to do in a formal manner or according to prescribed ritual” and “to give a performance.” The verb has other meanings, but these are the two–the worksheet shows both transitive and intransitive use–meanings which the context clues seek to elicit from students.

Performance means, as its worksheet attempts by context to define, both “a public presentation or exhibition” and “the manner in which a mechanism performs.” Performance is actually a relatively complicated polysemous word, but I’ve attempted in these context clues to hew to a the two definitions above.

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.

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective moot. It means, as an adjective, “open to question,” “debatable,” “subjected to discussion,” “disputed,” “deprived of practical significance,” and “made abstract or purely academic.”

This worksheet attempts to elicit from students, from the context, the latter two meanings. Moot, for me at least, was a very tough word to place in context that students are likely to possess the prior knowledge to understand, and therefore to infer the meaning. You’ll find, I think, that the context hews closely to the final definition above, but will probably move students to say “something that isn’t going to happen.”

If ever you felt like commenting on something on Mark’s Text Terminal, I would be interested to hear what you think of this. I would be especially interested to hear if you’ve written stronger context for this word. Nota bene, incidentally, that moot is also used as a verb to mean “to bring up for discussion,” “broach,” and “debate,” (with an archaic definition of “to discuss from a legal standpoint”); moot is also a noun meaning, of all things, “a deliberative assembly primarily for the administration of justice; especially one held by the freemen of an Anglo-Saxon community” (with an obsolete meaning of “argument” and “discussion”).

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 context clues worksheet on the noun phalanx. It means “a body of heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece formed in close deep ranks and files; broadly, a body of troops in close array,” “a massed arrangement of persons, animals, or things,” and “an organized body of persons.”

The context for this document frames the latter two definitions. This is not a commonly used word, but it does turn up in various places–often in a constructions (as Merriam-Webster’s has it) like “a phalanx of lawyers.”

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.