Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Exult (vi)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb exult. It’s only used intransitively, so no direct object is required for its use. This is kind of an old-fashioned word. That said, it has a nice abstract quality which puts young minds to work at interpretation, a solid cognitive procedure we really need to help students understand and apply.

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: Verb

“Verb: A word or group of words that expresses the action or indicates the state of being of the subject. Verbs activate sentences.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

The Weekly Text, October 30, 2020: A Lesson Plan on Using the Definite and Indefinite Articles

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on using definite and indefinite articles.

I open this lesson with this parsing sentences worksheet for nouns. This scaffolded worksheet on using the definite (the) and indefinite (a, an before words starting with vowels) articles. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet to make working through this lesson a little easier.

That’s it. Happy Halloween! Don’t eat too much candy, and wear your mask!

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.

President Richard M. Nixon

I offer this reading on President Richard M. Nixon and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet with the reminder that democratic processes dispensed with this criminal, bigoted president. I don’t know that those same democratic processes are as robust as they were in 1974, but they don’t look as though they are. I’d say let’s hope they are, but we need something less ephemeral than hope.

Get out and vote!

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.

Term of Art: Homonymy

“homonymy: The relation between words whose forms are the same but whose meanings are different and cannot be connected: e.g. between pen ‘writing instrument’ and pen ‘enclosure.’ Homonyms are words related in this way.

Distinguished from polysemy in that the meaning of one homonym is not seen as deriving from that of the other: in that light, the words are different lexical units. Homonymy can also be distinguished from cases of conversion: e.g. that of either of the nouns ‘pen’ into a corresponding verb. Also from syncretism, which is between inflections of the same lexical unit. The term may be restricted further to homonymy, as in this example, both in the sounds of words and in their spelling: hence the more specific homograph, homophone.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Word Root Exercise: Cide

OK, last but not least this afternoon, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root –cide. It means, you won’t be surprised to hear, “to kill.” This worksheet has several more words–eleven in all–than I usually include in such an exercise. That said, bear in mind that the words selected for inclusion are there because they often show up in high-stakes college admissions tests. That said, if this worksheet is too long, I would think you could dispense with germicide (any kid who uses hand sanitizer, which I hope is all kids during this pandemic) will quickly figure out what that means, uxoricide, and tyrannicide.

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.

Watergate

As I write this, the United States approaches one of the most consequential elections in its history. This is not a political blog, but I cannot help but reflect on the growth of cynicism in my lifetime. This reading on the Watergate scandal and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet narrate and record a scandal that, when I was a high school student myself, brought down a presidency. Compared to some of the conduct of the current administration, Watergate appears in retrospect a triviality.

And that is not a good thing.

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.

Term of Art: Transitive Verb

“Transitive Verb: A verb that requires a direct object to complete its meaning: They washed their new car. An intransitive verb does not require an object to complete its meaning: The audience laughed. Many verbs can be both: The wind blew furiously. My car blew a gasket.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Common Errors in English Usage: Select (adj), Selected (adj)

Hot off the press at Mark’s Text Terminal (I just wrote this), here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of select and selected as adjectives. This is a usage exercise meant to meet the Common Core Standard on usage. These are words, particularly in the context in which I’ve presented them (as the reading dictates), that are commonly used in marketing and promotional materials. So, if you’re teaching anything related to business and marketing, this worksheet will clarify these words in that context.

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.

Ernest Hemingway

If you’re teaching Hemingway’s fiction, this reading on Ernest Hemingway and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might serve as an introduction to the author himself. I wrote it for that purpose, to support students who were about to start with The Old Man and the Sea–a novella which, despite its plaintive prose, can baffle struggling and emergent readers.

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.