“Abridgement, n. A brief summary of some person’s literary work, in which those parts that tell against the convictions of the abridger are omitted for want of space.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun hoi polloi, from the ancient Greek meaning “the many.” This noun phrase isn’t much used anymore, perhaps because it has negative or even contemptuous connotations. Still, if we want to produce educated citizens who are capable of sustaining a civil society, this might be a word and concept for them to understand.
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.
This week’s Text is a simple one, to wit this reading on Walt Disney and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is relatively high-interest material for students, at least many I’ve served. There are relatively few children in our society (and arguably in any society) whose imagination Walt Disney and his characters haven’t colonized.
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.
If you’re a stickler for usage, or want to give your students a chance to become sticklers in their own right, then this English usage worksheet on the past participle shrunk and the simple past tense verb shrank might be one avenue to bring that endeavor to fruition. For the record, shrunk is the past participle, so it must be used with the helping verbs had and have. Shrank, on the other hand, is the simple past tense of the verb shrink.
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.
If you seek to interest students in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hobbits might be a good place to start. It’s a short exercise–a half-page–with only three questions. I’ve used this to good effect with alienated students who I know had an interest in mythology, and fantasy literature.
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.
“Body for Trunk. The body lay here, the head there.’ The body is the entire physical person (as distinguished from the soul, or mind) and the head is a part of it. As distinguished from the head, trunk may include the limbs, but anatomically it is the torso only.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb interpret and another on the noun interpretation. The verb is used both intransitively and transitively; it’s worth mentioning that used intransitively, its meaning is limited “to act as an interpreter between speakers of different languages.”
The reasons for teaching these words should be obvious, so I won’t wheedle, nag, badger, pontificate or lecture on it.
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.
As it seems to have returned to its prominent place in the bundle of American political anxieties, now seems like a good time to post this reading on communism and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
In my ill-fated career as a doctoral candidate, one of the more interesting seminars I took was on the “Hegel-to Marx Problem.” Needless to say, I read quite a bit of Marx and Engels for that class, as well, later, on my own. I bring this up because I want to comment that for a one-page reading, the documents in this post introduce communism thoroughly and objectively. It’s good stuff if you need it.
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.
Now seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the republic as form of government. This is a full-page worksheet, so it might be useful as an independent practice (i.e. homework) assignment. There is, like most if not all of the Cultural Literacy worksheets on this blog, plenty of room to expand this document; and, as are the lion’s share of documents here, this one is in Microsoft Word, so it is easily exportable, transferable, and reviseable.
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.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Seeing Double.” Judging from my download statistics, these are always a crowd pleaser.
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Have. an ax to grind,” (which might also be usefully employed when introducing students to the methods of writing a research paper–especially scholarly disinterest). This PDF of the illustration and questions is the evidence you’ll need to conduct this investigation. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key so that you may bring the culprit to the bar of justice.
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.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
You must be logged in to post a comment.