“Avocation for Vocation. A vocation is, literally, a calling; that is, a trade or profession. An avocation is something that calls one away from it. If I say that farming is some one’s avocation I mean that he practices it, not regularly, but at odd times.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
OK, last but not least this morning, here is an English usage worksheet on reknown and renown. The first word is simply a misspelling of the second; put another way, reknown is not a word in English.
Renown, however, is, both as a noun and a verb–and the verb is used only transitively. In this English usage worksheet it is used only, in five cloze exercises, as a noun. Given how short this worksheet is, I’ll suggest that there is plenty of room for helping students understand renown as a verb by asking them to write some sentences using it that way.
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.
OK, moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root cerebro. It means, I expect you’ve gathered by now, brain. Most of the words that grow from this root–it’s very productive in English–denote brain but also connote mind and intellect. But again, you probably already know that.
Like many Greek roots on this blog, this Latin root will be useful, indeed necessary, for students interested in the healthcare professions.
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.
National Public Radio ran a story this morning on airlines–among them Qantas and Royal Brunei–are offering “Flights to Nowhere.” People suffering travel withdrawal can board a plane and fly…back to the airport where they started!
I can’t pretend to understand anyone’s desire to do something like that, but at the same time, to each his or her own. In any case, I found this reading on jet travel and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet in the warehouse. You can see why I post it now.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on class structure to complement another post, seven below this, on class consciousness. My guess? This stuff wouldn’t fly in most schools and school districts. We Americans actually believe all the nonsense we tell ourselves about opportunity and the American meritocracy; we fancy ourselves above or immune to class distinctions.
I have bad news: we’re not. I think poor kids have a right to know that, and I think teachers have a moral and intellectual obligation to help students understand the way the edifice of class circumscribes students’ lives.
Just sayin,.
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.
“Proper Noun: The name of a particular person (Frank Sinatra), place (Boston), or thing (Moby Dick). Common nouns name classes of people (singers), places (cities), or things (books) and are not capitalized.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, punctuation, term of art
It popped up at Merriam-Webster yesterday, and I can’t think of a better time, in a world where nothing is sacred and everything is for sale, to compose and publish this context clues worksheet on the verb shill. It’s only used intransitively. Shill is also a noun: someone who shills is, naturally, a shill.
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, in the ongoing observation of Hispanic Heritage Month 2020, is a reading on Emiliano Zapata along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Any study of the history of Mexico, United States policy there or elsewhere, or revolutionary movements across the world probably ought to include something on this patriot and revolutionary.
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.
In my experience, regret isn’t at the forefront of the adolescent’s emotional range; indeed, it is probably at graduation at the earliest that teenagers get a taste of regret.
So, this English usage worksheet on differentiating the adverbs regretfully and regrettably might not land. Still, it does meet the standard for understanding how to work with a usage manual, albeit adapted for struggling learners.
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.
It’s not something we talk about in school, because it offends people’s perception of our exceptional, egalitarian society in the United States. Of course that is nonsense: social class divisions, with unequal access to basic resources and economic privileges, has long been a part of American social life.
This Cultural Literacy worksheet on class consciousness is actually a good introduction to the idea of social class as well as, obviously, consciousness of one’s own social class.
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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