It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the verb purport, which is used only transitively. Don’t forget your direct object: what is the subject of your sentence purporting? Arcane knowledge? Expertise in neurosurgery? A conscience?
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.
Are you old enough to remember when The Monkees television show was broadcast between 1966 and 1968? I saw it in those years, and if memory serves it was one of the last things up in the Saturday-morning cartoon lineup (though I think this was a rebroadcast and the show debuted in primetime), right before The Jetsons. By Christmas of 1967, I had my own copy of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, which only confirmed my tender-aged skepticism of the The Monkees as both thespians and musicians.
Here is a reading on The Monkees along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I haven’t tagged this as high-interest material, because I’m not sure it is–but it might be, depending on the student who receives it. There is a fair amount of conceptual inquiry implicit in the story of The Monkees, including the difference between commerce and art, the continuum between the popular and the rarefied in the arts, as well as the coarse and the fine in culture.
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—as for So—as. ‘He is not as good as she.’ Say, not so good. In affirmative statements the rule is different: He is as good as she.”
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
It popped up as the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster’s last week, but I let it go by. Then I saw it used not once, but twice, in the Harlan Coben thriller I’m reading at the moment, so I wrote up five sentences. Here, therefore, is a context clues worksheet on the adjective ruddy if you can use it.
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.
While I know I harp on this far too often, I want to remind users of this blog that it is not political in nature.
Also, I understand that there has been no deficit of reporting on President Donald Trump. That said, when I read this article on Donald Trump (here’s the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it) in David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim’s. The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture: Converse Confidently about Society and the Arts (Emmaus PA: Modern Times, 2008), from which I have developed a large number of readings and worksheets, I decided to work it up because of its historical interest. Nota bene the publication date, which is not before Mr. Trump first indicated an interest in running for president–that was 1999, as the article reports–but well before he ran. The article takes a bemused tone as it characterizes Trump, essentially, as a clown and a product of celebrity culture.
It also contains some information about Trump’s assets and his management of them that may well turn out, in the very near future, to be false. The Trump Organization returned from the edge of collapse, in the 1990s, it is clear, by taking in money from some dubious figures. Moreover, at least one of its lenders flagged some of his (as well as his those of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner) transactions as suspicious. This article argues that Trump emerged from his various bankruptcies by dint of his own genius. It has become increasingly difficult, under the circumstances, to believe that.
All of this is under investigation by both the Southern District of New York and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. So this reading may turn out to be an interesting avenue for historical inquiry concerning the Trump presidency. He kept his own mythology alive for far longer than the facts supported it. The question for students is this: how did Trump accomplish that? How are the news and entertainment media in particular and our culture in general culpable in this man’s lies?
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’s an English usage worksheet on using rebelling and revolting in declarative sentences. This is a relatively short exercise that can, nonetheless, to be expanded.
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 worksheet on the Greek word root lith/o. It means stone and rock. Simple enough, and useful if you happen to be teaching geology in particular or earth science in general.
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 comes to us from the sociologist C. Wright Mills, and if there is a better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the power elite, and to develop and inculcate a critical awareness of the power elite, I don’t know when that would be–although I could say that about so many moments in my own lifetime.
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.
“Participle: A verbal A that functions as an adjective. Present participles end in -ing (brimming); past participles typically end in -d or -ed (injured) or -en (broken) but may appear in other forms (brought, been, gone).”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, and given how it’s generally used in English–with nouns like rebellion and opposition–now is a good time to post this context clues worksheet on the verb foment. It’s used transitively only, so do not forget your direct object: you must foment something.
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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