Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Over the Cliffs and Down We Go”

OK, moving right along on this grey, damp morning in southwestern Vermont, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Over the Cliffs and Down We Go.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom, derived from a longer proverb, “For Want of a Nail.” You’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions that constitute the evidence of this case to conduct your investigation. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key so that you can complete the investigation and bring the suspect to 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.

Term of Art: Onomatopoeia

“Onomatopoeia (noun): The forming of or use of a word that imitates in sound what it denotes; use of imitative or echoic words; echoic word. Adjective: onomatopoeic, onomatopoeical, onomatopoetic, onomatopoeian; adverb: onomatopoeically, onomatopoetically; noun: onomatope, onomatopy.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Word Root Exercise: Path, Pathy

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots path-o and pathy. They mean both disease and feeling. As you can probably see from looking at them, these are extremely productive roots in English, giving us words like pathology, sympathy, and empathy. There might be something to be done, using this worksheet, in helping students understand the mind-body connection in medicine and, indeed, in life.

In any case, this is another word root students looking at careers in healthcare ought to know.

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.

A Lesson Plan on Continents’ Population and Surface Area from The Order of Things

Here is yet another lesson from The Order of Things, this one on Continents’ Population and Surface Area. You’ll need this worksheet with the list and comprehension questions to complete this lesson.

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.

The Weekly Text, April 24, 2020, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the World War II Era Internment Camps

This week’s Text, in the continuing–but premature–observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020–returns to the subject with which I began the month, to wit, this reading on the internment camps in which American citizens of Asian Pacific descent were held during World War II along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. We Americans think ourselves exceptional, but nationalism, tyranny, and bigotry are anything but exceptional–they are the tedious crap to which we as a species have subscribed for centuries.

That’s something worth remembering as our idiot president uses locutions like “Chinese virus” and violence against Americans of Asian descent is on the rise.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Academy Awards

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Academy Awards. This may be high-interest material for some students, though I can’t recall any of students I’ve served asking for it–so I have not tagged it as high interest.

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: Defective

“Defective: Indicating a lack of customary grammatical (or inflectional) form or forms, or used in only one form, e.g., ‘quoth,’ ‘wend,’ ‘behooves.’”

 Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Duty (n), Dutiful (adj)

On a rainy, chilly Friday morning in southwestern Vermont, here are two context clues worksheets on the noun duty and the adjective dutiful.

And I submit to you, editorially of course, that these two words, and the two concepts the words represent, ought to be very active in our public and private discourse right 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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Islam and Muslim

Here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the nouns Islam and Muslim. Don’t forget that May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020 (and that I began posting materials for it a month early because, like–increasingly–the days of the week, I lost track of the month).

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.

Cultural Literacy: All’s Fair in Love and War

OK, last but not least this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “All’s Fair in Love and War.” It’s a nice abstract expression that students, if you want to augment, could work to reify in a few sentences.

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.