Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Term of Art: Etymology

“etymology: The study of the historical relation between a word and the earlier from or forms from which it has, or has hypothetically, developed. Thus the etymology of sheep relates it, with German Schaf and others, to a reconstructed Common Germanic skoepa; that of street relates it, through Old English straet, to a borrowing into Germanic of Latin (via) strata ‘paved road.’

Loosely described as a study of the ‘origins of words’; but any form may have an earlier prehistory, over many thousands of years, of which we can know nothing.”

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

Matronym, Matronymic

“Matronym, Matronymic (noun): A name derived from that of one’s mother or a maternal ancestor, usually by addition of a suffix or prefix. Adjective: matronymic, matronymical; adverb: matronymically. Also METRONYMIC”

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

World War II on the Homefront

Here is a reading on World War II on the Homefront and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet if you teach this period of global history.

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, January 17, 2020: A Trove of Documents for Teaching Night by Elie Wiesel

Mark’s Text Terminal is undergoing a cleaning of its digital storage locker. A couple of weeks ago I posted a trove of materials for teaching Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart; two weeks hence, I’ll post another cache of documents for teaching William Golding’s Hobbesian nightmare, Lord of the Flies.

This week’s Text is an assortment of documents I wrote between ten and twelve years ago for teaching Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night. I’ve not used these materials in ten years, so I am moving them off my hard drive and onto Mark’s Text Terminal for storage–and to offer them to others for their use.

I’ll start by uploading this reading on Night (from the Intellectual Devotional series) and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I’ve definitely posted these documents elsewhere on this website; since they are in this unit’s folder, I’ll include them here because it makes sense to do so.

As I write this post, I realize that when I walked into a new job at the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan in the fall of 2008 (exciting times at that moment in the Financial District, as the world economy was about to fall off a cliff on account of worthless mortgage securities peddled fraudulently–and you who did this know who you are), I came into a situation in which my co-teacher, whom I’d not met, was out, and I needed to get some materials together right away to keep busy those young people whose education I was charged with delivering. For that reason, my first move was to write this prelude for group work to furnish kids with some context for understanding the Holocaust, and therefore for understanding Night.

Somewhere in this process I wrote this unit plan, which looks incomplete to me. I also wrote these eight lesson plans, only the first three of which, I regret, are complete. Still, the other five are solid templates, and wouldn’t be hard to finish.

Here are eight context clues worksheets, one for each chapter of Night, along with their eight sets of definitions for your class linguist.

Finally, here are the eight comprehension worksheets I used to guide the reading of the book.

Every document attached to this post is in Microsoft Word, so they are at the disposal of you and your students.

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.

Write It Right: Candidate for Aspirant

“Candidate for Aspirant. In American politics, one is not a candidate for office until formally named (nominated) for it by a convention, or otherwise, as provided by law or custom. So when a man who is moving Heaven and Earth to procure the nomination protests that he is ‘not a candidate’ he tells the truth in order to deceive.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Word Root Exercise: Quin, Quint, Quintu, Quinque

Here is a worksheet on the Latin roots quin, quint, quintu, and quinque. You probably already recognize the meaning of these roots as five and fifth. This root is very productive in English and probably quintessential to student vocabulary building.

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: Alien and Sedition Acts

Because it was an important topic, as I recall, in the United States History course I taught for a couple of years, I suspect this this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Alien and Sedition Acts will be useful to teachers of that subject. Indeed, when I briefly–but happily–co-taught United States History in Lower Manhattan, my esteemed colleague taught this with a thoroughness that persuades me this worksheet probably can only serve either as an introduction to the subject, or as an independent practice worksheet.

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.

Bliss (n)

OK, I’m just waiting for Time Machine to complete my final backup for the day. Here, while I wait, is a context clues worksheet on the abstract noun bliss. If nothing else, this is a good word for social-emotional learning.

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 the Greek Word Root Auto

If you scroll down to the seventh post below this one, you will find a pair of context clues worksheets on the noun autobiography and the adjective autobiographical.

Perhaps this lesson plan on the Greek word root auto–it means self and same–might complement those worksheets, or vice versa. I probably don’t need to tell you how productive this root is in English; it is at the basis of huge number of words used across academic domains.

I open this lesson, hinting at the meaning of the root, with this context clues worksheet on the adjective identical. Finally, here is the word root worksheet that is the mainstay of 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.

Soul (n), Sole (n, adj)

Can you use these five worksheets on the homophones soul (as a noun) and sole (as a noun and an adjective)? As I was pasting them together yesterday, I found myself wondering whether I should have named the species of fish as well in these worksheets.

As with virtually everything else at Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents, so it would be easy enough to add another word or two.

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.