Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Trans Fat

OK, health teachers: if you can use them, here is a reading on trans fat and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies 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.

Muckraking

“Muckraking (noun): The searching out or exposure, as by a writer or newspaper, or wrongdoing committed by prominent individuals or institutions, especially of political corruption or scandal; sensational revelatory journalism. Adjective: muckraking; noun: muckrake, muckraker; verb: muckrake.

‘Having failed in her basement, I thought to have her here, in the loft of the parish hall, where a leaky old skylight made vivid the woody forms of miniature creches and lifesize mangers, wise kings’ crowns and shepherd’s crooks, Victorian alter furniture and great padded Bibles no longer thumped by the virile muckraking parsons of the first Roosevelt’s reign, plywood palm trees, and temples of gilded cardboard.’

John Updike, A Month of Sundays”

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

Gravity (n)

Rereading this context clues worksheet on gravity caused me to realize that because gravity, while it exists in the physical world (indeed, it’s a cornerstone of physics), is nonetheless a very difficult abstraction to explain, this document is not exactly the strongest I’ve ever composed. In any case, it is, like everything else on this website, in Microsoft Word, so you can edit or rewrite as you see fit.

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.

Undo (vt/vi), Undue (adj)

OK, on this very dark, still morning in southwestern Vermont, here are five homophone worksheets on the verb undo and the adjective undue if you need your students to understand these words.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Psych/o

This worksheet on the Greek word root psych/o–which means mind, soul, and mental process–takes students through a series of words that grow from this very productive root in English.

Do I need to say that anyone considering a career in mental health services in particular, and healthcare in general, should know this root? They’ll  need it to understand fully the meanings of psychologist and psychiatrist.

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.

Write It Right: A for An

“A for An. ‘A hotel.’ ‘A heroic man.’ Before an unaccented aspirate use an. The contrary usage in this country come of too strongly pressing our aspirates.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Hippies

Even though it drives them crazy when I do it, I often address my students as “hippies.” Here, then, for all of them across the years, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on hippies if you have any use for 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.

Historical Terms: Cabal

“cabal: The name given to the ministry which took power in England in 1667 (when Charles II dismissed his chancellor, Clarendon), taken from the initials of its members: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. The term is also used to mean any close-knit group of persons, particularly those involved in intrigue.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

A Lesson Plan on Linking Verbs

Here is a complete lesson plan on linking verbs. Because sentences with predicate adjectives are one of the most commonly used structures in both English prose and speech, I teach them several times in the course of the parts of speech unit I wrote several years ago (and continue to revise).

Anyway, here is the Cultural Literacy worksheet on intransitive verbs with which I open this lesson after a class break. This scaffolded worksheet on linking verbs is at the center of this lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on the verb to be to help students conjugate this often confusing verb.

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.

Nikola Tesla

His name is now a corporate brand, so perhaps this reading on Nikola Tesla and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet will help students understand the significance of that fact–and learn something about the plot of the recent film The Current War.

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.