Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Acrimony (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun acrimony. I suspect that its adjectival form, acrimonious, is probably in more common usage in the English language. In any case, acrimony and the concept it represents probably ought to be a part of a high school student’s linguistic toolkit.

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.

Common Cold

Health teachers and others involved with the sciences, here is a reading on the common cold and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it, if you need them.

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: Pablo Picasso

OK, here, to wrap up the week, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Pablo Picasso.

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.

The Weekly Text, October 4, 2019, Hispanic Heritage Month 2019 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the War of the Philippines Insurrection

When I prepare materials for Hispanic Heritage Month (of which, alas, as I previously mentioned in these pages, I currently suffer a shortage), I tend to perceive the materials along a narrow range of topics, related almost solely to people and events in the Americas. As this web page from Catholic Relief Services observes, “Hispanics and Latinos are not necessarily the same. Hispanics are descended from Spanish speaking populations. Latinos are people of Latin American descent.” I’m no expert on this. If you are, I’d be greatly obliged if you could weigh in on this topic.

What I do know about the Hispanic World derives both from my own education and my travels across South America. For me, the most salient characteristic of the Hispanic world is that it was, in its entirety, subject to imperial exploitation and expropriation. Therefore, one of the unfortunate products of the Spanish presence in the new world is that legacy.

In any case, I think under the definitions limned above (again, if you have scholarly knowledge of this, I would be extremely grateful for some clarification of this issue), I can safely post, as part of Mark’s Text Terminal’s observance of Hispanic Heritage Month 2019, this reading on the War of Philippines Insurrection and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.

Bonnie and Clyde

As I get ready to leave school for the day, I’ll post this reading on Bonnie and Clyde and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that this is not biographical material on Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but rather a reading on Arthur Penn’s film starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, respectively, in the title roles.

Have you seen it? It’s a masterpiece by any standard I recognize.

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: Badly for Bad

“Badly for Bad. ‘I feel badly.’ ‘He looks badly.’ The former sentence implies defective nerves of sensation, the latter, defective nerves of sensation. Use the adjective.”

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

Titanic

This reading on the Titanic and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet have tended to be relatively high interest material in my classrooms over the years.

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: Code Switching

“code switching: Switching in speech between different languages, dialects, etc. E.g. two business associates meet and chat in one language; the meeting becomes formal and they switch to another. Often analyzed into subtypes, e.g. as occurring within sentences or at sentence boundaries. Sometimes distinguished from code mixing, or from borrowing; sometimes not.

The term ‘code’ is loosely used of any language or distinct variety of a language, whether or not it is actually thought of as a code (like the Morse code or a legal code) in any illuminating sense.”

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

Cultural Literacy; Cryptography

OK, moving right along on this chilly Monday morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on cryptography. This has turned out, at times, to be of very high interest to students I’ve taught over the years.

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.

Arduous (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective arduous if you need 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.