Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

The Weekly Text, June 21, 2019: Five Worksheets on Differentiating and Using the Nouns Capital and Capitol

Posted on June 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, here, very simply, because I am exhausted on this first Friday of the summer break, are five homophone worksheets on the nouns capital and capitol. Right off the top of my head, looking at these, I can see a number of ways to edit and revise them to take students more deeply into these words and the concepts they represent.

That’s it. I hope you’re enjoying nice weather and the free time to get out in 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.

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Surreptitious (adj)

Posted on June 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, if you can use it, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective surreptitious. It means, of course, “done, made, or acquired by stealth” and “acting or doing somethings clandestinely.”

I’m off this morning to take the Massachusetts Test of Educator Licensure (MTEL) in English. Wish me luck on this four-hour test.

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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Word Root Exercise: Dyn, Dyna, Dynam/o

Posted on June 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here, on a rainy Thursday morning, is a worksheet on the Greek word roots dyn, dyna, and dynam/o. They mean power, energy, and strength. These are, as the worksheet shows, some very productive roots in English. A number of STEM-related words start with this root, among others.

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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Anxiety

Posted on June 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

This morning seems as good a time as any to post this reading on anxiety and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If you work with anxious kids, and if the statistics on anxiety in kids are true, I suspect you’ll find a use for this in your classroom.

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.

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Superstition (n)

Posted on June 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

Finally, on this Tuesday morning, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun superstition, which seems like a word students ought to understand clearly–particularly, I think, in these times, as an antonym to reason or science. There is a lot of Counter-Enlightenment sentiment, basically superstition, floating around at the moment. It’s up to educators to keep alive the values of reasoned inquiry.

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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Accademia della Crusca

Posted on June 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

“(Ital, ‘Academy of the Chaff‘) Florentine literary academy founded in 1583 to purify Tuscan, the literary language of the Italian Renaissance. It was opposed to Tasso in the debate over the merits of his Gerusalemme Liberata. The first part of its official dictionary appeared in 1612, and the work is still in progress.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Word Root Exercise: Rupt

Posted on June 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

If there is a better time, for obvious reasons, to post this worksheet on the Latin word root rupt, I can’t imagine it. It means “to break, burst,” and is at the basis of the English adjective, very much in the news of late, corrupt.

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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Cultural Literacy: Vatican City-State

Posted on June 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Vatican as a city-state. I’ve used it, among other materials, to illustrate the concept of city-states in freshman global studies classes.

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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Term of Art: Antecedent

Posted on June 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

“1. The words in a text, usually a noun phrase, to which a pronoun or other grammatical unit refers back. Cook is the antecedent of him in: ‘In 1772. Cook began his second voyage, which took him further south than he had ever been.’ Similarly, his second voyage is the antecedent of which. With impersonal it, this, that, which, the antecedent may be a whole clause or paragraph, as in: ‘Might not the coast of New South Wales provide and armed haven? To some people this looked good on paper, but there is no hard evidence that it did so to William Pitt or his ministers.’ Despite the implications of the name, an antecedent can follow rather than precede: ‘For his first Pacific voyage, Cook had no chronometer.’ 2. In logic, the conditional element in a proposition. In If they did that, they deserve our respect, the antecedent is they did that.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Cultural Literacy: Franz Kafka

Posted on June 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

Last fall, while unpacking some boxes of books for my classroom library, I learned with considerable pleasure that Peter Kuper has rendered Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis as a graphic novel. Personally, I like what Mr. Kuper has done with that staple of Mad Magazine, Antonio Prohias’s Cold War allegory as comic strip, “Spy vs. Spy.” Mr. Prohias was a hard act to follow, and Mr. Kuper has done so respectably, indeed even admirably. Professionally, that the students I teach–who have neither particular nor general interest in reading for pleasure–all read The Metamorphosis amazed me. Needless to say, I recommend this book for your classroom.

To complement The Metamorphosis, should you come by a copy, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Franz Kafka.

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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