“auxiliary: In grammar, a verb that is subordinate to the main lexical verb in a clause. Auxiliaries can convey distinctions of tense, aspect, mood, person, and number. In Germanic languages, such as English and Romance languages such as French, an auxiliary verb occurs with the main verb in the form of an infinitive or a participle.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
From Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on differentiating and using properly the adjectives ignorant and stupid. This is a full-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises.
Given the current state of American culture and society, I would think this would be timely, and therefore useful, material. But that’s just the perspective of my currently jaundiced eye. On a brighter note, and to give credit where it is so amply due, you should know that Professor Brians allows access to his usage manual at no cost; you can find the webscript (can I coin that portmanteau?) at the Washington State University website.
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 on this Tax Day (actually, Tax Day this year is on Monday, 18 April) is the penultimate lesson, a sentence writing review, of seven-lesson unit on the use of prepositions. Without further ado, then, here is the lesson plan.
I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on author Yoshiko Uchida; in the event the lesson stretches into a second day, here is another on Basketball’s Beginnings. (And to give credit where it is so deservedly due, the good people at Education World allow access at no cost to a calendar year’s worth of Everyday Edit worksheets, should you find these useful documents work well for your students.) Here is the sentence-writing review worksheet. If you need it, here is the learning support for commonly used prepositions that I work to keep by students’ sides throughout this unit. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet.
Next week I’ll publish as the Weekly Text the assessment lesson for this unit. Then Mark’s Text Terminal will be able to offer a complete seven-lesson unit on using prepositions in prose.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the organization man. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is a term coined, as a title of a 1956 book, The Organization Man by sociologist William H. Whyte. I don’t know what place, if any, this document might find in the secondary classroom. But if you are concerned about the increasing bureaucratization of everyday life (and if you’re a teacher and not concerned about this, I would like to suggest that you pay greater attention to what is happening in your school and school district–e.g. look for job titles like “assistant vice superintendent”).
I’m just about to finish the late David Graeber’s book on rapidly expanding bureaucracies, Bu****it Jobs, so I suppose this is on my mind–hence this post, even though this document has lain around at the Text Terminal warehouse for several 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.
Here is a pair of context clues worksheet for articulate used as an adjective and a verb. These documents require, I think, a bit of exposition: these are complicated words, and the worksheet itself is keyed to specific meanings of these words and the parts of speech for which they function. Let’s start with the adjective: the sentences in the first document seek to move student toward inferring the adjectival definition of articulate as “expressing oneself readily, clearly, or effectively.”
The verb is another matter. First of all, it is used both intransitively and transitively. Intransitively, it means “to utter articulate sounds,” “to utter clear and understandable sounds,” and, less relevantly to the matter at hand, “to become united or connected by or as if by a joint” (e.g. the articulated buses one sees in big-city public transportation systems worldwide). Transitively, articulate means “to give clear and effective utterance to,” “put into words,” “to utter distinctly,” and “to give definition to (as a shape or object).” But it too carries the meaning” to unite by or as if by means of a joint” as above.
In any case, the second page of this document seeks to elicit the more common definitions of the verb, which is, transitively “to give clear and effective utterance to,” and “put into words.” And that’s more than enough said about the use of articulate (don’t forget the stress shifts to the final syllable for the verb) as a verb and as an adjective.
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.
Moving right along on this spring morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root post. It means, of course, “after” and “behind.” I feel confident that I need not belabor the productivity of this root–and as I write this, I wonder why I didn’t include this root in the two yearlong (one lesson per week) cycles of word root lessons for building vocabulary I wrote for freshman and sophomore English classes. In fact, as you certainly know, post can be attached to just about any noun to form the meaning of “after something.”
This worksheet, in any case, asks students to infer the meaning of the root from such high-frequency English words as postdate, posterior (which also gives us posterity, which is not on this document), and posthumous.
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.
“Antonym (noun): A word opposite in meaning to a given word. Adj. antonymous; n. antonymy.
‘The Greeks used caco-and dys- to manufacture the antonyms to eu-compounds.’ Philip Howard, Words Fail Me”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the denominations of paper currency in the United States from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book, The Order of Things. For students, here is the combined reading and comprehension worksheet to use for this lesson.
Nota bene please that I conceived of and prepared this material for students who find it a challenge to navigate and manipulate two symbolic systems–that is, numbers and letters–at the same time. This is a comfortable way to ease into more complicated work like word problems in math–or at least I like to think it is.
But what do you think?
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.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun argot. It means “an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group.” I assume this was a Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster at some point, because this is not exactly a high-frequency word in the English language. In fact, I think there is a case to be made that argot is a linguistic term of art rather than a noun in everyday use.
So, unless you are teaching a unit on, or mounting a production of, Guys and Dolls (or if you need to explain the patter in a Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or Chester Himes novel, or explain the use of an adjective like “two-bit”) I expect this document will have little utility in the primary or secondary classroom. But what the hell, I wrote it, I have basically unlimited storage capacity on this blog, and maybe someone can use 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.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb administer. It is used both intransitively and transitively. The sentences in this document, however, are keyed to this verb’s first transitive definition, “to manage or supervise the execution, use, or conduct of.” Ergo, you will note that all the sentences on this worksheet use administer with a direct object–i.e. transitively.
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 Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.