“What is the name of the little boy who goes to the country of the Wild Things in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are? Max.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Novel, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by it successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Once again, with material adapted from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on understanding the difference between a hero and a protagonist in a work of drama, fictional prose, or poetry. This is a full-page worksheet with a paragraph of reading from Professor Brians’ book followed by ten modified cloze exercises to help students distinguish these two words and the important concepts in English language arts that they represent.
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 adjective two-bit. I wonder if anyone knows these days that two bits means twenty-five cents. Two-bit, therefore, means “cheap or trivial of its kind,” “petty, and “small-time”; this document is keyed to those definitions as well.
Unless you plan to teach a reading unit on Damon Runyon, or cast a production of Guys and Dolls, I can’t imagine why any student needs to learn this vanishing adjective. I can, however, imagine, that this was the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster at a moment in life when I had some time on my hands.
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.
“Chaucer’s tale-tellers: Knight * Miller * Reeve * Cook * Man of Law * Wife of Bath * Friar * Summoner * Clerk * Merchant * Squire * Franklin * Physician * Pardoner * Shipman * Prioress * Monk * Nun’s Priest * Second Nun * Canon’s Yeoman * Manciple * Parson * Narrator
And those who don’t tell tales: Host * Plowman * Yeoman * Canon * Second Priest * Third Priest and Five Guildsmen (Haberdasher, Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer, Arras-Maker)
Chaucer tells us that there are ‘well nyne and twenty’ pilgrims in the company that sets off from Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas-a-Becket in Canterbury. But once you start list-making you find that such numerical certainty proves evasive, for there are thirty-four identifiable characters in his text, of whom twenty-three tell a tale. I like to imagine that the Host and the Five Guildsmen would have been made to perform if Chaucer had lived long enough, for The Canterbury Tales was almost certainly a work in progress, which Chaucer happily tinkered with all his life.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, philosophy/religion, readings/research
“Antithesis (noun): The juxtaposing of contrasting words or ideas through parallel of balanced phrasing; rhetorical counterposing of opposites, as by asserting something and denying its contrary; the second or opposite element in an expressed contrast. Pl. antitheses; adj. antithetic, antithetical; adv. antithetically.
‘The poet ate his salad with his fingers, leaf by leaf, while talking to me about the antithesis of nature and art.’ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
This week’s Text is the penultimate lesson in the 13-lesson unit on pronouns I engineered several years ago, and have been working on ever since. It is basically a pre-assessment review lesson to prepare student for the final lesson, a guided mastery exercise in which they review and recapitulate all the foregoing lessons.
I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on “Women Get the Vote.” If the lesson enters a second day for whatever reason, here is another Everyday Edit, this one on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Here is the scaffolded worksheet for this lesson that is its primary work. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of same. I’ll put up the final lesson soon, and then there will be a 13-lesson unit on pronouns available in its entirety on Mark’s Text Terminal.
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.
“Rotten Reviews: A Fan’s Notes
‘The book’s fault is its lack of passion.’
Library Journal”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
In response to a student question the other day about the difference between prose and poetry–the prose poem “A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass was that day’s lesson in our English class and occasioned the question–I whipped up this learning support on the literary terms poetry, prose, and prose poem. This document is a single page with three short passages of text from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. It’s basically a glossary.
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 Master and Margarita: (Russian title: Master i Margarita). A novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), combining dark humor, satire, fantasy and philosophy. It was completed in 1938, but not published in Russia until 1966-7 (in serial form); the English edition was published in 1967. In the 1930s the Devil visits Moscow, and, with the aid of a naked girl and a gun-toting, cigar-smoking, man-sized cat, spreads chaos and mayhem and shows up the moral inadequacies of Soviet society. Standing apart from all this is the Master, a novelist of great integrity, and his beloved, Margarita. He is writing a book about the appearance of Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, long sections of which are included by Bulgakov. The book is prefaced by quotation from Goethe’s Faust.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
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