Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Miguel de Cervantes. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two short sentences and two comprehension questions. A nice little symmetry that includes mention of Don Quixote.
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.
“Jose (Raul) Capablanca: (1888-1942) Cuban chess master. He learned chess from his father at 4 and beat Cuba’s best player at 12. He defeated Emanuel Lasker to become world champion in 1921; in 1927 he was defeated by Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946). From 1916 to 1924 he did not lose a game. In 1921 he published an instruction manual, Chess Fundamentals.“
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Yesterday began Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, which occurs every year between September 15 and October 15. This year’s month contains five Fridays, so there will be five Weekly Texts such as today’s–i.e. readings and comprehension worksheets. Unfortunately, and to my chagrin, this will exhaust my supply of materials for this month where Weekly Texts are concerned. I have developed a number of shorter exercises to post while I figure something out for Fridays–i.e. Weekly Text day.
For now, here is a reading on Francisco Goya along with its accompanying 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.
“To learn English, you must begin by thrusting the jaw forward, almost clenching the teeth, and practically immobilizing the lips. In this way the English produce the series of unpleasant little mews of which their language consists.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“Azulejos: The Spanish word for ceramic tiles used for decorative purposes to embellish architecture. The art is a legacy from the Arab occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, and fine examples are found in both Spain and Portugal.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Here is a reading on the Spanish Civil War along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. While the reading does mention that this conflict became a “cause celebre among communists and left-leaning Western intellectuals,” it does not mention the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an oversight in my estimation. This lapse, if you too think it one, can be remedied with this material from the Zinn Education Project.
Incidentally, The Brigade’s members were dismissed as “premature antifascists” in their time. In ours, I suppose, they would be ridiculed as the “woke left” by the halfwits on Fox News. They were right then and remain so about the menace of fascism.
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.
“Emilio Aguinaldo: (1869-1964) Philippine independence leader. Of Chinese and Tagalog parentage he was educated at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, and became a leader of the Katipunan, a revolutionary society that fought the Spanish. Philippine independence was declared in 1898 and Aguinaldo became president, but within months Spain signed a treaty ceding the islands to the United States. Aguinaldo fought U.S. forces until he was captured in 1901, After taking an oath of allegiance to the U.S., he was induced to retire from public life. He collaborated with the Japanese during World War II; after the war he was briefly imprisoned; released by presidential amnesty, he was vindicated by his appointment to the Council of State in 1950. In his later years he promoted nationalism, democracy, and improvement of relations between the U.S. and the Philippines.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
This week’s Text, for the final Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2021, is a reading on Cesar Chavez along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading comes from one of the Intellectual Devotional books; there is another reading and comprehension worksheet from one of those volumes. Entries on him appeared in two of them–Biographies and American History–and both are now available on this blog.
In fact, to use the boilerplate for this circumstance on Mark’s Text Terminal, these documents join a growing body of material on Mr. Chavez, one of the heroes of my youth.
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.
“Ruben Dario: (pen name of Felix Ruben Garcia Sarmiento, 1867-1916) Nicaraguan poet and essayist, famed as the high priest of modernismo. One of his favorite sayings was ‘Art is not a set of rules but a harmony of whims.’ Because he wrote verse as a child, he became known in Central America as ‘the boy poet.’ In 1886 he went to Chile, where he published his first major work, Azul (1888), a collection of verse and prose sketches that bore the imprint of the French Parnassians and revealed the fondness for lush, exotic imagery that was to characterize his work. In 1890 he returned to Central America and the first of his two unhappy marriages. After a short visit to Spain in 1892, he moved to Buenos Aires. The appearance of Prosas Profanas (1896; tr 1922), in which the influence of the French symbolists is fused with that of the Parnassians, marked the highpoint of the modernist movement. In 1898 Dario went again to Spain, now as a correspondent for La nacion, a Buenos Aires newspaper. He was acclaimed by intellectuals of Spain’s Generacion del 98, who, like Dario, were profoundly affected by the outcome of the Spanish-American War. Cantos de vida y esperanza, generally regarded as his best work, appeared in 1905. It shows the technical excellence and lyric beauty of his earlier poetry, but there is a greater freedom and a new feeling for the native themes, which he had previously rejected. Dario’s concern for ‘our America’ is also evident in ‘A Roosevelt,’ a poetic diatribe against the U.S., motivated by the seizure of Panama in 1903, and in Canto a la Argentina (1910). Dario’s later work reveals a growing disillusionment and despair, Although he was named Nicaraguan minister to Spain in 1908, his last years were marred by financial difficulties and poor health, due in part to his heavy drinking. In 1915, after an unsuccessful lecture tour of the U.S., he was stricken with pneumonia in New York and died soon after his return to Nicaragua. Dario’s influence on Spanish poetry can be measured by the statement of Pedro Henriquez Urena that ‘of any poem written in Spanish, it can be told with certainty whether it was written before him or after him.’ The Selected Poems of Ruben Dario appeared in English translation in 1965.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Che Guevara. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences and six comprehension questions. With this worksheet, I can say that the document joins a growing body of materials on Che Guevara on this blog.
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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